It’s so much easier being a tourist when you’re alone. I have touristed my way around many cities with my wife and children in tow, which meant negotiating air travel, hotel reservations, restaurant reservations, museum reservations, shopping excursions, and every other tourist chore with their needs in mind. Truly exhausting shit. This explains why I’m the sort of person who treats business travel as a meditative experience. When I’m off the clock in any new city, I take full advantage. I go where I want. I see what I want. And, most vital, I eat what I want.
Which brings us to Pittsburgh. I was in the Steel City for my first time, on a super top-secret assignment for Defector Media. I was told by people I trusted that despite the presence of multiple Steelers fans, Pittsburgh is a surprisingly cool place to hang. They were right. The city’s downtown is alive. The Pirates ballpark is so perfectly situated along the banks of the Allegheny River that the home team doesn’t even have to win to give you your money’s worth (and it doesn’t). The Andy Warhol Museum contains some of the most arresting works of art I’ve ever had the pleasure of beholding. One of my favorite pieces inside was the one that Warhol and his friends pissed on.
But a city is only as good as its food, which I prefer to be urine-free. This is where Primanti Bros. comes in. You probably know this place from the B-roll of any Steelers game you’ve ever had the misfortune of watching. This is the restaurant that’s famous for stuffing their sandwiches with both coleslaw (vinegar-based, although I didn't know this going in and assumed it was tainted with mayonnaise) and French fries (intriguing). It’s also a chain now, with locations as close to my home as Hagerstown and as far from me as Fort Lauderdale. So Primanti Bros. is no longer the most distinctly Pittsburgh joint to hit up. Indeed, the Pittsburghers I know told me there were better sandwiches to be had in town. But I wasn’t a Pittsburgher. I was a fucking tourist, and what I wanted was a big dumb sandwich stuffed with a lot of crap.
So I walked into one of the original Primanti locations downtown (Market Square). Right away, I knew I’d chosen wisely. The joint was packed, to the point where I had to find a seat at the end of the bar, like an old drunk pounding whiskeys at 11 a.m. The only napkins were rolls of paper towels situated in front of every other barstool, which I regarded as a good sign.
You’re expected to eat like a slob in a place like this, which suited my needs. Without my wife around to remind to eat with my mouth closed, I was free to do just that. In front of my barstool was an open griddle: big and greasy and nasty. Whatever was cooking on that griddle is certain to give me atomic diarrhea, and I wanted it. I wanted to get the full Pittsburgh experience in my mouth and on my hotel room toilet.
I ordered the Big Don: a new entry on the “Tall Boy” sandwich menu. It did NOT come with a tall boy of Budweiser, which I found tragic. I begged the bartender to leave the coleslaw out of my sandwich, and he obliged me. The sandwich arrived in short order, those naughty fries packed tight within:
What do we got in there? I’m seeing a griddled wad of capicola, salami, baloney, and pepperoni, plus a layer of white provolone. Hard to fuck up a sandwich that piles on the fatty cold cuts, and Primanti Bros. didn’t. They had the meats. I took a bite and was pleased. Primanti's uses a thick white bread for their sandwiches that’s very good at sopping up meat grease, and had that Martin's Potato Roll squish to it when I bit into it. Fuck and yes, that’s quality sandwiching. I tore off a paper towel and blissfully wiped it across my greasy maw.
But what about the fries?, you’re asking. They’re great. They also add nothing to the sandwich. This is the kind of sandwich that was likely conceived to feed a 1950s steel mill worker who needed a 15,000-calorie lunch they could eat in five minutes or less. That kind of worker no longer exists in modern American cities, even if the big-ass food they liked to eat does. I was getting too much potato in every bite of my sandwich. I wanted to dump the fries out and eat them as a side, the way normal people eat fries. But I wanted to experience the full Pittsburgh stereotype, and I didn’t want to get beaten up for being a nancy boy who takes the fries out. (I’d already committed the cardinal sin of pronouncing the name of the joint "Pri-MAHN-ti’s," as if I were dealing with a legitimately Italian enterprise. That’s not how they roll in yinzer territory. You will use a short a when you say "Primaaaaaaanti," or else Mean Joe Greene will burst through a wall and tackle you to the floor.) I craved authenticity.
So I left the fries inside the sandwich. After eating one half of it, I remembered that I was a doughy tourist, and that I was alone. The only rules I had to abide were my own. After that cool story bro epiphany, I unloaded the fries inside the other half of the sandwich onto my plate and proceeded as usual. No one noticed. Ben Roethlisberger didn’t magically appear behind me and assault me with his gray dick. I was free to be as dainty as I pleased.
I’d go onto to enjoy quality high-end fare in Pittsburgh: jamon iberico at Balvanera, binge-able sushi at Penn Avenue Fish Company, blueberry crumble for room service at the Fairmont Hotel. You can find these dishes in virtually any American city that has its shit together. But what I really wanted from Pittsburgh was food that was unmistakably American: large in portion, high in calories, and trashy in appearance. That’s exactly what Primanti Bros. gave me. I’d never discourage you from checking it out, nor Pittsburgh in general.
Fuck the Steelers eternally, though.
