![]() ![]() One of the places trying to make a go of it at lunchtime Downtown is Eddie Merlot’s, an upscale steak and seafood restaurant on Liberty Avenue. But there are a lot of places that aren’t doing lunch anymore.”Īctual statistics weren’t available: The Pittsburgh Downtown Partnership said it did not have restaurant specific data readily available, and the Pennsylvania Restaurant & Lodging Association Western Chapter did not respond to a request for specific information about lunch business among restaurants in Downtown Pittsburgh. “We have a reputation for doing this, so people know us. Who wants to come Downtown? Would you want to come Downtown if you just heard there was a shooting? But I’m here. It’s kind of like the Wild West Downtown. “The open air drug use, drug dealing, vagrancy are more pronounced. There’s a lack of critical mass, so that the worst elements that are around are more evident,” Scott said. We’re still down 25% (in sales) from where we were (before the pandemic). “It’s created challenges for us that are probably not new to anyone else who has a business Downtown. But places like Wiener World that depend on the Downtown lunch crowd to make a profit have been hit especially hard. Now though, times have changed dramatically, as they have for a lot of businesses. I like the casing dogs, and you don’t get those in a lot of places.” “You either like a beef dog or you like a casing dog. Unkovic works Downtown for the law firm of Meyer, Unkovic & Scott and is a regular customer at Wiener World. “The best hot dogs in Pittsburgh without a doubt,” said Dennis Unkovic, 74, of McCandless. The place had been a fixture for decades. The formula was simple: tasty all-beef hot dogs and natural casing wieners filling a grill, crust up, amid old-school counter service and people standing because there are no seats. From 11:30 to 1:30 every day, (there was) a line out the door.” “Office space was full, people were buying housing in droves - they couldn’t build condos fast enough. “The summer before covid, the town was just booming and it seemed like we were on such an upward trajectory,” Scott said while standing behind the counter of his restaurant amid the off-white tiled walls on an unusually warm Thursday in January. Nearly 60 years later, Wiener World has become an iconic Pittsburgh eatery with a business model based on selling top-quality hot dogs exclusively for lunch - that’s why owner Dennis Scott bought the place in 2017. was still four years away from landing a man on the moon. When Wiener World opened on Smithfield Street in Downtown Pittsburgh in 1965, the disc jockeys in KQV radio’s storefront studio a block away were only in their second year of playing Beatles records, Lyndon Johnson was president and the U.S. ![]()
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