{"id":64,"date":"2016-06-28T12:36:24","date_gmt":"2016-06-28T16:36:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/newsinteractive.post-gazette.com\/pghinsidersguide\/?p=64"},"modified":"2016-06-29T11:10:54","modified_gmt":"2016-06-29T15:10:54","slug":"religious-experiences","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/newsinteractive.post-gazette.com\/pghinsidersguide\/food\/religious-experiences\/","title":{"rendered":"Religious experiences"},"content":{"rendered":"

Our ascendant dining scene makes it more likely that you can have a religious experience in a great restaurant. But Pittsburgh being Pittsburgh, you still can have some great food experiences in religious settings. So many of our ethnic festivals happen in churches and cathedrals, including the Greek ones that seem to be running, somewhere, every weekend. Other houses of worship open their doors to seasonal feeds, from holiday bake sales and \u201ccookie walks\u201d to spaghetti dinners and even a \u201cSoup-A-Thon\u201d (at Monroeville\u2019s St. Nicholas Serbian Orthodox Church). Here are some more votes against the separation of church and steak.<\/p>\n

\"The <\/a>
The filling is wrapped in dough and ready to be pinched at the St. George Ukrainain Catholic Church. (Darrell Sapp\/Post-Gazette) <\/div> <\/div> <\/div>
\"Members <\/a>
Members of Pittsburgh Korean Central Church prepare food for their Korean Food and Culture Festival. (Tony Tye\/Post-Gazette) <\/div> <\/div>
\"Sri <\/a>
Sri Venkateswara Temple (Photo by Brian Cohen) <\/div> <\/div> <\/div>
\"Hot <\/a>
Hot filets out of the cooking oil. The New Alexandria VFD holds its annual fish fry as a fund raiser for the department. (Post-Gazette) <\/div> <\/div> <\/div> <\/div> <\/div>\n

Pierogi churches<\/strong>
\nVolunteers at churches across the region still regularly make and sell one of the most iconic of Pittsburgh foods: pierogies. Sometimes they just put out a sign: \u201cPierogies today.\u201d One great place to get these dumplings is St. Mary Ukrainian Orthodox Church in McKees Rocks, where they make and sell them every Friday, Labor Day to Memorial Day, to eat in or take out. The church also is home to what they say is Pittsburgh\u2019s largest ethnic festival, Ukie Fest, held the last week of July and featuring pierogies, halupki (stuffed cabbage) and halushki (cabbage and noodles), plus lamb sandwiches and Duquesne Pilsener beer. \u201cIt keeps the doors open,\u201d says Father Timothy Tompson of all the fundraising food, adding, \u201cI used to weigh 170 pounds when I started here. I weigh a lot more now.\u201d<\/p>\n

Fish fries<\/strong>
\nPittsburgh is hooked on Lenten fish fries. In a region with a lot of Catholics, lots of people still give up meat for Lent (the six weeks from Ash Wednesday in February leading up to Easter), but that doesn\u2019t mean they don\u2019t eat well at fish fries at so many places that the Pittsburgh Catholic newspaper publishes an annual Fish Fry Guide. There\u2019s even a Lenten Fish Fry Map online, and an organized tour of churches and their fish fries. While the mainstays remain the fish sandwich and macaroni-and-cheese, a few serve fancier dishes such as linguini with salmon and lobster ravioli, and a few even serve beer: St. Bernard in Mt. Lebanon last year was selling $2 drafts of Great Lakes Brewing Co. Elliot Ness amber lager.<\/p>\n

Korean Food Bazaar<\/strong>
\nOne of the best food fests happens on the first Saturday in May at the Korean Central Church in Shadyside. This event \u2014\u00a0this was\u00a0its 21st year \u2014 takes over the whole corner, as Pittsburghers of all walks of life nosh on exotic fare ranging from bulgogi (Korean-style barbecued beef) to haemul pajeon (seafood pancake) to sushi roll in colorful floral designs, all made by ladies in hairnets in the church\u2019s basement.<\/p>\n

Church Brew Works<\/strong>
\nAny craft-beer fan needs to visit the altar of the former St. John the Baptist Church in Lawrenceville, which is now a celestial-blue brewhouse for the Church Brew Works. Remodeled and reopened as a brewpub in 1996, this stunning place, where you can sit in a cut-down pew, has regular brews named Celestial Gold, Pipe Organ Pale Ale and Pious Monk Dunkel. They\u2019ve earned numerous medals in competitions such as the Great American Beer Festival, which last year awarded the place a bronze in the Belgian-Style Tripel category and in 2012 named it the national Large Brewpub of the Year. Don\u2019t miss the Pittsburgh Pierogi Pizza.<\/p>\n

Sri Venkateswara Temple canteen<\/strong>
\nSouth Indians love to eat, so it\u2019s no surprise that they can eat at this landmark white Hindu temple, one of the first in North America, built in 1976. It\u2019s located on a wooded hillside just off Interstate 376 East in Penn Hills, east of Downtown. Pilgrims from all over and other visitors can get a range of simple, cheap vegetarian fare such a yogurt rice and tamarind rice. If you\u2019re still hungry, do what the South Indians do and head to the nearby Udipi Cafe and eat again. Just south of the city off Interstate 376 West, you can drop into an Indian restaurant in a former Catholic church turned Indian Community Center \u2014 Cafe Delhi. Like Udipi, it lets you bring your own booze.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Our ascendant dining scene makes it more likely that you can have a religious experience in a great restaurant. But Pittsburgh being Pittsburgh, you still can have some great food experiences in religious settings.\n [...]<\/a>","protected":false},"author":40,"featured_media":65,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"coauthors":[9],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/newsinteractive.post-gazette.com\/pghinsidersguide\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/9\/2016\/04\/20151015mfchurchbrewmag.jpg?fit=3900%2C2483&ssl=1","wps_subtitle":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7tYWJ-12","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsinteractive.post-gazette.com\/pghinsidersguide\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsinteractive.post-gazette.com\/pghinsidersguide\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsinteractive.post-gazette.com\/pghinsidersguide\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsinteractive.post-gazette.com\/pghinsidersguide\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/40"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsinteractive.post-gazette.com\/pghinsidersguide\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=64"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/newsinteractive.post-gazette.com\/pghinsidersguide\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":358,"href":"https:\/\/newsinteractive.post-gazette.com\/pghinsidersguide\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64\/revisions\/358"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsinteractive.post-gazette.com\/pghinsidersguide\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/65"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsinteractive.post-gazette.com\/pghinsidersguide\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=64"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsinteractive.post-gazette.com\/pghinsidersguide\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=64"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsinteractive.post-gazette.com\/pghinsidersguide\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=64"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsinteractive.post-gazette.com\/pghinsidersguide\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=64"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}