- [Narrator] This Gumbands Podcast is made possible by the Buhl Foundation, serving Southwestern Pennsylvania since 1927 and by listeners like you, thank you.

- Hi, welcome to Gumbands.

I'm Rick Sebak here at WQED.

We've been doing this podcast for a couple of months now, experimenting with various formats.

And what you're gonna see here now is a video version of our interview with John Tarallo, who owns and runs a business in Millvale called Steel City Salt Company.

We also did a short video while we were there, which you can find at our website, wqed.org/gumbands.

Lots of reasons why you should stay with us.

And I think we started this interview where it should start asking John about how did he get started.

(playful music) Give us, if you can a quick history of Steel City Salt.

- So we launched in 2014, my wife and I, and we set up in the Strip District with a vending table with just a few imported salts that we brought in from around the world.

And just wanted to change the way people thought about cooking and how salt can make such a difference, not just with the flavor, but for texture and really bringing out the natural flavor of what you're doing.

And since then we've expanded, I'm still in the Strip District every weekend 'cause I'm very loud, so I have to be out there.

We opened our store in Millvale in 2018 where we expanded to a line of spices.

We carry local food products and we've really added a lot of different salts and rubs and seasonings, sugars, mainly by customer requests.

And you know, we're just still cooking up a storm.

- But what happened at the beginning that you got interested in salt or was it totally your wife's fault or, I mean.

- Well, you know, I always had an interest in cooking and with different ingredients.

My first job was at Grocery Italiana in Bloomfield when I was an early teenager.

And my mind was blown because they would make everything by hand in the basement kitchen there, the seasonings, the meatballs, the pasta.

They had the ravioli maker upstairs, this little like 90 year old lady.

And that started to spark my interest in cooking and food and flavor.

And then I would have dinner with my grandfather every weekend in Bloomfield.

He was from Sicily, he's since passed.

But he would use Sicilian sea salt.

And I always thought that was a wild thing as a kid.

I'm like, what is this?

It was in this funky container.

And he's like, it's special, it's special, it's special.

So that kind of always stuck with me.

So I've been around the food industry my entire life and I met a guy who was an importer of salts and spices and we hooked up and he could get all of these cool salts from around the world and we just started bringing them in and packing them up and selling them to the public.

- And so you decided I'm gonna start a business?

- Yes, yes.

Well, I always wanted to start a business.

So the joke in my family is, so I'm a Tarallo, but my mother's side, they're Violas and they said, Viola men always own businesses.

That's how it is.

They had businesses in the Strip, in Cranberry, all over the place.

So it was always kind of ingrained in me and I'm not really good at taking orders and getting yelled at and stuff.

So I always said I wanted to open a business and be the boss, and that's what we ended up doing.

- Cool, so you start selling salt and actually I think it was probably a flake salt that you had there.

- Yes, I remember it was the Cypress flake salt.

And that is a stunning, probably our most beautiful salt that we have, these large, gorgeous pyramid flakes.

- Did you ever think you'd know this much about salt?

- No, not at all.

Not in the beginning.

I just wanted to start with a few of the imports and possibly grew, but it wasn't really in my game plan.

I'm not much of a planner, so it was oh, we have these salts, they're cool, people like them and they can really enhance your cooking.

And then I started to really look at the different salts from around the world, how different they can be from one another and then doing the flavors and blends and you just learn as you go.

I mean, you have to be knowledgeable about your product and I love taste testing everything, so I have no problem.

- So do you have a favorite salt after all this time?

- You know, I volley between favorites throughout the year, depending what I'm doing.

So right now I'm using a lot of the Peruvian salt because we're doing a lot of grilling and steaks.

Also the Red Hawaiian, it has a lot of iron that helps break down meat.

So I'm doing a lot of marinades and rubs.

Of the seasonings, I would say the coffee rub right now because of course that grilling angle.

But our Steel Town garlic and herb I end up putting on everything, yeah.

- Cool, so is there any limit to this, I mean?

- The sky is the limit.

I mean, salt is a blank slate.

And then with spices, that's a whole other infinite ballgame.

- And I mean, as I understand human history, we usually forget how important salt and spices are to the way human beings have turned out.

- Incredibly important.

I mean, you can't live without salt, not just for keeping your electrolytes up, but I mean, you can heal wounds with it.

You can cure meat, you need it.

And spices, I mean, who doesn't want flavor in their food, I know.

- No, but it's like what caused Columbus- - Yes, to find pepper.

- Yeah.

- Yeah.

- Everybody was looking for spice.

- Yeah.

- And it's something that I think we all just sort of take for granted.

You go to the grocery store - We do.

- and get spices, and some things we take, and I mean some places don't have salt.

- Right, yeah.

Some stores, they won't carry it.

Some countries, they have to import it in.

But generally most places will harvest their own, whether it's a rock mine or from the ocean.

Or a lot of times they have brine springs from old volcanic activity that they could bring the salt water up because I mean, the world was covered in oceans millions of years ago.

So when that all got buried and dried up, those are all salt deposits and Himalayan salts, they've been harvesting for 2000 years.

The story is Alexander the Great found the Himalayan Salt Mine.

Whether that's 100% true or not, I don't know, but I like to believe it.

- So, is there a great American salt or is there a Pennsylvania salt?

- You know, there was Saltzburg, PA.

Most of the salts harvested in the US are not really food grade.

The biggest way of harvesting here is brine solution mining.

So they pump a mine full of water, they extract that briny water and they boil it in kettles and that's how they get the salt.

And usually it needs to be purified if it's like that because of the impurities in the earth.

- It's a funky salt.

- It's a funky salt for sure, yeah.

- Probably with a funky taste.

- Yes, yeah.

And I mean, most salts should be gray, but a lot of times they're stripped of nutrients and they're purified, so it has that bright crystalline white.

- Oh, they should be gray.

That's interesting.

- Yeah.

- Yeah, they should be gray.

- So what's your grayest salt?

- We have a salt from Bali.

It's our Bali pyramid salt.

It was one of the first, it's harvested by hands.

So they funnel this water into little channels and they let the sun dry it and they scrape it with wooden rakes and these little salt crystals bloom on top.

It's almost kind of how the Cypress flake is harvested.

So the top layer is like a fleur de sel, a flower salt 'cause it blooms.

But the bottom dense watery layer is the gray salt.

That's the mineral rich stuff.

And we carry that one.

- What do you mean it blooms?

- So when it's dried out by the sun, when the water evaporates, it blooms on the top of the salt, it becomes exposed and it's the neatest thing.

- And that's fleur de sel?

- Fleur de sel, flower salt, yeah.

And I mean, the most popular fleur de sel is from France.

I mean, that's where you get the name from, but pretty much everywhere it's harvested that same way.

And the top layer is the high grade, the bottom layer layer is the mineral dense, that's the flaky stuff as well.

- Wow, now, I know my sister's partner, Bill, who was a coal miner in West Virginia eventually ended up working in a salt mine in Louisiana.

- Oh wow.

That's pretty cool.

- So, I guess there's, and I have always assumed it was food grade.

- Yeah.

- From Louisiana.

- Who knows?

I mean, it varies depending where you're at.

Now I know there is a salt mine in West Virginia and they're called Dickinson, Dickinson Saltworks.

And it's a family that has owned a salt mine and it was in disrepair for many generations.

And the new generation took it over and reestablished it and we're going to be carrying those salts one day, yeah.

- Local salt.

- Local salt, yeah.

- Always better, right?

- Always, always.

- The local connection.

And so it was just so successful in the Strip District that you decided you could open a brick and mortar place?

- Yes, well, the initial thought was not to open a brick and mortar.

I didn't want to really be tied down with having regular hours because we have our Strip location, we did a lot of festivals, we got this building in 2016 and it was in such disrepair, it took my dad and I two years to fix it.

It was just him and I. Everything we did was us, except for the electric we had to hire out for and with this little space out front, I said, well, we're gonna be here anyways.

We might as well put a little store and people can come in.

And it was one of the best decisions I made besides marrying Candy.

(laughs) - [Rick] And people like that, don't they?

- They do.

- They like coming into a spice store.

- They do.

We were skeptical at first saying, well, we don't know how it's gonna be.

We're gonna be here anyways, we'll do some sales.

But the past two holiday seasons, we've been busier here than our Strip location, which totally blew my mind because the Strip, you know how it is on the weekends, holidays, it's crazy.

And it's been really cool.

The neighborhood and community really has been supporting us.

It's been fun times.

There's always events here and people know Millvale, the breweries, Jean Mark, Iron Born, all these places.

- Right.

I know, Millvale is a great place.

- It is.

- But it's not where you grew up.

- No.

I grew up in Lawrenceville and Bloomfield and say Lawrenceville before it was cool and Bloomfield when it was Little Italy and I just had so many cool experiences.

Most of my family still lives over there.

- Okay.

And like you say, the sky's the limit.

What do you think's gonna happen?

- I really don't know.

I don't really plan that far ahead.

I just, when I get an idea, I try to roll with it.

I always like coming up with new things.

Newest is our watermelon sugar because everyone keeps saying, "Oh, this song "Watermelon Sugar", I would love watermelon sugar."

I said, "I'm gonna make this sugar."

And we did and it's been a huge hit.

We sold like 200 jars in a day.

It was nuts.

- You found watermelon flavoring, you started to cut watermelon and dry them in the sun or how do you do that?

- We were actually able to procure really high-grade watermelon fruit powder with no fillers, no additives or anything.

And we were able to hand mix that and infuse the sugar with it.

So it has that really nice watermelon flavor.

I always say it's almost like fun dip I used to eat as a kid.

It's really good.

But for cocktails and mojitos, lemonade and iced tea.

- I see, for like putting a salt rim?

- Yeah, yeah.

You can do the rim with it, yeah.

- Or a sugar beer with it.

- Right, I know what you meant.

- Yeah, yeah, okay.

- But we're always doing collabs.

We work with a lot of local companies.

We're in talks now with Pittsburgh Honey to do a barbecue blend using their honey.

So that's fun.

- So, but you are other places other than just here in the Strip?

- Yes.

So these are our two main locations, the Strip and here.

But there are a lot of local stores that also carry our products, most in Western Pennsylvania.

But we are nationwide, which is pretty cool.

And I think it's people that have found our products in the Strip or ordered online and they either have a store and want to carry it or their customers bug them to say, "Hey, I got this salt, you should carry it," which is awesome.

- No, and it's, I don't know, I guess there's this element of Pittsburgh pride in all of this.

- There is, yes.

Yeah, the Pittsburgh pride is, I mean, people come in and they'll say, "I want your Black and Gold Blend."

I'm like, "Well, have you tasted it?"

They're like, "Nope.

But I saw the sign.

And I love Black and Gold.

I love the Steelers, I love Pittsburgh.

Give me three jars."

We're like, "Okay."

And then they like it and they buy more of it.

- And it's a great present.

- Yes, it is.

It is.

- Okay.

So do you still cook a lot?

I mean, with all these possibilities.

- I cook a lot.

Breakfast, my wife usually does the lunch, meal preps and then dinner.

We mostly cook at home.

I'd say we eat out maybe once a week, once every two weeks.

And we try to eat local.

But it's just so fun to cook at the house.

It's my passion.

I know if I'm like really stressed or anxious or anything, I'm like, I need to cook.

And just that motion gets me out of my loop.

- Cool.

And although you say Candy was with you at the beginning there at the Strip, you say you met her in the Strip?

- I did, yes.

I volunteered at the big Polish St.

Stanislaus Church down there for years, working the parking lot with my grandfather, parking cars, collecting money.

And Candy's sister owns Chicken Latino, which was in the Strip for 10 years.

They're now in Beach View.

So she would come every weekend and park.

I'm like, oh wow.

She's really pretty and nice and genuine.

And at the time I was in college and we'd always have parties every weekend and I'd say, "Hey, do you wanna go to a party tonight?"

And she goes, "Oh no, I'm busy.

Okay.

This went on for about a year.

So finally I said, you know what?

I'm done.

I'm in a bad mood.

She doesn't want.

So I didn't ask her one day.

And she parked, she got out of her car and she came up to me and she said, "You didn't ask me today."

I said, "No, of course not.

You didn't want to go."

She says, "Well, I'm free tonight."

And it's been history ever since.

- Okay.

Love story in the Strip.

- Yeah, always, always.

- But you work together too, so that's a lot.

- It is, it is.

We're always together.

Whether it's here, whether we're going out, we're hanging out with Grandpap, whatever we're doing.

- But I know from coming to the store here, she's usually the face of the store.

- She is, yes.

I don't do very well in the store because I'm too loud and it's a smaller space.

So I like to step back and do all of the mixing and blending.

And the Strip is where I really flourish because I can freely talk and BS with people and all of that.

- And other than your own table, is there a favorite place in the Strip?

- To eat or to set up or in general?

- Oh, to set up?

No, I just meant is there another place in the Strip that either you knew as a kid or that you still love or?

- I just love everything about the Strip.

I mean, I shop at Penn Mac, Wooley, Stamoolis is cool.

Mancini's Bread is one of my favorites.

I have to watch though cause I eat too many loaves and you know, but my family really goes back to the Strip.

My great-grandfather was a, I guess they would call them a huckster that would fill their cars up with fruit and they would go to the produce terminal every day.

And he had a horse and buggy.

And then he graduated to a truck and they actually had a grocery store on Ligonier Street and my whole grandfather's side on my mom's side.

I did all that.

My grandmother was born in the Strip District.

So we have a lot of history down there.

- And a lot of people are moving there now.

- Yes, they are.

- I mean, the construction is astounding.

- It's amazing.

I'll drive down Smallman and I'll see an empty lot and then I'll drive by a week later, it seems like a whole new building is up.

I can't believe it.

- So we have some questions we want to ask everybody, and one of them is why do you think you live in Pittsburgh?

- Well, I love Pittsburgh.

I love the community.

My whole family is here.

I grew up here.

I love the way that things have changed.

I mean, growing up in Lawrenceville, it was really fun, but it was pretty dilapidated, the main street and it could be dangerous at times.

And it's really nice to see a change where businesses can come in.

I think everything is cyclical.

So when a lot of businesses left and opened in malls and things like that, downtown areas went downhill.

But now everybody's coming back and opening up small spots and I just find it so interesting.

People could say, "Oh wow, my grandfather used to own a butcher shop.

My grandmother used to own a sewing place," or whatever.

And I see that coming to fruition a lot.

And a lot of people are tired of working in corporate America.

They want to open something up for themselves.

And it's really nice to see.

- But I assume your business has allowed you or given you the privilege of traveling a lot?

- Yes, yes and no.

So it's really hard because for a long time we were a two person operation, so closing is always tough because we have to close here, the Strip, online orders.

Now that we've hired some help, it's become a little bit easier.

But we've traveled to Peru, we've traveled to Mexico, we've traveled all around the country and just to explore different food culture, different salts and spices.

And pretty soon I'd like to go even further.

We had big plans for 2020, but with how that went.

- Yeah, is there a place with a salt that you think, oh, I want to go see where this comes from?

- Yeah, so I would actually love to go to Cypress because the Cypress Flake is gorgeous and I can then travel to the Middle East.

My best friend is from Jordan, so I'd like to see his family and kind of just hop along around there.

There's a lot of cool salts in Asia that they don't export, especially from Thailand.

So I'd love to go there and maybe set up a connection that we can bring some Thai salt over or even some Japanese salt.

There's a really cool seaweed salt from Japan that has a lot of iodine in it and has an umami flavor 'cause it's made with seaweed and I've been trying to get it for years.

- Is it green?

- It has a green tinge to it.

And it's just always been on my mind.

- Huh, and without getting yourself in trouble, I like to ask people is there a place to eat here that you really love that wouldn't mind if more people knew about it.

- Yes, well, I have to say Chicken Latino, not just because she's my sister-in-law, but because it was my favorite place in the Strip to eat.

Peruvian food is awesome.

Duncan Street Sandwich Shop up the street is great.

Grant Bar down here.

On Saturdays, their prime rib, you cannot beat it.

It's fantastic.

But you must put in a reservation because if you wait, they're gonna be run out by the time you get there.

And I like Piccolo Forno in Lawrenceville.

We just go all around.

I like to try new places.

- Is there a family story?

I mean, this all came about because one night we were in a bar, we were swapping stories and I said, "I know that my great-grandmother in order to come to America, stole her sister's money."

- Wow.

- And came instead of her sister, which is, even as a little kid, we all love that story.

- Right, right.

- I never, she died 10 years before I was born, so I never knew her mum mum.

But my mother always told mum mum stories and all of that.

But there's all these little stories that you can, I mean, I have no problems telling that story now - Right.

- because it's not hurting anyone.

Do you have any, are there any family confessions that you?

- Yes, well, the one is, well two, the main one, my great-grandfather, he had some brothers and when they were coming over from Italy, his one brother got into a fight and had a big black eye.

They wouldn't let him on the boat.

So he snuck on.

And when he snuck on and it landed, he realized they were in Argentina and not the US.

He got on the wrong boat.

So he had to come up from South America then.

And it was a big ordeal and a big mess, yeah.

- That's your grandfather?

- Yeah, my grandfather's uncle, that's who it would've been, yeah.

- Someone you didn't know.

- No, I didn't know.

- It's just one of these stories that you hear from.

- Exactly, right, right.

- You said there's a second one?

- The second one.

Well, it's my last name.

So it's Tarallo and it's not that crazy, but it came from names, I guess in Europe and a lot of places came from your occupation.

And myself and my dad, we love sweets.

When my grandfather on his side was alive, we love sweets.

I'm thinking, why is this?

This is crazy.

We eat a ton of sweets, we don't get cavities.

And it turns out because a late generation was a baker that would make the Taralli Cookies.

So he probably ate a lot of them.

And that's how we got our last name.

And that's why we love sugar.

- It's a cookie.

- Yes, yeah.

Little Taralli's is what they're called.

- What kind of a, I don't know, Taralli.

It doesn't bring up a- - Yeah, it's like this, it's like a hard cookie and that you dunk in coffee and usually eat it with breakfast and dessert.

Yeah, you can probably get them at Pennsylvania Macaroni.

There's lemon ones.

And so I had some education on seasonings and spices, but nowhere near what I know now.

I mean, it's always a learning experience.

I'm always learning about new items, new salts, new seasonings, new combinations.

In fact, the best part I like about what I do being in the Strip, is I get to talk to everyone about cooking and what they use.

And I love it.

And that's why I'm not too good in the store because it's just such a small space.

But when someone buys something in the Strip or if they're just looking, and I, "Well, what do you like to cook?

What do you like to use?"

Just so I know, like, it's so cool.

I have a lot of recipes and people are like, you're brilliant.

You came up with all these recipes.

I said, "No, I get recipes for cooking by learning what people use this on."

And that's just how it goes.

And it's the coolest thing.

- Is there any story where you were surprised at how sort of well, I never thought that that could happen?

- Well, the one is that Tequila worm salt.

I was approached by a bar and it was a Mexican bar and they said, "We want worm salt and we want chapulin," And chapulin is a grasshopper, a cricket.

I'm like, what?

Are you nuts?

I've never heard of this before.

They're like, "Nope, we have mezcal.

We want this salt, we want to do this."

Okay.

And we searched around, we were able to find some and bring some in.

And that was a very interesting combo.

I thought they were lying to me.

Also, we carry a salt from India called kala namak that has sulfur.

It tastes like eggs, hard boiled eggs.

It's used for vegan and vegetarian cooking to give you that eggie flavor.

And that was another one I had no idea about.

And people are like, do you have the sulfur salt?

I'm like, what, sulfur?

Are you nuts?

What are you talking about?

- Yeah, we don't want things that smell like sulfur.

- Yeah, right.

But it's a big hit.

I get calls from people saying, do you have, it's known as black salt, but we have three different kinds of black salt, so I tell my people here, usually if it's black salt, it's usually that one.

So you have to say, "The one that tastes like eggs?"

They're like, yep.

Okay, we have it.

- Huh, I love the fact that you obviously really do love this business.

- Yeah, I do.

I do, I love cooking.

I mean, there's certain things that aren't as pleasant, administrative tasks.

No, I can do without that.

But everything else, the mixing, the blending, I mean, every piece of us goes into every jar, every blend that we do.

And we're really passionate about it.

- I think that's probably what makes it work.

- Yeah.

- [Rick] In all that you do, do you use rubber bands at all?

- We have rubber bands that hold our shrink bands together when we're putting them on the jars and everything.

So, that holds it together.

- [Rick] Cool, and you have no trouble with the word gumbands, you know gumbands.

- I know gumbands, yeah.

- Since you were a kid.

- Yeah, gumbands.

Yeah, gumbands in that.

(laughs) - I know that I will be here many times.

This isn't you know, I love this place and that's why I wanted to do this little interview, but I thank you for being on Gumbands.

- Yes, thank you so much, Rick.

It's always a pleasure.

It's always great talking to you.

- [Narrator] This Gumband's podcast is made possible by the Buhl Foundation serving Southwestern Pennsylvania since 1927.

And by listeners like you.

Thank you.