Spork
New American | upscale | cocktails/mocktails | $$$-$$$$
Crispy Octopus. (Steve Mellon/Post-Gazette)
The In the Keys mocktail. (Steve Mellon/Post-Gazette)
The concept at Spork, says chef and co-owner Christian Frangiadis, is “hybrid tasting menu.” Translation: Order from the menu, but expect about five “surprises” from the kitchen throughout the meal. The idea, the 2020 James Beard nominee says, is to give guests “an experience, and maybe think about food in a different way.”
For example: You might, after eating your appetizer, be brought compressed cucumber with a fermented raspberry water and topped with goat cheese and garlic — “a really delicious bite of something that you probably would never have ordered if it was a menu item.”
Unpacking that simple-not-so-simple bite reveals a couple of other keys to the upscale restaurant: a focus on the vegetables grown in Spork’s neighboring garden and the experimentation the experienced chef (35 years and counting) does creating umami flavors in the basement food lab. (A tour of which uncovered fermenting waters, kombucha, numerous types of miso, and koji, the mold that’s been utilized in Japan for centuries). “All the food has some kind of fermented element to it,” Frangiadis says.
The food: While there are certainly items on the seasonal menu with more uncommon descriptors — a pepito miso mole sauces a Rock Shrimp Stuffed Jalapeño appetizer, tomato water supports the Forest Mushroom Ravioli — Spork aims for approachable, to “underpromise, overdeliver.”
Another for example: The Koji Rye Fried Chicken. It’s listed just so, even though it’s quite complex, with the poultry dry-aged with koji, then marinated in buttermilk and tossed in a coating from rye berries milled in the food lab. “We don’t feel we have to tell you everything, ‘we did this, we did that.’ Just taste the food and you’ll see.” And here we are, back to that word surprise.
The current menu offers an array of proteins — lamb shank, dry-aged duck, a surf-and-turf with wagyu and a lobster corn dog. The Spork Garden Pesto takes advantage of the substantial produce output from the restaurant’s 300 or so linear feet of planting beds.
The drinks: The cocktail program, overseen by general manager and longtime Pittsburgh mixologist Sean Enright (an Embury alum), is just as conversation-inducing. A cocktail cart, introduced during the pandemic, does more than offer traditionals such as Manhattans and Old Fashioneds tableside: The bartender walks guests through technique. “That cocktail cart,” Enright says, “is basically an instructional.”
The mocktails on the rotating menu are as layered as the alcoholic beverages, with some incorporating Frangiadis’ kombuchas. Currently, one builds off of a pumpkin-apple-sage, another off a blueberry-ginger. Others find inspiration from teas, like the creamy In the Keys, with Key lime tea and meringue.
Back to the leaded options, a charitable cocktail, which changes about every three months, sends $5 per to a different cause. Right now, that’s a smoked whiskey drink benefiting Planned Parenthood. (Its predecessor earned $500, sent to Magee-Women’s Hospital and tagged for breast cancer research.)
5430 Penn Ave.; sporkpittsburgh.com
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