Pittsburgh area locals with a passion for food talked cooking, growing, creating and heritage Saturday at the Heinz History Center’s Hometown-Homegrown program.
The program, in its eighth year, aims to celebrate locally crafted food and food history in the region. This year, the program was incorporated into Heinztoberfest, a month-long celebration for the Heinz company’s 150th anniversary.
That means a lot of ketchup-inspired recipes this year, according to Sam Moore, director of public programs at the History Center.
“Food history is really powerful,” he said. “Food is in people’s memories. It forms a big part of their lives, and so it’s really important to talk about food and the part it plays in all of our lives.”
The program featured cooking demonstrations and talks on how local companies grew from their roots to become mainstays.
“Pittsburgh is a very loyal town, and we’re a local product,” said Vito Gerasole, who bills himself as the Sultan of Soda at Natrona Bottling, which sells old-school soda pop.
He said that, as a company that is part of a dying breed, the longstanding local roots and nostalgia are what have kept them afloat.
“This is Pittsburgh,” he said. “We take pride in who we are and we take pride in where we’re from.”
Moore said the food heritage in the area is rich thanks to Pittsburgh’s reputation as a melting pot of ethnicities and background.
“We have people from all over the world who converged on the Steel City as a place where they collaborate and live together and share recipes and share ideas,” he said. “There’s no better way to express that than to make some of those dishes and to talk about those histories here.”
