One of the many things I love about Pittsburgh is the amazing restaurants. We all probably know the ones on campus, but there are a few more that are located in Lawrenceville and Downtown that I recently discovered.

Pusadee’s Garden

I can easily say that one of my favorite cuisines is Thai, so when I found out about this restaurant, I was so excited! Pusadee’s Garden is located at 5319 Butler St. in Central Lawrenceville. The atmosphere of the restaurant is amazing, filled with beautiful plants but with a cozy feel to it. 

Its dinner menu is relatively small and not like the typical Thai restaurant, but I still thought the two dishes I got were really good. The jungle curry has chicken, kabocha squash, banana peppers, basil and coconut milk. However, if you want the curry to be more spicy, they can do that by removing the coconut milk so it does not dilute the curry. The grilled shrimp came in a panang curry with kaffir lime leaf and galangal. I definitely had to look up a few of these ingredients before placing the order, but it was so worth it! 

Gi-jin

If you are a sushi lover like me, then without a doubt this should be your next dinner spot! Gi-jin is at 208 6th St. in downtown Pittsburgh. I was very surprised when I found out about this place because I had thought I knew almost every restaurant downtown — apparently I did not. My friend and I split a few dishes so we were able to try most of them, which was the best decision. We got the bara chirashi, southern California and the king salmon shrager rolls. My favorite out of them all was definitely the bara chirashi because it came with different types of fish, fish roe and furikake. It also had a few desserts for us to try, and we got the silk chocolate torte, which I will definitely be coming back for. If I ever get the chance to go again, I certainly want to try its tuna pizza and apple spice cake for dessert.

Fish Nor Fowl

Italian food is a big weakness of mine, and I will always choose this cuisine over anything else. I recently discovered Fish Nor Fowl at 5523 Penn Ave. when I was in the area. It had a wide selection of different types of pastas, which was very hard to choose from. To start off, I got its Castelvetrano pesto, which was served as a dip, and its gnocchi pasta, which had a bone marrow cream, trout roe and a six-minute egg. Both dishes were very worth it, especially the gnocchi! It had so many other kinds of pastas to offer, such as fusilli, mafaldine, manicotti and much more. If you are of age, it also had a wide selection of cocktails and wine, which paired well with the pasta! 

I hope you get the chance to try these restaurants out at some point. They all have different cuisines, and the ambiance of each restaurant is amazing, as is the service. There are still so many other restaurants here in Pittsburgh that I look forward to trying.

Shriya writes primarily about her everyday experiences on Pitt’s campus. Talk to them at [email protected].