The Strip District, Pittsburgh

If you ever visit Pittsburgh, one place you have to see before you leave is the Strip District, especially if you are a foodie as it´s a paradise for foodies! It is one of my favourite parts of Pittsburgh and I never get tired of going there. The Strip District is a street in Downtown Pittsburgh which is full of restaurants, bars and specialist food shops from Asian grocery shops, Italian bakeries and delicatessens, to a Mexican specialist food shop and specialist butcher selling all types of meat from the typical to the more exotic, such as rabbit, buffalo etc. You name it, you can probably find it in the Strip District!

At the weekend, The Strip usually comes alive especially on a nice,sunny day and is a hustle and bustle of people. You can find a lot of street stalls selling food from the shops,like this one of Wholey´s Fish Market cooking Alaskan salmon etc and also others selling Steelers merchandise, soap, sunglasses etc. Usually you find more of these stalls on a Saturday than on a Sunday. I don´t even like fish and used to hate walking through the fish market when I was a child due to the smell but most of the photos are taken in Wholey´s Fish market, which has a wide range of fresh fish. So fresh in fact that you can even choose your own (see photos below)

Wholey´s is not only a fish market it is also a normal supermarket. There are a couple of Asian supermarkets, the largest and probably the best in my opinion being Lotus, where you can find everything from tofu to burdock sticks, noodles to water chesnuts and many things I´ve never even seen before,never mind tasted.

There is also a chocolate shop, Mon Amiee Chocolat, which I discovered to my delight, sells a lot of Cadbury´s chocolate and some other British goodies such as shortbread etc as well as selling many other famous international brands of chocolate. The problem was choosing which Cadbury´s chocolate bar to choose.In the end, I opted for a Wispa and another favourite of mine, German "Dominosteine"-Christmas chocolates made of three layers, one layer of biscuit( like Lebkuchen), an orange jelly type layer similar to the middle of a Jaffa cake and topped with marzipan, then covered in chocolate! After a hard day of shopping, you can treat yourself to a well-deserved rest and lunch/brunch at one of the many restaurants or food stalls although you might end up having to queue for the most popular places, some of which have appeared on the Food Network or the Travel channel. We chose a typical American diner, Pamela´s, decorated in bright pinks and greens and with all the typical black and white photos, Betty Boop etc memorabilia. The food although cheap is very good although if you´re looking for something healthy,I wouldn´t recommend it. All in all, the Strip is definitely an experience and a must for all foodies!