Speaker #0Hello, my name is Elaine Zedak. I'm the project manager for strategic initiatives at Visit Pittsburgh, which is the destination marketing organization for Allegheny County, which is where the city of Pittsburgh sits within the state of Pennsylvania in the United States. I manage our 10-year tourism development plan, and one of the categories within that plan is culinary tourism, and that means helping to shape how the city tells its food story. connecting chefs, neighborhoods, and cultural traditions into something that promotes experience for both residents and visitors in a meaningful way. Food has always been personal and intellectual for me. It's how I understand people and place. When I travel, I'm looking for those unique eating opportunities that I can't find anywhere else. The opportunities that allow me to really taste the place that I'm in. So one of my favorite... off the beaten path places to highlight for people when they come into Pittsburgh is a place called Pierogies Plus, which is a converted gas station with a walk-up window where you order some of the most delicious Eastern European home-style food that the city has to offer. It's takeaway in nice weather. They set up bistro tables in their parking lot. And for me, it's a perfect way to highlight Pittsburgh's legacy food. and Pittsburgh attitude. So we're a very no frills city. And this place definitely has the vibe of we know why you're here, take your pierogies and go. And there's something extremely Pittsburgh and extremely honest about that. And I find it very charming. And maybe that would be different if the food was worse, but the food is absolutely delicious. So it's just a perfect snapshot of the legacy of Pittsburgh food and Pittsburgh people. And that's why I love recommending it to people. So that is definitely one of my favorite places in the city. One of the most unique eating experiences. Pittsburgh is the city, the largest city in Western Pennsylvania. Pennsylvania is a state within the United States. And we sit at the intersection and the confluence of three rivers. So we have the Monongahela, the Allegheny River, and both of those flow into the Ohio River at the point within the city. And then we're surrounded by mountains and really beautiful farmland. And what really defines our city is the uniqueness of our neighborhoods, because we are really a city made up of 90 neighborhoods. And because of the topography here, each neighborhood is very unique. And there's a joke that Pittsburghers don't go over bridges and they don't leave their neighborhood because each neighborhood has such a distinct identity. So one thing that's really unique about Pittsburgh is our language dialect. It's called Pittsburghese. A lot of it is derived from Scotch immigrants, Scottish immigrants when they came. and one of our most prominent words that you'll see around the city. You'll see it in Steelers merchandise and our sports team merchandise and things is yins, which is a word that's derived from yuans, which is a Scottish slang phrase. And basically it's the same as y'all or everyone or you all. Yins, the phrase usually is yins guys want to go downtown. And so like there's a very specific accent. that Pittsburghers have in this region. So when you come to Pittsburgh, if you see the word gins, it just means y'all are welcome. It just means come on, come on in. You're here. Everybody, everybody is welcome. The thing that I personally love most about living in Pittsburgh is the balance that the people strike between progress and wanting the city to thrive and move forward. We very rarely move forward for the sake of moving forward and the sake of progress. We are moving forward for the sake of our communities. And that is something that living in Pittsburgh, you can feel it here. You can feel how tied into community people are. You can feel how much people still pay attention to their neighbors here. And that sense of community is what makes it such a unique place to live. So yeah, it's an absolutely beautiful city. It's a seasonal city. So we have all four seasons here that are very prominent. And we have a lot of green space, which is very exciting for a city. We take sustainability very serious here because of our industrial past. People that travel into Pittsburgh still have a misconception of where the city is, because historically, for 100 years after the Industrial Revolution, our city was dirty, to be quite frank. It was very polluted. You know, you would have to turn the streetlights on at noon because you couldn't see ahead of you because of the smog and the smoke from the steel mills. And unfortunately, Pittsburgh is still battling that perception even after most of the steel mills have closed. And, you know, they closed 30, 40 years ago and we're still battling that perception. So when people come here, they're very surprised by how beautiful our green spaces are. We have wonderful parks. We have we have trails that connect you. to the Allegheny Passage Trail that runs from Pittsburgh the whole way down to Washington, D.C. for bike cyclists and hikers. We have beautiful kayaking opportunities on the river now. Those are the things that I always highlight about Pittsburgh, as well as the food. But if you have to spend time outside of our wonderful restaurants, then I would recommend going to the green spaces and going to the art museums. because they are world-class institutions that not a lot of people know about. But because of that industrial past, we did have legacy from the Carnegie's and the Frick family. And they put in foundations and endowments to bolster the arts community here. And that legacy has really continued to the modern era. And we have a world-class arts and culture program here. It is a city that has succeeded. despite so many things against it. And that's why I'm so excited to be working for it, to promote it to people. Pittsburgh is unique in the fact that we straddle two identities. So we sit between Appalachia and what's known as the American Rust Belt, which we don't particularly love that terminology anymore, but it is the easiest. way to position us within the United States. So because of that, our identity is very deeply, our food scene is very deeply influenced by Appalachian tradition. We are influenced by the immigrant communities that came here and worked the steel mills and the coal mines in the area. A lot of Eastern European influence, a lot of Italian influence. We have a large Irish population here, Scottish. A lot of European countries did immigrate here, but we also have a very deep history of Chinese immigrants here. And all of that has kind of converged within the Appalachian food scene for large portions. We love large portions. And now we have an influx of new immigrant populations, which are bringing their food to our city. And we're so excited to have them here. We have... some refugee programs that have brought some different demographics here. And one of the things that I'm most excited about is we have an Uzbek population that are opening a bunch of restaurants in the last couple of years. The food is fantastic. And that's something that I'm very excited to see happen because it continues the legacy of how important immigrants have been to the fabric of our city, but with new flavors and tastes from other areas of the world. and Primanti Brothers is a sandwich shop here that people generally associate with Pittsburgh. It's probably been the most promoted food of Pittsburgh. Their legacy story is also tied into the labor and the immigrant population here, where the sandwich itself is pretty unique, where it's lunch meat, cheese, deli coleslaw, and then French fries. Then the bread is about an inch thick. And so it's this giant sandwich. when you stack it up, it's about four or five inches thick to eat. But the reason that the sandwich was developed was to feed the dock workers down at the strip district and the laborers that were going to the steel mills because they didn't have time to like eat different components of their meals. They would just put everything together and eat it very quickly while they were at their job. So Permini Brothers just eliminated the middleman and started creating the sandwich for the laborers specifically. And it became a huge phenomenon in the city. And so that legacy piece is still happening today as well. So that's another very unique. We love putting fries on everything. We've Pittsburgh salads have fries on top of them. The Pittsburgh sandwich, which is the Primanti sandwich has fries on it. We just, we love the extra car load here. And so that is something that's very unique to the city as well that you can't get in other places. We're very lucky to have a lot of small family-owned farms still in Pennsylvania. The majority of our farmland is still farmland privately owned under 50 acres. So in a world of loss of land access and farm consolidation and large-scale farming, we are very lucky to have small-scale farms that can provide really unique ingredients to our chefs. And then because of our city size, Farmland is right outside our door. If you drive 20 minutes outside the city, you're in farmland. So the proximity of those farms to be able to feed our chefs and our restaurants and our population is really great. So that is a huge influence. And for Appalachians in general, we take gardening very seriously and fresh produce very seriously. So a lot of people around here still have their own personal gardens if they have access to land. And that's something that I think should be celebrated. And thankfully, we are within an area and within a state that does allow that. And some of our ingredients are unique to place because we have something called, like, there's a fruit here called the pawpaw, which grows wild in our forests. And it's very hard to actually cultivate, but it's a foraging product. It's in season. It's only in season for a few weeks. The fruit is very hard to ship. That's why you can't grow it commercially. The fruit itself is wonderful. And because you're able to forage it, the higher end restaurants are incorporating it as part of their Appalachian style menus now, because pawpaw has been eaten for hundreds, thousands of years by the indigenous folks who were here first. And it's this wonderful custardy mango banana flavor. And the fruit itself is soft. So you can like, it eats like a custard. And so that's one unique ingredient that we have in our region that you cannot find in other areas of the world. Our largest food festival is a festival called Picklesburg. It is put on by an organization within the downtown of Pittsburgh. And it actually takes over the majority of the downtown footprint whenever. It happens. It happens mid-July for three days. And last year it brought in 250,000 people over a three-day period. So, of course, it shuts down streets and, you know, we take over market squares and things like that. But it's really a festival that's meant to celebrate Appalachian food preservation methods. And it is all things pickle. And any... food that you could put pickle seasoning on. People have there, there's pickle popcorn, pickle grilled cheeses. There's a local dairy and beverage company called Turner's that makes a pickled iced tea, which I drank and can attest that it is shockingly good as long as it's ice cold. Once it starts warming up, it can get a little odd, but when it's ice cold, it is an absolutely delicious drink. It's definitely for pickle enthusiasts. There's pickle juice drinking contests. Yeah, it's a wonderful festival. And like I said, it really encapsulates the Appalachian preservation. In the beginning of April, Pittsburgh was lucky to be included in the Michelin Guide as a member of the American Great Lakes Collective. We have been working on that effort for a little over a year. to coordinate with the other cities within the collective and bring the Michelin Guide to our chefs in the city. It is so exciting. We are extremely excited about this opportunity because, you know, there are things about the Michelin Guide that can negatively influence an area, but we're just very excited about the possibility and the platform that this gives our chefs and our restaurants to the global community. Because the recognition of the Michelin Guide is so prominent across the world that it really is a unique opportunity to showcase how wonderful our talent is here in Pittsburgh and what our chefs are doing now. We've always been a James Beard city. We have several James Beard nominations, awards, semifinalists across the... food landscape here. But to have that next step now as Michelin Guide recognized, that is just really exciting. We're really exciting for the possibility to showcase the talent. We're really excited for the possibility to bring in new investment into the restaurant community here. It's really a wonderful feeding ground for new talent. Having that Michelin guide come here is very validating for the city and very validating for our talent here. So I am just really excited about that. Our whole team is very excited about that. We have inspectors on the ground already. So as soon as the announcement was made, inspectors were in the market. They had already been doing the research about which restaurants that they wanted to inspect. As the destination marketing organization, as the DMO, we are the ones that signed the contract. you brought them into the region. But we have no influence, of course, over which restaurants are reviewed, which restaurants are selected, any of that. So that is completely on the organization. We made some suggestions about restaurants in the area. The selections will be made at the end of the year and the announcements will be made in the beginning of 2027. So that's when everyone and we'll find out who won, what restaurants were selected. Many people... When you hear Michelin Guide, you think stars, which, of course, is their most prestigious award. But they do have other tiers of awards. And Pittsburgh is ripe for big gourmands. We have several restaurants here that I am confident will qualify for big gourmands in the first year. Or at least, you know, I'm hoping that the inspectors see what I see. We are very excited about the overall impact that this will have for the economic. impacted the city. And I think the largest thing that we have to do now moving forward is to figure out how to support our culinary community here now that the guide is going to be here. Because what we don't want to happen is for it to create that pressure cooker situation. You know, obviously there's, it is competitive. It's the Michelin guide. Like I'm, there is competition inherent in it, but we really want to cultivate. a community of chefs that are here to have, you know, that phrase, a rising tide lifts all boats. That's very much how we're viewing this. So we are very excited about Michelin coming to Pittsburgh and recognizing all of the wonderful work that our culinary scene has been doing over the last 20 years. My advice for anybody that's interested in pulling the Michelin Guide into their cities or their region is to first audit the culinary assets that your city has and really examine where you are sitting currently in that story. Because the Michelin Guide is so huge and so recognizable and chefs. across the industry know what it is. They want the stars. They want the Bib Gourmands. They want the awards. And so I think it's very important for cities, city officials or destination marketing organizations or anyone leading this within their region to fully understand where they realistically sit right now and understand is if Michelin, pulling Michelin into your region right now is the goal. Does it have to happen right now or is it something that you can plan for? And in the meantime, you're helping to develop the food ecosystem in your city and you're helping to bolster chefs and you're you're starting programs that, you know, help to subsidize new restaurants and things like that. And really knowing where you sit realistically, I think is very important because what we don't want to do is set unrealistic expectations that we bring. the Michelin guide into a specific area. And then, I mean, worst case scenario is that you bring in the Michelin guide and no one wins any awards because, not because your city doesn't have talent. Every city has talent. It's just a matter of whether or not you're ready for that. And if you're not ready for that, then I would strongly encourage cities to invest into their food scenes and figure out. how they could get ready. And so that is my biggest piece of advice is to know where you are realistically and then strategically plan for that. I think for the future of Pittsburgh food, we're going to see continued recognition, but more importantly, a deepening of what already makes the city special, its authenticity. More chefs choosing to build here, more focus on sustainability, more connection between food and community. more recognition for Pittsburgh as what it is, which is a wonderful place to dine and drink and a wonderful place to just come and visit and live even. So that's what I want for the city. I want the recognition that it deserves and our dining scene is part of that and it deserves the recognition. And so that's what the future holds is that recognition. And I'm really excited for that. We have been a member of the Food Capitals Network since January of 2025, and I actually heard about the Food Capitals Network when I was at a conference in 2024, and I was very impressed by the model that they had. I liked not only the emphasis on culinary restaurant, but also the incorporation of other things like urban farms and food policy and things into the work. I thought that it was very comprehensive support for the cities. And then also, I just really loved the approach to it. And I just really loved the network itself. The most exciting thing to me was about joining the network and being part of it. And I attend meetings regularly is the collaboration across the network. The collaboration among the cities is wonderful. And it doesn't matter which part of the world they're in. It is not just, you know, the European cities, you know, are super collaborative and then the rest of us just kind of join meetings when we want. No, everyone that joins these meetings are very collaborative and very helpful. And we're sharing resources and I can reach out to any of the member cities and say, you know, I'm interested in doing this project or, you know, we're thinking about doing implementing this kind of a policy. I know you guys have it. Can you tell me more information about it? Immediately, they're like, here's all the information we could possibly give you. They've been very helpful. It's just been really exciting to be part of that network and to sit at the position that we're in now, where we are the only city within Appalachia that's part of the network and to represent the region that way within the network. But really, that collaboration piece has been invaluable, especially in the process of developing this culinary tourism strategy. There have been moments because we couldn't, the Michelin guide is very strict about you cannot talk about. whether or not you're contracting, you can't talk about even the possibility while you're going through the contracting process. And so we couldn't tell anybody, we couldn't tell any partners that we were doing this. We couldn't tell anybody, but I could turn to the Food Capitals Network. And there of course are several cities within the network that have Michelin. And so I could reach out to them and say, you know, Hey, we're expanding our culinary tourism strategy. you were thinking about adding prestige awards, you know. tell me about your experience with these prestige awards. And then of course, Michelin, you know, they would, Oh, well, Michelin guide and then they would give me all the information that they possibly could from their perspective of how they implemented it with their stakeholders and, you know, things like that. I mean, this network has been invaluable for that. And I, I sing the food network praises wherever I can at any conference that I'm at when I'm talking to people about culinary strategy, I'm talking about. the fact that they should plug into the food networks, to the food capitals, because it is an invaluable resource for collaboration. And I just, that is my favorite part about being part of the network. It has been wonderful. Food has the superpower to build bridges between people, tell stories, and forge new opportunity all at the same time. Thank you so much for having me. I want to see everyone in Pittsburgh over the next couple of years. I would love to see everyone coming and drinking and having a wonderful time and exploring our beautiful city. And I just want to say yinzer welcome.
