Pittsburgh Pretzel looks to be new lunchtime favorite

It’s high time soft pretzels made their way to Oakland.

Having enjoyed enormous popularity in malls and airports across the country, not to mention being a staple of sidewalk vendors in Philadelphia and the South Side’s The Pretzel Shop, Pittsburgh Pretzel Sandwich Shop is finally bringing the salty snacks to our corner of the ’Burgh.

But does the shop manage to add its own spin to the beloved classic? It’s own — dare I say it — twist?

Located on Forbes Avenue just past Kiva Han, the shop is ideally situated for Forbes Hall residents but presents a slight trek for other campus dwellers.

Even though Pittsburgh Pretzel opened only a month ago, the front windows already display Pitt pride with blue and gold paint and panther paws.

I stopped by Pittsburgh Pretzel for what I naively assumed would be an early dinner at 5:30, only to discover the somewhat limited hours ran from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.

I returned the next day at 4 p.m. to find the shop nearly empty, allowing my dining companion and I our choice of cozy booths.

Given the limited space, the sandwich shop is probably bustling during peak hours, but for a mid-afternoon snack it was perfectly relaxed and quiet.

A decent selection of standard sandwich shop fare is listed on the menu, but it hardly seemed responsible not to order a pretzel.

Soft pretzels are available salted, unsalted, with cinnamon sugar or multigrain for $1.75 each, or $1.50 if you order two or more.

I tried the cinnamon sugar, a perfect balance of savory and sweet that is best enjoyed warm.

The taste would leave one wanting more, regardless of the portion size, but the pretzel’s being only slightly larger than a fist contributed to my resolution to purchase two on future excursions.

A large box of bite-sized pretzel poppers is $3, plus sauces available for an additional 50 cents each. My dining companion and I opted for spicy brown mustard, chocolate and, ­solely because it seemed bizarre, the seasonal pumpkin cream cheese.

Soft pretzels dipped in the cake batter-like chocolate combined all the merits of their cousin, the chocolate-dipped non-soft pretzel, with being warm — a trait not to be neglected during Pittsburgh’s long winter.

My dining companion assured me that the mustard was excellent, though I found it to be excessively spicy.

Surprisingly, the pumpkin cream cheese sauce was the winner by far in terms of sheer deliciousness and the best contrast with the pretzels.

In an attempt to balance our snacking with some semblance of a meal, we ordered a pretzel bowl of Italian wedding soup.

My fondness for Panera’s bread bowls notwithstanding, it would never have occurred to me to serve soup in a bowl made of pretzel, but I suppose that sort of innovation is why Pittsburgh Pretzel is in the restaurant business and I am not.

The soup was excellent, but the pretzel bowl did not benefit from being saturated in broth and soon became disconcertingly mushy and unpalatable, thus wasting what was originally a lovely albeit mushroom-cap-shaped pretzel.

There are still a few kinks for this new shop to work out, like running out of silverware and not having tap water available. But minor issues aside, Pittsburgh Pretzel shows promise for becoming one of Oakland’s new favorite lunch spots.