Iron Born Pizza and Anvilicious, long-time Smallman Galley tenants, leave the Strip District meals hall on June 2. But a pair of new restaurants are shifting in.
Mangiamo, Italian for “Let’s consume!”, offers pasta classics and experimental services, while Sultry F&B serves Eastern European comfort meals and cakes.
Mangiamo is the first pop-up owned and operated by Galley Group, which runs Smallman Galley. Its sister places Federal Galley at the North Side, Ohio City Galley in Cleveland, and Detroit’s Fort Street Galley. Sites in Chicago and Minneapolis will open this summer season.
Ben Mantica, who co-founded the restaurant incubator with Tyler Benson in 2015, says introducing Italian cuisine to the desk was a no-brainer.
“Growing up in Pittsburgh, I got here to the Strip each week to visit Penn Mac and Sunseri’s,” says Mantica, a retired U.S. Navy Lieutenant who has dined in food halls around the sector. “It’s tough now not to get addicted to Italian meals. We can get a variety of first-rate elements a block away. That’s how we landed at this anchor idea.”
Among their services is spaghetti Bolognese, a slowly simmered sauce of ground red meat, pork, white wine, sparkling tomatoes, and herbs poured over lengthy, tubular bucatini noodles that help distribute the zesty red goodness throughout the dish.
Other traditional staples encompass calamari and rigatoni with sausage. The Italian chop salad, a mixture of artichoke hearts, hand-pulled mozzarella, Roma tomatoes, romaine hearts, cucumbers, and crunchy chickpeas in a French oregano dressing, is summer in a bowl.
The menu also boasts imaginative dishes, such as polenta fries with shaved Parmesan cheese and residence marinara and an eggplant parm panini with crispy eggplant, mozzarella, basil, Parmesan, and purple sauce.
Chef Phillip Milton created the menu. He also helms Home (Smallman’s consolation meals pop-up) and the hen-based Came First at Federal. He’ll manage all three operations until Galley Group hires a workforce for Mangiamo.
The other new offering, Sultry F&B, is headed by husband-and-wife crew Brian Forrester and Melissa Barth, who have worked at Federal Galley’s El Lugar and Provision PGH.
Their pop-up offers savory bistro cuisine while paying homage to Pittsburgh’s homestyle cooking. The menu covers brunch, lunch, dinner, and dessert with plates, which are as attractive to the attention as the flavor buds.
Forrester elevates vintage-time favorites, such as the Confit Pork Haluski with cured cabbage, egg noodles, and potato and cheese pierogies served with Brussels sprouts, braised beef, and creamed onion.
Grandma’s Chicken Paprikash improves with braised hen, candy peppers, onion, paprika, potato dumplings, and bitter house cream. Pickled beets with shaved onions, sweet and spicy peppers, homemade croutons, and caraway seeds complement the dish.
Barth oversees the pastry software, which incorporates her take on pączki, a Polish doughnut filled with chocolate, vanilla, or seasonal custard. Other candies include seasonal sorbet, the Nota Prince Polo (dark chocolate ganache, crispy wafer, and hazelnut), and the Lady Lock Cup, a vanilla bean Bavarian cream and berry coulis in a flaky pastry shell.
Like other Galley Group pop-ups, Mangiamo and Sultry F&B will operate for about 12 months afterward, preparing the way for different principles and aspiring chefs who dream of eventually starting their own brick-and-mortar eateries.
Chef Pete Tolman’s Iron Born Pizza started at Smallman Galley in June 2017 and now has a stand-on location in Millvale and plans for a 2d operation at 1808 Smallman Street. Chef Hoa Le of Anvilicious is presently attempting to find a permanent area.
