Asian Food Weekend, Part 3: Salt of the Earth's Ramen Brunch

Special meals come but once in awhile.

Salt of the Earth has a fantastic dinner menu.  It changes occasionally, but no matter what appears on that chalkboard menu, you know it's going to be unbelieveable.

But remember my cardinal rule if you can't decide what to order - you can never go wrong with the duck.

A few months ago, Salt of the Earth started offering my favorite meal - brunch - on the third Sunday of each month.  Not a brunch from the chalkboard menu, but a special ramen brunch, where your only options are pork, vegetarian, or vegan ramen.  Anyone who ever spent any time in college is familiar with "ramen noodles", the dried noodles when, mixed with hot water, created a cheap yet filling meal for a poor, overworked student.

But this ramen was better.  SO MUCH BETTER.  The real deal.

When we arrived, we were told to place our order with Maggie Meskey, the cocktail wizard of Salt of the Earth.  The communal tables downstairs were pretty full, but there was also seating upstairs if needed.  A line of at least 10 people was already at the bar, so we worked our way to the end.

Spanish teachers must know good food (no matter which culture it's from), because in front of us was my colleague, Rachel, whom shares my room at school when I leave to teach my English as a Second Language Students.  A strange coincidence, but of course, we know what's good, right?

When we arrived at the bar, we placed our ramen orders - pork for James, vegetarian for me, and decided to stick with water to drink (cocktails are available, though).  We found two seats that communal tables, and waited for my name to be called with our orders.

After several minutes, my name was called, and we approached the open kitchen to fetch our food.  I couldn't wait to dig in to the steaming hot bowl of ramen!

My vegetarian ramen consisted of tofu, seitan, and egg, with plenty of veggies and ramen noodles:

Vegetarian Ramen with Egg

James's pork ramen had...pork (duh), ramen noodles (double duh), scallions, radishes, and even some fish cakes for flavor:

Pork Ramen

This apparently was the last time that the ramen brunch was going to be offered - because, according to the Tweets, ramen will be available 7 days/week at Station Street Hot Dogs (another Kevin Sousa restaurant) not far from Salt of the Earth.  Hot dogs, ramen...and their new taco menu?  Interesting...

The brunch will be changing to a spaghetti and meatballs meal, with details coming soon.  I can't imagine what awesome thing Kevin Sousa will do with spaghetti...

Salt of the Earth
5523 Penn Ave.
Pittsburgh, PA 15206 (Garfield)

Website: http://saltpgh.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/saltpgh?fref=ts
Twitter: https://twitter.com/saltpgh

Salt of the Earth Never Gets Old

Oh, Salt of the Earth.  <3

I know I'm "supposed" to write about Hispanic/Latino restaurants and foods, but if you haven't noticed, I'm a fan of ALL foods.  All.  Hispanic/Latino is a favorite, and it's what I require my students to focus on for extra credit, but come on - Pittsburgh has SO MANY AWESOME RESTAURANTS that to restrict myself to one category and ONLY write about that would be...prejudicial.

After all, if I only liked one kind of food, wouldn't I contradict my own motto: "Try something new"?

And if I only liked Hispanic/Latino foods, would I ever consider Salt of the Earth to be one of the most fabulous restaurants in all of Pittsburgh?  No.

But I do.

James took me there on a whim on a recent weekday evening.  We went early, as I knew the crowd would be light and I don't like to be out late on weekdays (since I go to bed so early).  We were seated at the end of a communal table (with no one else around us), and I let James handle the appetizer order.

We began with 3 appetizers, all fish-based: Escolar (which is no longer on the menu - this day was the last day), Hamachi, and Trout:

Escolar

Trout

Hamachi

It's a shame that the Escolar is not on the menu anymore, because it was AMAZING.  My favorite of the three, no doubt.  The rice cakes were fried - we were told that they come as small cubes, and throwing them in the fryer makes them puff up like they did.  SO GOOD.  The Hamachi and Trout did not disappoint, either.  The Trout contained sunchokes, which I had not tried before and found to be a great compliment to the fish.  The Hamachi's blend of flavors (chestnut, mint, kelp, kohlrabi, and prosciutto) was interesting and delicious.

Of course, when I go to Salt of the Earth, I have to get the Duck - each time I go, it is prepared differently, and as I've said before, "You can never go wrong with the Duck."  James agreed and ordered it as well.  On this day, the Duck was prepared with flageolet, persimmon, shiso, and duck ham:

Duck

Mannnnnn, I love being right.  I did my best to eat this as SLOWLY as possible so that I could savor every last bite.  The flageolet is a white bean with great, soft texture - a perfect accompaniment to the duck, as I was sure to smother the duck pieces with it as I ate it.

As someone who cannot eat regular ham, I found the duck ham to be a wonderful alternative.  I like the taste of ham, but my body doesn't like digesting it properly, so this was a fantastic way of getting the flavor through another medium.

The sweet flavor of the persimmons reminded me of the flavor of...icing.  Vanilla-y, I guess you could say.  Sounds weird, but when I mentioned it to James and he tried them, he understood what I meant.  Definitely a wonderful finish to the dish.

But, dessert was also in order.  First, the Cheese:

Cheese

Seven Sisters cheese, a pear sauce. and...wait, is that BREAD?!  Well, brioche, but still...no bread is served at Salt of the Earth, so this was rare.  An anomaly, even.  The dish was good, nothing too special (aside from the brioche).

Ahhh, and the Butternut:

Butternut

A butternut squash, quince, walnut, honey, miso, with a sorbet unlike any I've ever had - less sweet, more savory.  Yum.

Kevin Sousa knows what he's doing at Salt of the Earth.  Although I'm not a fan of Union Pig & Chicken, and this tacos thing at Station Street Hot Dogs has me perplexed, no one could convince me that that man does not know what he's doing in the kitchen.  He does.  More than most.

I can't wait to see what he brings to Braddock, as I'm only right across the river....

You can buy this shirt from Steel City Cotton Works.  100% of the proceeds help to rebuild Braddock, PA

Salt of the Earth
5523 Penn Ave.
Pittsburgh, PA 15206 (Garfield)

Website: http://www.saltpgh.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/saltpgh?fref=ts
Twitter: https://twitter.com/saltpgh

...Salt of the Earth [off-topic]

I didn't know such amazing food existed in Pittsburgh.

I write mostly about the Hispanic/Latino foods in this town, yes, but that does not mean that I don't enjoy foods from other cultures - which should be obvious from some of my more recent, off-topic posts (Pho Van, Root 174, and Dozen, to name a few).  In addition, most of those visits have been courtesy of James, who has opened my eyes to the non-chain restaurants that are NOT Hispanic/Latino, as I have opened his to the ones that are.

It's a pretty awesome partnership, to say the least.

After our visit to Verde Mexican Kitchen & Cantina, we walked about a block to Salt of the Earth, where James is a regular, and to which I was a foreigner.  I have followed both the restaurant and their chef, Kevin Sousa, on Twitter for some time now, and given their interesting postings on the menu items, I was curious to see what it was like.  We ventured in and sat at the bar to talk to Maggie, whom James follows on Twitter, and ended up ordering dessert.

We couldn't resist, despite our fabulous and filling meal at Verde.

The enormous chalkboard menu at Salt of the Earth

 We ordered the S'more.  This was the fanciest S'more I have ever seen in my life, not to mention the most delicious:

S'more at Salt of the Earth

 The "graham cracker" part was actually Cinnamon Toast Crunch, the chocolate was delectable, and the marshmallow part was nice and well-toasted (just like I like it - I always set my 'mallows a-flamin' over a campfire!)  The ice cream was a maple-flavored variety that helped to cool down the warm cereal and marshmallow fluff.

And then we ordered another dessert: Honeycrisp.

Honeycrisp at Salt of the Earth

I liked this a lot, but I was not a fan of the thyme in the dessert - thyme is probably my least favorite herb, so that is just my personal taste bud preference.  Besides the thyme, it was prepared amazingly.

So, when James and I were trying to decide where to eat on our night out the next week, there was no question that we had to go back and try the appetizer and entree portions of the menu.

Loft version of the menu, Salt of the Earth

We made reservations for the loft, or upstairs seating area, which offers a great view of the downstairs seating (picnic tables and bench-like individual seats, essentially) and food prep area - not to mention the larger version of the menu that takes up almost the entire side wall.

View of the downstairs seating from the loft

I let James take the lead on what to order, since he was a regular, after all (although the menu does change periodically).  For our first appetizer, we ordered the Risotto, made with octopus, prosciutto, cantaloupe, and miso:

Octopus Risotto

This is probably, no exaggeration, one of the most amazing, fabulous, out-of-this-world things that I have ever eaten - EVER.  I felt like I did when we visited Root 174 - I can't believe that food this fantastic exists in Pittsburgh.  I have only ever eaten octopus in Mexico, at a restaurant right on the Gulf of Mexico - and this was so much better.  The prosciutto was crispy, the octopus was tender, and the flavor of the risotto itself was indescribably, insanely excellent.

For our other appetizer, we ordered the salmon, made like lox on an everything bagel, sans bagel:

Salmon

This appetizer was made from salmon, caper, roe, cream cheese, and poppy seed and sesame seeds (like on an everything bagel).  Although the Octopus Risotto completely stole my heart, this was a commendable appetizer, as well as creative.  I would never think to combine the ingredients quite the way that Kevin Sousa did in his creation.

I was torn on my entree choice.  I wanted to try the duck, as I have never had duck, but so did James.  We agreed that he would get the duck, and I would get the scallops, a usual selection of mine in most restaurants of the same type.

However, I never had scallops - or mussels - quite so fabulous:

Scallops

Both types of seafood were partnered with red potatoes, olives, sunchoke, artichoke, and pancetta.  There is no way that anything in any chain seafood restaurant would ever taste as savory as this did.

And the duck?  Wow.

Duck

I tried the duck, and fell in love.  As cute as ducks are, and as much as I kept remembering my many visits to South Park to feed the ducks as a kid while I ate it, I will eat duck at Salt of the Earth again.  Tender, flavorful, and so much better than any land animal meat.  This came with parsnip, haluski (the hunky in me appreciated this), brussels sprouts (a new obsession of mine, due to Keith Fuller's version at Root 174), apple butter, and pomegranate. 

I was tempted to swap plates with James.  I controlled myself.

And do you think we could resist dessert?  No way!  We ordered the S'more again, and it was as sweet and rich as the first time.

S'more, take two

 I have run out of adjectives to describe my meal at Salt of the Earth, so I will end with this: Bravo, Kevin Sousa, bravo.  If there is anything that the Pittsburgh City Paper's Reader's Poll got right, it is that you are "Pittsburgh's Best Chef".  

I can't wait to see what Union Pig and Chicken (his next restaurant venture) will have to offer.

Salt of the Earth

5523 Penn Ave.

Pittsburgh, PA 15206 (Garfield)

Website: http://www.saltpgh.com

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Salt-Of-The-Earth/159871574028612?ref=ts&sk=wall

Twitter: https://twitter.com/#!/saltpgh

For more on Union Pig and Chicken, click here and follow them on Twitter.