8 minutes ago
Cars have barely left the parking lot for the final dinner service at The Fairlane, but there’s already a taker for the space that caps one end of Mt. Lebanon’s Beverly Road retail district. Mediterra Cafe will open its second location there by early November.
Mediterra Cafe, also a bakery and market, opened in its first location in Sewickley in 2018. “We tend to do well in walking communities, in neighborhoods,” said Mediterra owner and founder Nick Ambeliotis. “We do really well with families.” The cafe is an extension of Mediterra’s successful artisan bread business, founded nearly two decades ago.
The new location in Mt. Lebanon will expand on the cafe’s popular Sewickley menu. It’s well known for more than 20 varieties of crusty and tangy artisan Mediterra breads, many of which are slow-fermented sourdoughs. It has a full coffee bar and house-baked pastries. The vibrant breakfast and lunch offerings feature toasts with garden-fresh toppings, shakshuka (the tomato sauce-based egg dish), fresh-baked pizza and an uncommonly thoughtful kids’ menu.
The look and feel will also resemble their Sewickley spot, which Ambeliotis describes as “an eclectic mix of California bistro.”
But here’s the twist: The new location will evolve to include an evening-geared tapas menu. Executive chef Aniceto Sousa and sous chef Waylon Rivers are crafting charcuterie, cheese plates and specialty platters, along with well-curated wine and cocktail lists.
Coming home
For Ambeliotis and his four children, all of whom work for Mediterra, the Mt. Lebanon location is a homecoming, reaching back to the mid-1990s.
The son of a grocer in Warren, Ohio, Ambelotis was born to the food retail business. He spent 10 years running the store after college before moving to a different vein of the industry, food importing. He advanced to the rare and enviable role of “forager,” traveling the world in search of exotic, specialty foods just familiar enough to entice American shoppers.
When not globe-trotting, he sold the specialty foods to U.S. retailers, choosing the Pittsburgh region as his sales territory. In 1995, Ambeliotis and his family moved to Mt. Lebanon.
The constant international visits to boulangeries and patisseries, especially in France, Greece and Germany, gave rise to Ambeliotis’ new ambition. “I felt that the bread business would be a good business to go into,” he said, and decided to strike out on his own.
In order to finance the career change, the family sold their Hazel Drive home and moved into a Mt. Lebanon apartment. In 2001, Ambeliotis founded Mediterra Bakehouse, dedicated to the intricacies of artisan breadmaking. The next year he rented space in a Robinson industrial park and began to bake breads there. Their quality was quickly recognized and the business grew steadily.
While many of the business’ pastries and baguettes are, and will be, baked at the cafes, the 20-odd iterations of their artisan larger loaves are baked and delivered daily from that Robinson space.
Sourdough bread baking has become somewhat of a cult hobby among home chefs, especially over the covid-19 yeast-drought. From babying the flour and water-based starter, or levain, to assessing the crumb, or arrangement of air pockets, of the final product, the art (and science) of sourdough is understood by more lay people than ever before.
With no offense meant to more humble loaves, Mediterra sourdoughs are unlike anything that could be crafted at home.
Mediterra bread is baked in two European hearths, each weighing more than 30,000 pounds. The hearth’s bricks were quarried from the Alps. The ovens were shipped from France and Slovenia and assembled over three weeks, without blueprints, by a master European oven builder.
“It’s very porous rock, and it works great with bread-baking because the heat radiates through the rock into the dough,” said Ambeliotis. “It gives it a nice jump in the oven.”
Another inimitable difference comes from the grain itself.
The naturally-occurring bacteria that ferments the levain can work on nearly any flour, which is why sourdough bread-making is such an accessible experiment for curious lay chefs.
Go West, young man
The flour that Mediterra uses is quite literally Mediterra flour, thanks to an Arizona monk.
Ambeliotis is serious about his Greek Orthodox Christian faith. After visiting an Arizona monastery in 2011, he was urged by his spiritual mentor to think about expanding his bread business to the arid state.
“We talked about people who are hungry and didn’t have food to eat,” he said. “Bread was a noble craft in that you could help to feed the poor.”
Ambeliotis opened a bakehouse in Coolidge, just south of Phoenix, much like the space in Robinson. He also purchased 100 acres of land in Southern Arizona for growing his own grain, and staff to care for it.
“We harvest it ourselves, we store it ourselves, we mill it and we ship it back to Pittsburgh also to put in our breads here,” said Ambeliotis.
Southern Arizona’s climate is world-renowned for grain-growing. In fact, much of the United States-grown germ sent to Italy is grown there. Anywhere from 10 % to 100% of Mediterra loaves feature the company’s own organically-grown, heritage-variety red fife grain.
He didn’t forget about his spiritual mentor’s urging, either.
In Arizona, Mediterra sends bread-filled vans to the Mexican border and across it to feed the hungry. In Pittsburgh, the company works with 412 Food Rescue, local churches and others to serve the community.
When Mediterra joins the Mt. Lebanon neighborhood this fall, the community will be gaining a lot more than a brand-new concept and world-class bread.
“It’s a part of our ministry to help,” said Ambeliotis. “So, that’s a big part of what we do wherever that we are.”
Abby Mackey is a Tribune-Review contributing writer. You can contact Abby at abbyrose.mackey@gmail.com or via Twitter.
Categories: Allegheny | Food & Drink | Local
"cafe" - Google News
September 14, 2020 at 06:00PM
https://ift.tt/3iuSw5g
Mediterra Cafe to open second location in Mt. Lebanon - TribLIVE
"cafe" - Google News
https://ift.tt/2FkbMR3
https://ift.tt/3c4yPxW
:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/25244079/4.png)
No comments:
Post a Comment