My spouse and I dined at Emporio! A Meatball Joint for
brunch on a Saturday in early September 2018. Emporio is open daily from 11:00
am until 10:00 pm (with extended closing hours of midnight on specific nights).
Emporio does not appear to accept reservations. (At one time, the restaurant used
the No Wait app.)
Emporio is located on Penn Avenue in Downtown Pittsburgh’s
Cultural District. It is one of three restaurants on three different levels at
the same address. The owners of Emporio (Burt Orange Restaurant Group) operate
all three of the Sienna Mercato venues that share the same house number,
including casual Emporio on the street level, finer-dining Mezzo on the second
floor (where we ate in November 2016), and the retractable rooftop beer garden
Il Tetto on the third/top floor. The restaurant group also owns Sienna on the
Square (in Market Square, where we ate in October of 2014) and several
additional locations of Emporio (in Wexford, Washington, PPG Paints Arena).
The
Emporio space features industrial chic decor. Large garage doors at the front
are rolled back to provide an open-air experience. Concrete floors, stacked
stone, exposed brick, weathered wood, high ceilings, and wood tables, with red
metal chairs complete the look. You can sit at the U-shaped bar (with 40+ beers
on tap), at free-standing tables in different sizes and configurations, or at
tables that share a wooden banquette on one side.
As its name
implies, Emporio features
a meatball-centric menu. In fact, in keeping with the theme, the menu contains
other round-shaped offerings as well, including arancini (rice balls) and
munchkin-like donuts for dessert. For each entrée, guests take one of two
approaches: either select one of the composed dishes, or create-your-own-combination
by first choosing the number and type of meatballs (beef, pork, chicken, or vegetarian), adding a sauces (cheese, tomato, Bolognese, tzatziki,
and so on), and specifying your delivery method (sauced on a plate, as sliders, panini, or a hoagie). Not wanting to make too many
decisions, we ordered two of the suggested bowls: baked potato (with meatballs,
mashed potatoes, tater tots, bacon, cheese, scallions) and the spicy bowl
(spicy meatballs in a red sauce, cheese tortellini arrabbiata, and jalapenos).
When placed side-by-side, the portions of the two bowls were inconsistent, with
the baked potato bowl being nearly twice the size of the other. The meatballs
themselves are a little larger than golf ball size (about 3 ounces each).
We liked the
concept of Emporio and its casual atmosphere.
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