Winghart's
 Pittsburgh, PA      Date of Visit  03/02/17     http://winghartburgers.com  

Quick trip to the ‘Burgh to catch blues technician Joe Bonamassa at the Benedum and we looked for a reservation near the theater. Dummies are us, we looked the day before: Butcher and the Rye…nope, Proper Brick Oven & Tap Room…nope, Meat & Potatoes…okay they actually laughed at us, now what? I remembered a tv show about bacon and instantly recognized Winghart’s. We’re going to celebrate a birthday and this is much more up his alley than those that chuckled. Let’s get our grease on! They’ve got a nice sense of humor to go along with their devotion to the sandwich of burger and our server was all pro.
 

Tiny, rough, utilitarian and perfect is how I would describe the space. The centerpiece is the sparse and open kitchen where so many burgers have met the grill. The place seems to function on two cooks, one server and a busser who keeps disappearing up the steps with tubs of dirty. Not sure, there might be more tables upstairs, didn’t investigate.
 

Two appetizers, their Homemade Pierogies and Funnel Cake, yes as an appetizer. The pierogies were much thinner than you would find in a frozen blue box but were so packed with flavor they didn’t need to look like pillows. We got them Grampa Style (Happy Birthday!) with caramelized onions & bacon, hard to go wrong there. The real surprise was the Beer Cheese and Bacon Funnel Cake. So incredibly wrong, maybe even a venial sin but the lightly sweet and fried crispy batter played so well with the salty smoky bacon and salty gloopy cheese. It struck me as one of those Youtube videos something like a friendly, cute, and tiny dog is licking the teeth of a lion clean and your watching with the anticipation of abject horror but can’t stop watching. Beer Cheese & Bacon Funnel Cake!!! I dare you to stop picking at it until the plate’s empty.

Steph ordered wings split between two sauces…Whiskey BBQ and Butter Spice. They make everything in house including the sauces…the Whiskey Q was thick and sweet with a little smoke and a nice tang. The butter spice was rumored to have some heat and citrus mixed in with the butter, turns out, at least as far as I could taste, it’s just butter. Should have gone another way on that front. The wings themselves were enormous and still cooked through to the bone without becoming leathery on the exterior. Not their first rodeo, but the recommended sauce was a throw away.

The burgers are all freshly ground, seasoned just to support the beefiness and done to a T. The mid well was just brown through but still looked juicy, the mid raw was pink and just warm past the brown exterior. There seemed to be more pizza coming out of the kitchen for few folks with us at the few tables at the end of the long thin space, but the kitchen has clearly churned out enough burgers to do them on autopilot.
 

The Dockworker brings Primanti Bros. to the burger with Provolone cheese, hand cut fries and a creamy cole slaw. By all reports it was well done and disappeared quickly.

I went with the Shipwreck, Arugula, brie, white truffle aioli, caramelized onions, and bacon. Rich, oozy cheese, peppery greenery, shroomy eggy fat, sweet onions and smoky pork belly, all close personal friends of the ground beef patty sandwich. I know the French used to like to mock the burger, I wonder how they feel about so many of their tasty ingredients stacked on one. Winghart’s delivers exactly what you would expect walking in, and does it well.