Hey, everybody.

I'm here a Little Italy Days in Bloomfield.

And of course, this is th Bloomfield that everybody knows.

But is it really the Bloomfield of today?

What has changed here in this communit and who is driving that change?

I wanted to know.

I mean, clearly you're an institution.

I mean, everybody that I talked to was like, you do have to come here.

Or should be in one.

So can you talk a little bit just about the experience of having this space for so lon and being here, this is my life.

This is my second home, actually, if you count ours, this is my first time.

This is your first home.

So this is your kitchen.

This is my kitchen.

Yeah.

Not too many people are are privileged to stand out here with me.

How long have you been here?

First have been here?

Oh, little over 30, 31, 32 years now.

Well, Maria's last name is Merante.

And guess what?

There's another Merante just down the street, and her name is Gina.

And of course, only in Bloomfield.

And really, only a Little Italy.

Would they be sisters.

Gina was looking for a job.

At that time.

I was doing cooking classes.

We did cooking classes for about 15 years, and the neighborhood the it has changed again since then.

The neighborhood then had everything I needed fo cooking classes except produce.

So, I said, G, if you're looking for something to do, I said, we can do this together.

I said, you know, we'll open a little produce market.

You know exactly what to do.

You have all the.

You know, the connections tha you need to contact to do that.

And, I will be your, your best customer.

People cal you the patron saint of produce.

That is what it all means.

I might leave the saint part out but you know this is not a, this is a new apple Its called a lemonade apple I ate one finished just down to the core.

I didn't taste the lemon, but it was really poured out like, you know, how does it feel to be so established in that space?

Well, it's it's actually a lot of fun.

I was just telling everybody, I don't have a bucket list.

I'm doing somebody else's bucket list for that because I'm living my bucket list.

I really am every single solitary day.

Somebody from Paddy cake comes down my store.

When did you know, though?

I'm going to take this place.

Oh my gosh, I, I only, maybe about five years ago, this has been such a big part of my life since I was 14 years old.

This is where I grew up, you know, this is where I learned to learn to bake.

Learn to decorate it.

I started off when I was 14, folding boxes here during the holidays, on the weekends.

So this is like a real family experience, right?

Yeah.

So, every bit of it was a learning experience and, an and growing up and and family.

All right.

So you have upstairs.

Yes.

Still, what a legacy you have.

Yeah.

It was fun.

And now you're passing the torch.

Yeah.

How did that feel to have her take it over?

Sounds great.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Well, Paddy cakes has actuall been around since the early 80s, and that's probably before some of the newer faces who live i this community were even born.

And the way that they're reimagining and nourishing this space, let's say it's angelic, Justin And we're in church, well, a new kind of church.

We're inside Saint Ravioli.

I'm of Italian-American descent.

That makes two of us.

Yeah.

So it's just, you know, kind of you gravitate towards it, really.

It was, the pandemic that kind of stirred me into, like, figuring out something that I could do, you know, maybe a food related business that is pandemic proof can't be shut down because I don't have a dining room or anything.

And the ravioli was free.

And I did give a lot of it away for like a six pack beer, whatever.

Didn't have, like, prices or anything because it was just me out of my house.

Sure.

So I asked people to donate.

Some people did, some if they could.

A buddy of mine joked around and he actually doesn't even live in Pittsburgh.

He saw what I was doing on Instagram.

He lives in Denver, Colorado and jokingly one day on a zoom call, we were actually playing online poker.

Somebody is like, that was the stuff we did during the pandemic.

And he's like, when I logged in, he's like, oh, there he is saying ravioli.

And we all like, I watched like bulbs go off above my buddy' heads and we're like, that's it.

That's the name.

Probably what comes to mind isn't even the beer or the coffee, but it's the inclusive vibe and the safe vibe.

We try really hard to listen to our neighbors and our regulars who want to see, you know, a particular event or a particular style of beer or style of food.

And somebody came in, like a month ago, and they were sitting outside in the beer garden and they're like, oh, it's so cool to see, like folks older than me, younger than me and people of color and people in the queer community.

So I would say, like, if you talk to our day to day guests and regulars, it's important to us to like basically be a spot for everyone.

You are Jak of Jak's bakery.

I'm Jak yeah.

We have the nice, corner building.

Its beautiful.

Little you can call ourselves.

We're the corner bakery.

The neighborhood bakery.

I walked by here a couple weeks ago, and I was like, what is this?

It was very excitin to see a new business in town.

Yeah.

So, Jak has had a bakery in Bulgaria for decades, and, when we decided to open one here, we wanted it to look a little different.

It's Eastern European stuff.

It's not what you can get in every other bakery.

So we wanted it to look, both modern, but als it has traditional stuff in it, but not maybe not traditional for this neighborhood.

Yeah.

So we wanted to stand out.

Did you know that Bloomfield currently has 150 businesses operating it?

It also has more than 8600 residents.

And I found this really interesting.

More than 100 of those residents are over 85 years old.

I'm 75, Rich, you and I, we were talking a little bi about the chang in neighborhood.

What would you like to see come into Bloomfield?

Stores.

Stores, not just restaurants.

Stores.

Anything.

Yeah.

You know, we had I was telling you, we ha no Italian store up the street.

Yeah.

97 year before I went out of business.

Oh my gosh.

Now a lot of the family members died off.

But still we know 97 years is a good run now.

We have a lot of young people now.

It's a great thing.

Yeah.

50% of this store is younger people that come in now.

The spirit of Bloomfield is alive with fresh ideas.

Even in old spaces.

Anybody remember Lombardozzis?

When we're talking about what this was, I mean, this was a part of, you know, the Little Italy.

Oh, its iconic.

Yeah.

Did you feel that you ha big shoes to fill in that way?

Yeah.

No, 100%.

100%, I think.

But, yeah I mean, we obviously try to keep as much of the original esthetic intact as we could.

A because it's beautiful, because we're on a budget fair.

But it also, I think it harkens to this kind of golden age of restaurants that are esthetic, is sort of based around this sort of nostalgia.

It's kind of steeped in.

So honestly, it felt like it just clicked immediately.

You know, with any community, there's always going to be ups and downs, and it's not just enough to survive, but you really want to thrive in the place that you've put down roots.

And sometimes it takes the people who live in that place to make it happen.

So almost all of our employees are local.

My main baker actually lives, just behind our building.

So, this is really a community bakery.

It it is.

It's the community that works here.

It's the community that supports us.

And we tease that we're like bartenders because we know everybody's everybody's regular, you know, their regular order.

You know, Bloomfield, gosh, in my eyes, is, sort of at the epicenter of, like, density in the city.

It's very walkable.

It's very much like we're sort of a hybrid of commercial and residential.

So when we take a look at our regulars and our guests who walk in, there our neighbors, there are friends, there are food trucks that are nearby.

I remember coming to work every day i when I lived in the south side of my neighborhood before Bloomfield.

Yeah.

And just like, wanting to kind of be a part of it.

So there aren't any other Bulgarian bakeries?

And this is the first one that's been in the area for a while.

I think there used to be a lot kind of going up and down the Mont Valley.

But in this generation is the first one thats here, we know that there were bakeries all up and down Liberty Avenue.

We've talked to some of the the people who've been here for a while.

They said that there were, you know, eight bakeries in two blocks and one on every corner.

But they were they were telling me they were different stuff.

And so small bakeries are hard to, hard to keep open.

And a lot of them have close family.

If they're a family run especially.

It's hard to keep keep things going.

In Bloomfield.

It's not about outside developer coming in to change a community, but instead it's about neighbors helping neighbors.

And sometimes those neighbors look a little different.

It's a big change, but I never I never criticize for change.

A lot of people are disappointed in seeing that the Italians are gone.

Yeah, and new people are moving in.

But my father was an immigrant.

He replaced somebody else and they said, oh, here come this Italian So I won't do that.

We welcome everybody that's here.

We do.

We appreciate who's here.

We're trying to we're trying to hold on to to this era of Bloomfield.

Yeah.

That I'll be honest, I love the neighborhood.

No matter whether it's Little Italy or.

And to be honest, it was Little Germany before.

It was Little Italy back before the Italian immigrants moved in.

And, you know I think we have some of the best Asian food in the city here on Liberty Avenue.

So it's still Bloomfield.

And that's why the Little Italy days, it's the celebration of the Italian heritage.

But it's really a celebration of this neighborhood.

We try really hard to listen to our neighbors and our regulars who want to see, you know, a particular event or a particular style of beer or style of food.

That sort of old to new.

You know, it's changing rapidly.

I'm sort of the new guy coming in town, even though this has been here 41 years.

Yeah.

So like, you know, but yeah, but it's second generation.

But they've been so accepting, so helpful.

A lot of what you see when you step into Trace is meant to sort of already be coexisting with old Bloomfield.

People come in and say, why is it called Trace?

And so this, this building that was built around 1900 as a brass and bronze foundry, you know, this is Peak Pittsburgh.

It's light manufacturing, it's steel.

You can step inside of our building and actually trace back what it used to be in prior lives.

Yeah.

Part of the lighting structure, the, abstract, like asymmetrical white neons are kind of meant to kind of throw it back to when this was a manufacturing space.

You would have sparks fly through the air, and that was meant to kind of like mimic that era of Pittsburgh.

There was so many good parts about this space already.

The building had really good bones.

Lots of really interesting design features.

Like the iron grates were here.

The glass that's etched, it was elegantly flipped it upside down to be an f, to fit our need.

That that's.

Yeah.

So cool.

It's been amazin to be a part of this community and part of the Bloomfield businesses.

There's less than there used to be, but we're just as strong as we ever have been.

I mean, what makes a neighborhood, anyway?

Bloomfield doesn't even have a church or a funeral home anymore.

My big joke is I'm probably going to live to be about 300 years ol now because I can't get buried.

And I also have no church to give me.

Resurrection.

Quite a few years back, Lidia Bastianich was here, and she walked i and she said, I was in the strip and they said, where should I go?

And they said, you have to go to Bloomfield.

And she said, okay.

And they said, you'll go talk to Maria.

Yeah.

And that's all they said.

And they said, does Maria have a last name?

I said, yeah, yeah, she does.

But if you go to Bloomfield and you ask somebody o the street to go talk to Maria, they'll know exactly who you mean and exactly where to go.

What an impact you've made.

What an incredible impact.

One meatball at a time.

One meatball at a time.

I don't know, I get a little emotional.

Yeah.

I mean, everybody I talk to says you have to come here.

This is little Italy that has to feel good.

It does feel good.

Do you think Saint Ravioli is saving Little Italy?

I wouldn't go that far.

I don't think we're saving it, but we're trying to hold i in one spot, but also very open to all the different things.

New restaurants, the chicken spots going to be open up down the street.

So a lot of exciting things happening.

Why are community spaces like this, these organic places, these places that are taking the old and transforming it into the new?

Why is it so vital to moving Bloomfield forward?

I mean, honestly, it's just the more third spaces you have that aren't work, that aren't home, you actually get off your screens, you get off your phones, you get off your laptops, and you engage with the real people.

That's probably the most important thing to sort of keep the neighborhoods, you know, kind of crunchy, gritty vibe going is that we need to, like, kind of bump into one another and like, talk to one another.

But we don't see them daily, but they plug in and plug out and they're still kind of part of that, day to day rotation and that like, I feel like that's really the only way forward.

But what does it mean to move forward?

Is it the new corner bakery?

Maybe it's the kid who got his start making ravioli on Instagram.

Or maybe it's knowing someone is taking good care of a cherished space, or the commitment to always use buttercream frosting.

Or maybe it's the plac that you can quench your thirst any time of day.

Because what has always nourished this community is the people who want to make Bloomfield better.

One meatball at a time.