21st Street Coffee and Tea

One of the neat things about our website is that we can see what sites refer traffic here.  We can also see what search results people used to find us (or accidentally found us based on some searches).  Today I logged in and saw a bunch of referrals coming in from the Pittsburgh Post Gazette.  I followed the link and found myself reading yesterday’s Pirates Q&A.  I missed it because I haven’t had the time to follow the Pirates too closely this season, but I really enjoyed reading Dejan Kovacevic’s columns when he used to do the Penguins Q&A.  Anyway… if you scroll all the way to the bottom he talks about what makes Pittsburgh great:

Thing No. 100 that makes Pittsburgh great: (And who will not appreciate such accidental symmetry with this final old-fashioned Q&A?) The 2100 block of the Strip District.

The most frequent requests to this forum, though almost always unpublished, have not been related to baseball but to the Pittsburgh feature, and it usually has gone like this: Me and my so-and-so are coming to the city for such-and-such time for only a day or two. What is the one thing someone there would recommend other than the usual Incline, Point State Park, riverfront fare?

So, consider this the answer …

Drive or walk into the Strip, anywhere between the 2000 and 2100 blocks between Smallman and Liberty, and just get lost. Go anywhere. Left, right, up, down, into alleys, over the main drags, even in places where you think there could not possibly be any interesting. You will find no fewer than four of the region’s five best coffee places. That includes La Prima, the very best I have found anywhere in the country, and that means the main store on 21st Street as well as the open-to-the-public warehouse where they roast the beans right in front of you. (Best smell on the planet, even when you live a mile up river and it makes its way to your front porch each day around 4:30 when the bulk of the roasting is done.) There are enough Italians in the place, speaking the native language and complaining about soccer, that the ATM across the corner offers Italian as one of its language options. And there are other coffee places, too, including one that claims to have the widest selection of exotic — and expensive — coffees anywhere in the city on the corner of 21st and Smallman. It is called 21st Street Cafe, and it recently claimed to sell a pound of “the very best coffee in the world” for $50. Yes, someone bought it. (Not me.)

One also can find the best, freshest foods at Pennsylvania Macaroni and other adjacent markets, one of the neatest restaurants anywhere in Kaya, the alley-bound Enrico Biscotti, the used-book depository Bradley’s right across the street, the homemade soups at the mini-grocery Alex’s International, and … honestly, I could list pretty much everything within a stone’s throw.

Nothing I write here will do it justice. Check the site, set aside some time and go for yourself. It is quintessential, indispensable Pittsburgh, and I miss it more than any other place when away from home …