On Biscotti
A brief tribute to a man I never met.
Since the moment I moved away from Pittsburgh, I have missed the Strip District. Every time I make the trek back home, I stop there before I even make it to my childhood house. A collection of city blocks filled with converted industrial buildings, local grocers, quirky shops, and more than its share of sports bars, the Strip has a timeless Pittsburgh flavor I can't quite put my finger on that makes me feel at home faster than you can say "yinz." Bon Appétit recently gave it a brief mention as a good "stop" on an Appalachian food road trip (...), but to me, the Strip District is a world in its own, and that world is anchored by The Enrico Biscotti Company.
A small bakery with a wooden sign and screen doors, Enrico has been a Strip District staple since the early 90s, but feels like it could have been there for decades longer. Inside the bakery, where it always smells like I imagine heaven does, they sell biscotti, breads, and all other manner of baked goods, including some of the best flourless chocolate cake I’ve ever had.
The pastries are the draw, of course, but over the years, they have built a business based as much on gathering around food as the food itself, offering guided tours of Italy, huge, family-style dinners, and a popular bread-making class during which you were fed the largest, most-indulgent breakfast of your life. At Enrico, I understood for the first time how essential of a cornerstone good food is for community.
The best kept secret actually lives in the narrow alley directly to the left of the bakery. Through a red door, in a small space with tables and chairs playing Tetris around a mammoth oven and stacks of cookbooks and produce containers, Enrico serves the best lunch I’ve ever had outside of Italy. There is no feeling like being in the Strip District and realizing that Enrico is open for lunch; it is akin to what I imagine lotto winners must feel as their numbers pop up on the screen.
Pizzas, simple salads, beans and greens, and house-made wine are on the menu. You always get the special, and a bottle of basement wine to wash it down. It’s warm in the winter and protected from the summer heat. You always leave room for dessert, because you can smell the biscotti next door. It is the perfect place. It feels like home.
I was devastated to read that Larry Lagattuta, the owner and founder of The Enrico Biscotti Company, passed last week. Sad in the strange way that you become sad when you hear of someone passing who you had never met, but who had a profound impact on you nonetheless. It hit me the way that Anthony Bourdain’s death hit me — I felt like I had lost someone who understood something special about food and who had influenced me, unknowingly, to understand it as well.
I didn’t know Larry. I maybe saw him once or twice while I was buying biscotti. But I know how special the business he built is, and I feel so grateful to enjoy the legacy he leaves behind. If you’re ever in Pittsburgh, stop the by Strip and see if The Enrico Biscotti Company is open. I know that every time I visit, I’ll walk by those red doors, crossing my fingers and hoping that they’ll be open, settling for biscotti and fresh bread if they’re not.
I know programming has been….sporadic lately, but we’re getting back into it! Subscribers get a recipe for hot-to-cold summer pasta salad first, then we’ll talk chill-able red wines, cookbooks, and more as the summer flies by.