Did Someone Say Pizza?

We took a break from watching the second round of the NCAA basketball tournament (the best weekend in sports) for a dine-in pizza experience. One of my first reviews of the year was at Jioio's in Greensburg, and Giannilli's is catty-corner to Jioio's in an area of town known as Carbon.  Chip commented that he didn't even remember another restaurant at that corner, so he was surprised that the parking lot was so large. The history page on their website indicates they've been in business about 40 years, so definitely not as long as Jioio's. They have an additional location that hosts events. When we walked in, we were asked if we had a reservation. This question doesn't usually bode well for wait time, but the hostess indicated that the wait was probably only 20 minutes. We found seats in the very small waiting area, sharing it with a large drinks cooler and the carryout counter. A few folks came in for carryout while we were sitting there, but it was nothing ...

Even though we'd just eaten at a fish fry the night before, my complete disinterest in cooking  - along with the fact that Avery's girlfriend Steph was hanging out at the house - led us to try another pizzeria last night. I combed through my list of pizza places in the Harrison City area, only to discover that 2 we'd planned to try were now out of business. So we landed on PT's Pizza Palace. Readers not from Western Pennsylvania may be surprised to learn that we do NOT have county school districts in this part of the world. Instead, many towns and townships have their own school districts. It's incredibly inefficient, but that's an issue for another day. The reason I bring this up is that PT in this region typically refers to Penn-Trafford, the adjoining school district so named because its catchment area includes both Penn Township and the town of Trafford. So while this pizza place isn't in our town or our school district, it's only 7ish miles from our...

March 10 is the anniversary of my first date with Chip, so it's always fun to celebrate in a way that hearkens back to that date lo those many years ago (28, to be exact). While we didn't eat at a fish fry back then (I don't even think that Hagerstown, Maryland, has fish fries), we did drink beer and watch basketball, so we definitely wanted to find a fish fry that served beer. You can't count on that in Western PA. But we knew we we'd be OK at Norvelt VFD, one of our favorites. If the name Norvelt sounds familiar, it's because we tried Norvelt Pizzeria in January. That was the pizzeria staffed by a bunch of high school kids; you actually have to cut through the VFD parking lot to get to the pizza shop. Norvelt VFD had carryout in 2021 and didn't even have a fish fry in 2022, so we were super excited to go back but also wary of what the crowds might be like. The parking lot was crowded but we easily found a spot in the auxiliary lot, so it definitely wasn...

All of the fish fries we've been attending lately had us sort of burned out on restaurant meals, so we didn't try a pizzeria this weekend. Instead, we threw a few frozen pizzas in the oven. We did a DiGiorno three-meat rising crust, a DiGiorno thin crust Margherita pizza, and a Paul Newman thin and crispy spinach white pizza.  FYI, the spinach white pizza was amazing. One of the better frozen pizzas I've had. The Margherita one had a strange sweet taste; Avery thinks it was too much tomato and not enough basil. See you next week, pizza lovers!

Last Friday, Chip and I attended one of our favorite fish fries which had been cancelled in both 2021 and 2022: the North Irwin VFC. We didn't know until last week whether they planned to hold a fish fry this year, so there was some minor celebrating going on once we heard the affirmative. Pennsylvania has a convoluted system of boroughs, municipalities, townships, and cities, with similarly convoluted levels of government bureaucracy. I won't spend any time on that soapbox, other than to say North Irwin is a PA borough with a population of only 846 but its own governing council, tax structure, and volunteer fire company. It's a charming "town" on a hill with several streets of well-maintained older frame houses. At the end of one residential block sits the VFD. We've been to the North Irwin fish fry at least 5 times prior to this year, so we knew to expect a crowd and a wait. We left the house around 4:45 and when we arrived a half hour later, the parking l...

It was a beautiful Sunday afternoon, 50 and sunny, so we decided to trek to Mount Pleasant. It's a cute small town, population ~4200, about 30 minutes from where we live. There was an antique store in town we wanted to hit (Janford and Son - yep, you read that right) and then we parked downtown and walked for a bit. The town serves as a sort of gateway to the Laurel Highlands, part of the Allegheny Mountains. Mount Pleasant once had a thriving glassmaking economy (an item in the antique store was a tote bag that read "Stay Glassy, Mount Pleasant") which means the town once had money - and there are some beautiful old homes and commercial buildings to show for it. There are also four pizza places on my list in Mount Pleasant. One of them, The Village, was recommended by a staff member at Laurel Highlands Meadery early in our pizza journey, so I was excited to finally give it a try. Neither the website nor the Facebook page has any information about the history of the rest...

We had a pizza visit planned for the weekend, but wanted to first take advantage of the return of a popular fish fry on Friday night. The Claridge Volunteer Fire Department cancelled its fish fry in 2022 because of supply chain issues, but in prior years it consistently showed up on Top Ten fish fry lists for Westmoreland County so we were excited to see it back. The fish fry is held at Colton Hall, a banquet facility in the small town of Claridge, PA (population around 600). Because of the past positive press, the fish fry draws folks from all over the county and the Pittsburgh metro region in general.  We arrived at about 5:25 and were happy to see that the line was, while out the door, fairly short. Claridge has its order takers sit right inside the door. You order, pay, get a number, and then go inside to get drinks, grab a seat, and wait. The menu is neither the smallest nor the most extensive we've seen, but what is unusual is the availability of both broiled fish and spicy b...