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Sunday, June 22, 2003

I'm a great fan of the Strip District, and so is my daughter, Ani. We go to have fun and to shop for good things.

Since on most Saturdays we're going anyway, why not walk with friends? We found new friends by volunteering as tour guides. Ani's tour is auctioned off to benefit the Family Health Council, which provides free cancer screening for women in Western Pennsylvania who have no health insurance. Mine raises money for the Pittsburgh Arthritis Foundation.

On my tour, Ani assists. On her tour, I bring up the rear, most recently shepherding Jill Brethauer, who had bought the tour, and five family members and friends.

At each stop there was an opportunity to visit with purveyors and talk a little business.

Palate Partners offers a legitimate alternative to buying wines at a State Liquor Store. The operation is owned by a pair of experts, Michael Gonze, who hand-picks each wine, and Debbie Mortillaro, a Culinary Institute of America trained chef who is available to help you choose wines from a variety of price levels that will best enhance your menu. Their expertise comes free with the wines they stock. Two days are required to complete the paperwork on wines ordered through Dreadnought, the wine component of Palate Partners. Arrangements can be made for pickup or delivery.

By way of introduction to their many services and for their regular customers the Gonze gang offers twice monthly wine tastings, the first and third Friday of each month, for $10, and partners with The Andy Warhol Museum for its last-Friday-of-the-month wine tasting, which is $12.

Four times a year, Palate Partners publishes a newsletter detailing wine-related activities and listing new gift items available in their store.

Palate Partners, 2013 Penn Ave.; 412-391-8502.

There are more than 1,000 different kinds of candy displayed on tables at Amy Rosenfeld's store Mon Aimee Chocolat. I'd like to take up residence in this wonderland if the air conditioning weren't turned up so high to keep the products fresh.

Not everything is chocolate, but there is a lot of that, some of it of the rare, exquisite, costly kind bearing names like Jacques Torres, Andrew Garrison Shotts, Vosges-Haut Chocolat and Patrick Aldred. As I looked around the room, I was almost in a panic to buy. What I couldn't leave without was licorice. In an article in Vogue a few months back, Jeffrey Steingarten wrote so persuasively on licorice that I've been putting more quarters than usual into the Good and Plenty slot of the newpaper's candy dispenser. Licorice, Steingarten said, is made from the roots of a shrub that grows in China, Afghanistan, Iran and Russia. It was used as a medicine, though I don't know what health properties could be claimed for candy. I bought Finnish Sweet Licorice from Halva, Finland, short intense twists that had the effect of satisfying my craving, for $2.75. This is the candy store of one's dreams.

Mon Aimee Chocolat, 2101 Penn Ave.; 412-395.0022.

A trip to the Strip necessitates a stop at Pennsylvania Macaroni or, as every Pittsburgher knows it, Penn Mac. David Sunseri is president of the company and, as his dad once did, every morning he takes his place opposite the front door and at the seat of power. If you need information, you ask David. He knows the stock. He has most recently expanded the inventory by enlarging the space -- knocking down walls, laying new floors, installing new lights and adding more cheeses to the already incredible inventory. Behind the counter, Carol Pascuzzi dispenses the cheeses in high spirits and knowledgeably, addressing each of her customers as "Dear Heart." In a rush of affection and gratitude we call her the same. "Hey, Dear Heart, cut me a little of that smoky blue."

For bread to go with the cheese, Penn Mac provides a roomful, stocking a complete inventory from BreadWorks. Beyond is the new produce department. In addition, stacked on shelves are olive oils, balsamic vinegars, pastas, tomatoes in cans, along with a deli and foods sold in bulk. "Mangia, mangia, mangia," that's the message.

Pennsylvania Macaroni Co., 2010 Penn Ave.; 412-227-1983.

Ted Hazlett sells suitcases on the street in front of Stamoolis Brothers. The suitcases are seconds and for sale at a good price. It's where I buy when I need a new one. In my experience, no matter what you pay, a suitcase will be mangled in the course of a few trips abroad. For trips of three weeks or longer, I recommend a suitcase that's 26 inches high; for a shorter trip, a smaller suitcase.

Mancini's bakery in McKees Rocks belongs on this street. And there it is, in the person of three young family members who have taken into their heads to open a branch. They are the brothers Nick and Ernie Mancini Hartner and cousin Reed Baker, of the Seven Baker Brothers family. "The boys," as their mother Mary Mancini Hartner calls them, are doing this branch as a project.

When you ask whether they will stay, they talk a little wistfully about the future. Nick, 24, feels the need to go back for his master's degree in business. Ernie, 23, who worked as a reader for a publishing house, thinks about school, too, and Reed, 27, is a C.P.A. who feels some pressure to return to business. For this year, anyway, all three are in the Strip District branch bakery working their tails off and producing Mancini's bread in the old style, which, for many traditional Italian families, is the only style. Because boys will be boys, the three are experimenting with a few radical breads. I consider the couple I've tasted to be real successes.

McKees Rocks Bread Co. by Mancini's Bakery, 1717 Penn Ave.; 412-765-3545.

What brings me into Wholey's Balcony Cookware is Carol Moorhead. When you shop the Strip, you get attached to the purveyors, and the stops turn out to be visits with friends. Carol has turned me on to so many good things that when I'm at home and I grab for one of the items, I throw her a kiss from my kitchen. An example of a great product is my OXO one-cup measure, which is readable from inside the cup. (One day my daughter Ani, who teaches third grade, took all my measuring cups to school for a math exercise. The kids fought to use the OXO cup.) I also love the plastic sheets I use to cover the cutting board. You chop all those onions and then you pick up both ends of the plastic sheet and carry the onions to the pot. The sheet is dishwasher-safe. Ask, too, about the Silpat mat, the pliable baking surface to which nothing sticks.

Wholey's Balcony Cookware, 1725 Penn Ave.; 412-261-5513

At Robert Wholey & Co., generous patrons of every tour we take, we always play the same game. The rules are simple. You take home all the lobsters you can catch and hold in your arms in 60 seconds. One person in each couple steps forward to play. Usually it's the guy. You can grab the lobsters with your hands or use a mechanical device to catch them, but you must hug to you what you catch. All the claws have been banded.

How do you cook what you catch? Store manager John McNally makes it simple. "Head first in boiling water for 15 minutes. That's it."

And that pretty much is it, though there is some trauma in taking the live lobsters to the pot. In Nova Scotia, we learned that lobsters have no nerve endings and as a consequence don't suffer pain. I want to believe it.

Wholey's, 1711 Penn Ave.; 412-391-3737.

We never leave the Strip District without stopping at the Society for Contemporary Craft. The shows are interesting, and the gift shop has unique and affordable crafts for sale. Now on display are the Dorothy Gill Barnes sculptures, vessels and wood sketches, from tree materials; Keiko Miyamori's rubbings with homemade charcoal on washi paper; and new wood pieces from Pittsburgher Tadao Arimoto, artist and furniture maker. Admission is free.

Society for Contemporary Craft, 2100 Smallman St.; 412-261-7003.