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| The
Bloomfield neighborhood is an old Italian stronghold, but
like other neighborhoods in Pittsburgh, this one is changing as new
people settle in and new businesses emerge from the mix. TESSARO'S
owner Kelly Harrington welcomes the prospect of newcomers, but his
landmark bar has been doing just fine since he became owner in
1984.
The bar is surely a fixture of the neighborhood, and its original
founder, Richard Tessaro, was a local guy, but only a small percentage
of the current business is local. In fact, Tessaro’s has become a
destination bar for out-of-towners, and for people from other
neighborhoods of the city too. This says a lot in this city of
rivers
where people on the other side of the river are ‘strangers,' where
marriages across river boundaries are discouraged, and where social
networks are thick, and hardly porous. |
KELLY
HARRINGTON
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I
visited TESSARO'S when I first
landed in Pittsburgh, to do a
consulting gig. As soon as I walked in I knew it was a special
place,
but that feeling is hard to convey, and harder to describe. The
impression was so powerful that I thought, ‘I could live here.’ I
did
wind up living in Pittsburgh for a while, and spending a fair amount of
time at Tessaro’s – but that’s another story.
Kelly recalls that he “always wanted to be in the bar business.
When I
was growing up, instead of playing store, I played bar. ‘What ya
have?’” he’d say as a kid. After he bought the bar, he says, “I
got
out front, I got behind that hardwood, I was in the kitchen. And
it
turns out to be a family business. My dad stops in on Monday –
you’ve
seen him.” And Kelly’s mom is the host. “She’s the buffer,
the
steadying influence. She’s good with the employees. Mom
does all the
scheduling, all the hiring and firing. And my sister is here
too.
She’s here 18 years. So there’s a sense of certainty.” |
| The
broad mahogany bar is set perpendicular to the entrance and extends
nearly to the rear of the barroom. The dark wood bar and painted
tin
ceiling are paired with dark wood tables and wood paneling all
around.
Delicate white strings of light climb the walls and inch along the
ceiling, which define the contours of the space and offset the darker
tones of the wood. But the wood hues really establish the mood of
the
place, which is intimate and warm. When they expanded 13 years
ago –
Kelly says they badly needed room to spread out – his mother painted
murals on the new walls depicting the bar, Kelly’s family (mom and dad
and eight siblings), and the employees, many of whom still work
there.
His mother paints herself into the murals, but never reveals
herself.
Instead, she appears in silhouette, or with hands raised in front of
her face. “It’s kind of Hitchcockian,” Kelly notes, but the
murals
capture the charm of the place and underscore its warm mysteries.
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Tessaro’s
is all about personal attention, specially prepared foods,
and drinks made from established recipes. The famed wood grille,
visible behind a glass partition in the rear corner of the barroom, is
a hallmark feature of the place. Specials are posted on a
blackboard
in front, which consist mainly of fish entrees, salads, and
sandwiches. “The blackboard…people like it. My sister works
the fish
angle to the max. But 75% of the food we sell are
hamburgers.” Kelly
recalls that, “We used to buy our meat across the street at House of
Meats. We didn’t know what to do when they went out of
business. A
customer, a fireman, offered to cut meat for us at his house, but I
said, ‘How about if I create a space for you here?’ So I built a
place
in the basement, a walk-in. He cuts and grinds chuck, adds some
filet,
some trimmings. A guy came in, ordered a 24oz steak, he went
downstairs and cut it. Now where else can you get that? And
the meat
is fresh every day.”
Kelly has always taken a low key approach to PR, but even so, “The
place caught on, won awards for best hamburger. We were mentioned
in
Pittsburgh Magazine, and also in the L.A. Times, the New York
Times.
Travelers loved it, they talked and wrote about it…Out-of-towners come
in, say they read about it on the Internet, on CitySearch. We
were
listed in one publication as having one of the best four hamburgers in
the country. The Food Channel did a show on us…We’ve never done
any
advertising. Business has been good, though. It’s been a
steady
climb.”
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| Most
of the staff have been around a while, know the customers, and
have learned the score. Meaning that people who come to work at TESSARO'S tend to stay. Deb
Painter has tended the bar six nights a
week since her son was one year old; he’s a junior in college
now.
Courtney McFarland has worked the grille at TESSARO'S for more than 20
years. “I’m strong on the idea that all the employees make the
business,” Kelly says. And he backs that up by paying well.
“It shows
them that not all the money is for me.” But employees have to
earn
their place. “It takes a while to catch on, you can’t get away
with
loafing here.” All wear the trademark Tessaro’s outfit:
black pants,
black apron decorated with the TESSARO'S
logo (a stylized hamburger),
white shirt accented by a red bowtie. |
| When
I go there I always look along the bar for Debbie Painter, and
then let my gaze wander to the back corner to find Courtney, a steady
presence in the tiny, busy space surrounding the hardwood grille.
The
place is always crowded. People wait outside on the sidewalk for
a
table, some nestle just inside the door, while others spread out onto
the main floor to fill all the available spaces. The bar stools
are
full, with people standing two or three deep behind them. Either
Kelly
himself, or Tee his mom, or Ena his sister are there to greet and
accommodate, to put you down for a table or help you navigate the
bar. TESSARO'S is a
place where friends and strangers mix it up and talk.
It’s a shared experience, generous and spirited enough to brew a
powerful social mix. Standing at the bar one night, passing
comments
along and absorbing the chat that was filtering by, I suddenly thought
that if a heat sensing satellite were to pass overhead just then, the
place would trigger the sensors and raise a glow on some far, faraway
screen. |
TESSARO'S
4601 LIBERTY AVENUE
PITTSBURGH, PA 15224-1922
(412) 682-6809
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Tom Carroll is a folklorist and cultural worker, and
writer.
Itinerant for more than 25 years, he has done fieldwork throughout the
mid-Atlantic and New
England
regions, and in West
Virginia, Ohio, and Wisconsin. He works and travels
extensively in this corner of North America with people from all
over the world as well as with long established Anglo communities and
Native
Americans. Working with Cambodians, he has studied Khmer and
approached
Sanskrit; working with Haitians, he knows a few words of Creole and
French;
working with Latinos, he understands a little Spanish. Carroll
was born in Paterson,
New Jersey and now resides in Philadelphia, where he is active in The Kelpius
Society.
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STORY