The bar at Tender

One of the “advantages” of my job is that I get to travel regularly. Last week, my job took me to Pittsburgh, PA, and West Springfield, MA. I decided to drive because, well, I prefer driving over flying, and it gave me a chance to listen to BABYMETAL over and over and over again.

I highly recommend that.

I actually volunteered for the Pittsburgh gig – I’m from Morgantown, WV, originally, and I have friends in the ‘burgh. I arrived too late Sunday to do anything fun, but we got done quickly on Monday and I planned on leaving Tuesday. So avoiding the protests at UPMC I jumped into a cab and went to Tender, a bar where my friends Craig (aka Doctor Bamboo) and Nathan work – I’ve known those guys since the CSOWG days.

Super Punch!

Tender is a really cool bar. They don’t do a lot of beers on tap there (across the street, evidently, is quite the beer bar) but they have a solid cocktail program.

Something else they have is Super Punch Jannamico – call it the Malort of Pittsburgh (though much better tasting). Imported really only in that area, it’s a bitter, herbal amaro with a bit of a sticky sweet side to it. I don’t find it as infinitely quaffable as Fernet Branca, but on the other hand, it’s still good, and has an amusingly translated back label.

Super Punch Back Label

Originally, I hadn’t planned on necessarily eating at ?Tender because, well, I hadn’t really thought my day through completely at this point. After all, I’d been trudging through snow drifts earlier in the day looking at equipment that, well, I have no idea what most of it does, so I could write a report about for work. Huzzah, and stuff. I was also still coming off the stress of the drive up to Pittsburgh – I’d stopped in WV to visit my grandfather, who has been struggling, and an incoming snow storm made driving very stressful the entire day.

However, Mondays at Tender are burger days. I haven’t eaten a lot of burgers lately due to the whole “diabetes” thing as well as the whole “cholesterol” thing and to be honest, I’d rather not die quite yet. But they were very cheap on Mondays ?($7 wha?!?!?) and everyone kept telling me how great they are. Sure, they work there, but whatevs, I’ll give it a shot…

Menu and a “Second Spring”

Holy crap. I had the Blue Burger – blue cheese, fried egg, onion jam, balsamic aoli on a 1/3rd pound burger – and it was FANTASTIC. It was quite possibly one of the best burgers I’ve eaten in longer than I can remember. For me, it was the perfect size (not too thick, not too thin) and the chef just rocked it.

Seriously, folks, try it.

I washed it down with Craig’s Second Spring: Templeton rye, Cardamaro, creme de framboise, black walnut bitters. Also quite tasty. All of the drinks on the menu were marked with the initials of the creator so I made sure to try his and Nathan’s.

Food and drinks (lots of drinks) in me, I’d made plans to meet a friend of mine at another bar (Bar Marco). The USBG NE meeting was in town, which included folks from DC, and they had an event there that night. I hopped an UberX and went over there.

DIGRESSION TIME

I use Uber a lot here in DC. In Pittsburgh, they weren’t there the last time I was, and my encounters with Pittsburgh cabs were basically that they were unreliable, hard to find, and usually driven by some form of lunatic.

The bar at Bar Marco

Now UberX is there and I have to tell you, the guys driving those cars were FANTASTIC. And right now the rates are cheap as hell – it cost me $4 to get to Bar Marco from Tender, and $5 to get back to the hotel. (The unmetered car that took me to Tender cost me $20.)

HEY YINZ! USE UBERX! (If you sign up, use “UBERSEANMIKE” as your code and I think we’ll both get stuff and stuff.)

Bar Marco was a pretty cool place, maybe a bit smaller than Tender. They do chef specials on Monday but I was stuffed from Tender.

On the other hand, I got to see an old DC friend I hadn’t seen in ages – JP Carceres!

Wall art at Bar Marco

It was great to be able to talk to him for a little bit and get the lowdown on how life has been treating him since having to deal with DHS. He said he’s going on a bit of a vacation and going to do some research and experimentation on some projects, and then we’ll have to deal with him again. He definitely seemed to be in good spirits which is always good to see.

Unfortunately for me, I went back to my hotel to drop off the bottle of Super Punch that I’d…found…and fatigue overwhelmed me. It’d been a long week already, and the next day I had to drive back to Arlington (and then up to Massachusetts!) so I called it a night and did what we politely call “pass the %*@! out”.

It also reminded me of two things: 1, I need to visit Pittsburgh more often. 2, we need to get the band, errr, bloggers back together and hang out. Craig suggested that and I think that’s a FINE idea. So expect some email on that sometime here soon.

Cheers y’all!

– SeanMike