O’Nan waxes about what went wrong, citing our population loss, and with it much of our tax base.īourdain then asks “what went right” in more recent years. O’Nan points out that Pittsburgh was once (he believes) the sixth largest city in the nation. He sits down with local author Stewart O’Nan at the Squirrel Hill Cafe, and over cheeseburgers, Bourdain asks him of Pittsburgh, quite simply, “What happened?” It’s a hard look, through the eyes of locals, at who we are.Ĭertainly, Pittsburgh isn’t a simple picture to paint, but to Bourdain’s credit, he examines the spectrum.

This episode isn’t, and wouldn’t ever be, a travel brochure for Pittsburgh. The show wouldn’t be the show if it featured the Warhol Museum or Randyland. Bourdain drinks a lot of Yuengling.īut it’s important to remember that the whole conceit of “Parts Unknown” is to delve into the sides of a city that are rarely explored. The faces of well-known chefs and their impeccably plated dishes flash across the screen as they’re served to Pittsburgh titans. Still, the episode makes clear what “the new Pittsburgh” is all about, and why it’s America’s darling. The edges of pierogies are pressed to perfection and served alongside kraut and sausage. Lederhosen make an appearance in Deutchtown. And that old version is prevalent throughout the episode. This is the old vision of Pittsburgh, of course, not the shiny new image that tends to get us national attention. The man is an old-time Pittsburgher repeating, in his own way, the city’s golden rule. Anthony Bourdain is playing bocce in Bloomfield, eating sausage and peppers with Italian elders in a scene from his Pittsburgh episode of “Parts Unknown.” “I tell people, ‘when you come to Bloomfield, don’t talk about anybody because we’re all connected somehow,’” says one of his companions.

Parts unknown