TastyBurgher

Jimmy Tsang’s
5700 Centre Ave
Shadyside  15206
412-661-4226
M-Th: 11:30-10; F-Sat 11:30-11; Sun 3-9

Gotta say – this has been an interesting month.  And on top of that, I’ve been hitting up an unusual category of restaurant: the kind that you’ve noticed around town and that sticks in your mind but that you never even think to actually go to.  They give off some kind of vibe, like ‘don’t come in here, we’re full of old people and haven’t changed our recipes in 40 years’.  I’m saying places like Duranti’s on Craig and Fifth, Lombardozzi’s on Liberty, and Tokyo, that place next to the Shur-Sav in Bloomfield.  Typically, the food is as stale as the recipes, but not bad – I call it ‘fine’.  I have always kind of figured Jimmy Tsang’s was in this category — it’s just that Chinese place with the somewhat elaborate blue tile veneer and the liquor license, somewhere on Baum or Centee, maybe near Negley, that I have never personally known anyone to go into or come out of and just somehow never made it to myself.  Well this weekend I went, and though some of that vibe is correct (on a Saturday night their clientele was a handful of tables flocked with the elderly), the food was better than I expected and the menu selection was much better that I expected.  Perhaps even more pleasing, the prices weren’t too shabby, and their selection of import and micro beers was quality.  I think I might even go here again sometime.

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Pho Minh
4917 Penn Ave
Garfield, 15224
412-661-7443
M,W,Th: 11-2, 5-9; F-Sat: 11-10; Sun: 12-8; Closed Tu.

I’ve been meaning to go to Pho Minh for a while, and frankly I’m not sure how I went almost 12 years in the city, never going there.  I have to admit, I’ve been a Tram’s enthusiast for some time now and really just haven’t gotten around to breaking the habit.  However, I am aware that there are all these diners out there who prefer Pho Minh adamantly, and so I finally took the time to find out why.

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Panther Hollow Inn   (a.k.a. PhiBar, a.k.a. PHI)
4611 Forbes Ave
Oakland, 15213
412-682-0588
M-Sat: 11am-2:30am; Sun: only during Steelers season

Well due to recent happenings in my life, not only am I a graduate student, but I am a *poor* graduate student.  So while dining at finer establishments has been fun, I have to refocus my efforts on finding good deals when eating out.  I’m not quite down to the level of a free-gan, scoping the basement hallways of Pitt and CMU for the abandoned pizza of concluded meetings, but I do need to keep a bit of an eye on my budget to make sure I still have enough money left over for beer.  Here enters PhiBar.  PHI offers some really cheap food.  It is not fine dining, nor is it even stellar bar food, but it is dirt cheap and it qualifies as definitively good enough, maybe even better than most for what it is.  And of course, it is a classic Oakland locale to go get diza-runk, so consider going here if you want to eat cheap (but decent) pizza surrounded by wasted (but eye-pleasing) Pitt and CMU kids. (more…)