Reader Mailbag
Church halls, strip-district counters and one grandmother's recipe
Posted March 8 · Food writing · Allegheny County
Last month's roundup of Friday fish fries and parish kitchens brought more mail than anything we've printed this year, and almost none of it was about fish. The pierogi argument picked up where it left off in the fall, with readers naming specific halls, specific fillings and the exact hour they line up before the doors open.
The letters this month run from a Polish hall on the South Side to a takeout window in Brookline. One reader drives in from Munhall every second Friday and swears the dough at her stop is rolled thinner than anywhere else in the county. Another writes that she stopped going after the kitchen switched to a machine crimper, and she can tell by the seam. A third sent four paragraphs about sauerkraut versus potato-cheese and closed by admitting he orders both and eats one in the car.
What comes through in almost every letter is timing. The good stands sell out before noon, and the ones that freeze by the dozen are a different list entirely from the ones that serve hot. We've started keeping a note of which counters sell frozen and which only do plates, because readers keep asking.
In the February roundup we listed the wrong closing time for a Brookline stand. It closes at 6 p.m. on Fridays, not 7, and the kitchen stops taking new orders about twenty minutes before that. Two readers caught it within a day of publication, which is roughly the speed we've come to expect from this crowd.
One reader from the North Side sent in her grandmother's method, written out on the back of a church bulletin. You pinch the seam with your thumb and forefinger, working from the middle outward, then press once more with the flat of your thumb to set it. She says the trick is not to overfill, and that a wet edge will never hold no matter how hard you press. We're printing it as she wrote it, minus the parts about her uncle.
Three recent pieces from the Boom Pittsburgh desk. Two are reporting trips, one is a stack of reader letters we could not fit into a single reply. All of them carry addresses, bus notes and the kind of detail that only holds up if someone actually walked the route.
Saturday column
This route starts at a roastery on Butler Street and ends near Penn Avenue, with stops chosen for seating, pour-over quality and how easy they are to reach by bus. Each entry lists the address, the closest 87 or 91 stop, and the hours that actually hold on weekends. The piece also notes which shops keep decaf on the grinder and which ones fill a thermos without charging extra.
Interview
The Hazelwood branch does more than lend books: it holds the neighborhood's tax help sessions, a teen chess table and a shelf of local history binders that regulars keep adding to. This interview covers how the staff decide what stays on the front table, why the meeting room calendar fills up by Tuesday, and what changes when the weather turns. It also includes practical notes on bus routes and the entrance that stays open in winter.
Reader mailbag
The mailbag this month runs from a Polish hall in the South Side to a takeout window in Brookline, with readers naming fillings, dough thickness and the exact Friday they show up. Several letters argue about whether potato-cheese or sauerkraut deserves the top spot, and one reader shares a family method for sealing the edges by hand. We also print a short correction from last month's roundup and a note about which stands sell frozen by the dozen.