My spouse and I and five family members visited Southern Tier Brewing
Company on a Saturday afternoon in early September 2018 prior to attending a
nearby sporting event. Southern Tier is open daily from 11:00 am until 10:00 pm
(with early opening hours on game days, and extended closing hours on
weekends).
Southern Tier
Brewing Company opened in fall 2016 in a commercial building on Pittsburgh’s
North Shore between Heinz Field and PNC Park. The restaurant is located in the brand-new
6,000-square foot space (plus 10,000 square feet of outdoor “beer garden”
space) that had been reserved for North Park Lounge/Cabana Bar, which never
opened.
The original Southern
Tier Brewing Company (STBC) first began in upstate New York in 2002. The North
Shore venue opened in January 2017, although the beer garden was not operating
until later that fall. The bar/restaurant serves draft beers created by its
parent company (which also owns the Victory Brewing label), some of which are
produced onsite in Pittsburgh using eight stainless steel tanks near the front
of the restaurant and the stand-alone brewhouse outside at the rear of the al
fresco beer garden.
Rustic decor features
wood and steel, an homage to Pittsburgh’s nickname “Steel City”. Chandeliers
are made from parts of beer barrels and feature retro lightbulbs. A capacity of
150 patrons sit at the large concrete-topped bar (decorative wooden joists
above the bar suspend large pendant lights below it), at a few unique standing
tables (which look to be made of butcher block), at booths, or at individual tables
(some of which are free-standing, and others that share a padded banquette on
one side adjacent to the glass-walled kitchen). In appropriate weather, seating
space is more than doubled outside when side garage doors are rolled open to
reveal a second bar that mirrors the one inside and seating for 250 patrons,
half of which is under cover of a roof with open sides. Inside, an interesting architectural detail is a marker
on one end of the bar that shows the location of the left field foul line of
the 1890 Exposition Park, site of the first World Series played in 1903 between
the Pittsburgh Pirates and the Boston Americans.
Southern Tier offers
casual American pub cuisine as well as over 30 location-specific and classic
STBC beers. On event days, the restaurant offers an abbreviated menu to
adequately accommodate the maximum number of guests; when we dined, a nacho dish
and chicken wings were offered as starters, with a burger and at least three
sausage/kielbasa/bratwurst sandwich variations as entrees, each of which was
served with either fries or house-made chips. Complimentary nuts were offered
on our table as we perused the menu.
We enjoyed our
time at Southern Tier Brewing Company: the food and service were good, and the
atmosphere was fun and bustling.
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