Pittsburgh s drinking culture is a story of its people: vibrant, hardworking and innovative. During Prohibition, the Hill District became a center of jazz, speakeasies and creative cocktails. In the following decades, a group of Cuban bartenders brought the nightlife of Havana to a robust cafe culture along Diamond Street. Disco clubs gripped the city in the 1970s, and a music-centered nightlife began to grow in Oakland with such clubs as the Electric Banana. Today, pioneering mixologists are forging a new and exciting bar revival in the South Side and throughout the city. Pull up a stool and join Cody McDevitt and Sean Enright as they trace the history of Steel City drinking, along with a host of delicious cocktail recipes."
Industry Reviews
Wow. This is an eye-opener. And a taste-teaser. This gloriously researched and surprising history teaches us about our town through the speakeasies, jazz clubs, hippie haunts, discos, recent restaurants and the innovative concoctions of some of the best bartenders anywhere! --Rick Sebak, WQED Cody and Sean make us look cool. Their speakeasy history of Pittsburgh is not only an edgy page-turner but would make for a great movie (in a city that's the backdrop for so many movies today). I can't wait to make these cocktails at my next party--and show off all of my hometown trivia (Rude Judies, all around). Adam Milliron's photography makes the drinks go down that much easier. --Victoria Bradley-Morris, executive editor/managing director, TABLE magazine "Enright and McDevitt walk us through the booming age of jazz clubs, through the fight to include women and people of color in bartenders unions, from heady times full of joy, verve, and drinking with celebrities to the more somber eras of World War II and how war abroad changed the way bars and clubs ran at home. We see how those changes in turn molded Pittsburgh into the beautiful and lively city that it is today." BevSpot Pittsburgh has reinvented itself in recent years, still proud of its heritage as the Steel City, now driven not by smoke and soot but by technology, medicine, art, culture, cuisine, outdoor pursuits, dining. And the evolution has been a spirited one, proven here with a lively, entertaining and informative look at how the last century or so has led to the present state of adult beverages in the Golden Triangle--a vibrant, sparkling community balancing tradition and innovation, with room atthe bar for one and all, whether raising a classic cocktail, new invention or Imp 'n' Iron. Slainte! --Lissa Brennan, City Paper "Pittsburgh's cocktail and bar culture is booming. At top-flight bars such as Butcher and the Rye, in the numerous new brewpubs and on the party-time bacchanalia of a South Side bar crawl, (sometimes hazy) memories are made every night in Pittsburgh. Want to know how it started and what happened along the way? Pick up Sean Enright and Cody McDevitt's new book, "Pittsburgh Drinks: A History of Cocktails, Nightlife & Bartending Tradition," for a look at the city's drunken history." Pittsburgh Magazine "'Pittsburgh Drinks'? Does it ever." Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
