Did Someone Say Pizza?

Now that Lent is over, we're back on the hunt to try as many independent pizzerias in the county that we can. We found a goodie this week, y'all. I'll be honest - this review is going to be more about the vibe of the place than the pizza, because while the pizza was good, the spot was fantastic. And it really was a vibe. Hotel Loyal Pizza in Latrobe is housed in a building that was built in the late 1800s. And it apparently it catered to travelers for a long time - this photo on the wall of the tavern was of the hotel circa 1900. An article we found said it remained a hotel until the 1990s. The building is still in fantastic shape. There are elevated train tracks that run right next to it (while we were there we saw both an Amtrak train and a freight train go by) so you can imagine that the hotel was perfectly situated back in the day. The left entrance was for the dining room and the takeout counter, and the center entrance was for the tavern. We decided to eat in the tave...

Life has been a little crazy lately (and my motivation has been flagging), so I'm three weeks behind on fish fry reviews. I'm going to glom them all together here in this post, so sit back - it's gonna be a long one. St. Bartholomew/Crabtree VFD, March 24, 2023 The small town of Crabtree does something kind of interesting: their local Catholic church and VFD collaborate on the fish fry and split the proceeds. Last year they held it at the VFD, and this year it was at the church. They hold it in the ground floor of their social hall called Marian Hall. Avery and Steph went with us. When we arrived around 5:35, there was a good crowd but several empty tables (by the time we left at 6:10 or so, the line was out the door). This was the only church fish fry we attended this year, so I had to get a picture of the requisite religious art on the walls. Menu options included fried fish and baked fish, pierogis, fries, slaw, haluski, and mac and cheese. We all ordered fried fish; Chi...

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...