Habitat offers sanctuary for local food lovers

Habitat Restaurant

Breakfast: 6:30-11 a.m.

Lunch: 11 a.m. to 2 p.m.

Dinner: 5:30-10… Habitat Restaurant

Breakfast: 6:30-11 a.m.

Lunch: 11 a.m. to 2 p.m.

Dinner: 5:30-10 p.m. Sunday-Thursday, 5:30-10:30 p.m. Friday and Saturday

For college students who live, breathe and eat local, salvation is only a bus ride away.

Habitat, the new Downtown restaurant focused on using locally sourced ingredients and exercising earth-friendly practices, opened this past March on Market Street near the Cultural District.

“We have a big farm-to-table philosophy,” the restaurant’s general manager Jennifer Churma said. “We try to use local, sustainable items anywhere we can.”

The ingredients for Habitat’s seasonally rotating, multicultural menu are selected from the local farms of Western Pennsylvania by the executive chef, England native Andrew Morrison.

“We try to balance the menu with various items. We start off with the best,” Chef Morrison said.

The chef brings a wealth of diverse experience to the table when selecting ingredients and preparing his robust and vivid dishes.

“I started cooking in high school back in England, working in restaurants a lot,” he said.

He moved to the United States 20 years ago and worked as a New York restaurant consultant and cook for the Four Seasons hotel chain in Atlanta and Miami. And while Chef Morrison has never received any formal training as a cook, he has found the culinary arts to be his true calling.

“All this time I have kept working and growing and have become very passionate about what I do,” he said.

However, Chef Morrison is only a part of Habitat’s overall charm.  The restaurant is not only focused on “greening” its food selections but also its entire business. According to Habitat’s website, all of Habitat’s furniture is from within 100 miles of the restaurant and purchased from local vendors. The menus are made from recycled materials and local Forest Stewardship Council-certified paper, and all paper, plastic, aluminum and glass waste is recycled. Even the cooking oil is recycled.

Habitat composts all inedible food waste and donates leftovers to the Greater Pittsburgh Community Food Bank. Such cognizant practices make the restaurant stand out in the arena of civic engagement, but students unaware of these acts of charity might first and foremost remember Habitat for its design.

“We’ve got a vast open kitchen, which features our tandoor oven as well as our wok station,” said Churma. “It gives our guests a chance to see how their food is prepared and feel like they are a part of the action.”

Also lending to a sense of community is the “communal table,” an object “produced from a single piece of wood and … completed with a natural, earthy finish.”

Positioned at the front of Habitat’s exhibition-style kitchen, the table, considered the restaurant’s centerpiece, seats 12 and is used for “menu tastings, chef’s dinners and intimate parties,” in addition to everyday dining.

Habitat is certainly a break from the norm, but its warm earthy tones and wood accents give it an atmosphere a little different from a neighborhood eatery.

“It’s a pretty fun restaurant,” Chef Morrison said. “We don’t really want to be looked at as a fine dining restaurant but rather a place with good food — simply prepared and well presented … somewhere that is easily accessible to anybody and everybody.”