Yo, real talk.
The first moment I ever felt inspired to make my drinks dance more than a Wisconsin Old Fashioned, more than a shaken dirty “Vokka” Martini, it was magic. I believe a lot of the troops in this game will have similar stories.
This week Pittsburgh is losing a gem of some weird and bizarre dimension. NACL, aka Salt of the Earth, aka, SALT, aka Kevin Sousa’s lovechild, aka focal point of the talk in this small-ass town for the last five years, for better or worse. We’re worse off.
My feelings on Sousa, who opened the restaurant, are on record, but the emotions he dredged up and put into bronze with Salt are also on record. Despite the fact he’s been removed from the 412 proper for a minute, his presence still looms. It’s deserved.
Circa 2011, I unno, maybe 2010, I was bartending at Sonny’s Tavern. I was ruhl fixed into the role of a snarky, rough, chain-smoking bartender. I had even had a Hunter S. Thompson inspired cigarette holder; I was working a role, writing poetry on all types of amphetamines, playing pool in my basement on all types of endorphins, legal and otherwise.
My dart team, Team USA (because anyone else is an auto bad dude), just won a season. It was the first of a few. I miss darts, it’s an honest, drunken sport for the unathletic. In any case, My teammate, a reputable business owner and purveyor of fine pizza always recommended Salt. He had been hitting the employees up with subs and pizza for a minute, and was always treated as such at Salt. It was a place cats like us, running around places like Sonny’s, could be treated like ballers. To paraphrase, my boy said, “Roll in as is. They don’t care. They will take care of you.”
My dart team came into a gorgeous spot rolling deep in its prime, and as a bartender, I was eye-glued to Maggie Meskey and Summer Voelker straight killing it. I was witness to a lot of magic before I went upstairs, and I sampled the fruits of both bar and kitchen. It was an amazing evening.
I saw these amazing tenders killing it, and at the time, I was begging my way into the game on the inspiration of Sean Enright (to paraphrase, “this didn’t become a career until I treated it like a career”), and that evening kept me on a bender of asking for anything my cup could hold. I saw Rosemary lit on fire. I saw both Chartreuse colors thrown into some of the most evocative and wonderful cocktails I’ve had.
Ever.
That was the day I wanted more.
My good friend Jeremy has carried a lonely torch in a city now filled with explosions. He kept up the tradition that I rolled into, as some half-cocked, blue-collar captain of a certain side of the tracks. I have been attending a wonderful environment for learning, drinking and community since.
It’s with a heavy heart I say farewell to a place I was lucky enough to stage in for a night. Pittsburgh changes. Faster than I think I lot of us who weren’t born here are interested in. At the end of the day, however, we’re always going to be here. We change with this beautiful city, softly, violently, passionately.
This is a thank you, to those that walked it before me, that taught me, that made it okay to expect some decent fucking sashimi and an old fashioned, let alone leapfrogging this town’s cuisine for years.
I wouldn’t be here without Salt. The people that worked there, that drank there, that taught me, this hurts.
We’ll keep on. We’re Pittsburgh. We breed steel wills.
There will never be another Salt, all the baggage aside, we’re worse for it.
We’ll keep on. We are Pittsburgh.
This town is pure steel.
86 composure 