The popular pop-up series Fet Fisk has signed a lease to open a full-service restaurant in the former Lombardozzi’s space in Bloomfield.
“Looking for the right place for a restaurant like this is almost like thrifting or antiquing. If we went into a blank space, we’d have spent a lot of money but not hit the mark of what we were going for. When you try to build that aesthetic from fresh, it always feels a little hollow,” says Nik Forsberg. “This space was the missing puzzle piece to what we wanted to do with Fet Fisk.”
Forsberg introduced Fet Fisk with former business partner Sarah LaPonte (who has since left Pittsburgh for other endeavors) in early 2019. The dinner series began with nomadic pop-ups in spaces such as the empty storefront that would later become Pigeon Bagels, Penn Hebron Garden Club in Penn Hills and Black Radish Kitchen in Point Breeze North prior to serving longer residencies in the now-closed Pear and the Pickle in Troy Hill and in 2022 at Soju in Garfield.
Along the way, Forsberg expanded Fet Fisk’s business to include a small farm, a prepared foods market and commissary kitchen in Shaler and a stand at the Bloomfield Saturday Market. He also added more formal multi-course wine dinners with Nine O’Clock Wines to his roster.
It has proven to be a recipe for success. Three years in, reservations for Fet Fisk dinners, which typically happen biweekly, still tend to fully book in advance.
The former Lombardozzi’s space, which opened in 1973 and has maintained its throwback atmosphere, looks to be a perfect fit for the Nordic cuisine-meets-Pennsylvania foodways dinner series concept.
“If you’ve ever seen the space, it’s immediately clear how it works perfectly with Nik’s aesthetic and his food. He works with nostalgia but isn’t nostalgic,” says Greg Austin.
Austin is the chef for 412 Food Rescue’s Good Food Project, and he has also worked with Forsberg in the Fet Fisk kitchen. One night in 2021, the two were shucking mussels for a dinner when Austin suggested they build an outlet for perspective-driven chefs that circumvents the typical investor-dependent restaurant business model.
“Sixty years ago, owning a restaurant was a vehicle for upward economic mobility. We want to question why that’s not the case anymore and prove that we can keep that space open for others,” Austin says.
Their conversation extended to Kate Romane, owner of Black Radish Kitchen. Austin had worked with Romane when she ran E2 in Highland Park, and Forsberg had developed a friend-mentor relationship starting with a 2019 Fet Fisk in Romane’s space.
Romane notes that when she opened E2 in 2010, building a successful chef-owned restaurant on a shoestring budget in Pittsburgh was still possible, but that the bar for entry is significantly higher in 2022.
“There’s so much development coming in. Which is great. But there are fewer opportunities for people like Nik who don’t have a lot of cash behind them or turn over control to an investor or an investment group,” Romane says.
“It’s still a business and you have to be considerate of the bottom line, but to change the culture of the hospitality industry starts from the inside out. Hopefully we can work out a way to set an example of that.”
The trio sees recent trends tilting in a direction that favors fast-casual dining and expense-account restaurants but pushes out bolder concepts that fueled the inventive fire in Pittsburgh cuisine in the 2010s as restraining the potential for a post-pandemic resurgence in regional dining.
“That’s exactly why we wanted to add that creative push back into things and do something closer to a classic service style,” says Austin. “There's a feedback loop where banks will typically only work with established investors. And so you end up losing a lot of opportunity for creativity along the way in the pool of who gets to own a restaurant. So to retain chef-ownership as a goal, to have our voices heard in the decision-making process, we want to push forward with this model of doing things.”
The Fet Fisk restaurant will be the first test of those goals. According to David Glickman, president of Keystone Real Estate Advisors, which represents the ownership group purchasing the Lombardozzi’s building, Forsberg’s distinct perspective fueled the enthusiasm for offering a lease.
“Landing Nik and his group was a big step for us. We had interest from other prospective tenants but we decided this group is by far the best. One of the main things is that he’s going to be running a unique, chef-driven, scratch kitchen. Those operations tend to have a draw from a larger geographic region, and that makes sense for a location such as this one. That’s pretty ideal,” he says.
No opening date is set, and the lease is contingent on the final sale of the space to a group represented by Glickman, who says it’s just a matter of signing some paperwork.
“It’s not a done deal but by all accounts there are no hurdles left,” he says.
Forsberg says he has well-developed ideas of what he envisions for the Fet Fisk restaurant. He typically serves a menu of 11 items at his pop-ups, with dishes ranging from seasonal bites such as king trumpet mushroom panzanella with tomatoes, corn and shiso, seafood such as grilled whole ruby trout with Jerusalem artichokes, smoked butter and lemon and meaty platters like Swedish pork and potato sausage with peppers, onions, tomato confit and polenta.
“I’ve had a lot of time to workshop and find dishes I’m happy with,” he says, noting that he has served around 250 dishes over the course of Fet Fisk’s life as a pop-up. “So we’re going to be able to hit the ground running and not get too caught up in developing things,” he says.
He says he has a draft menu of approximately 50 items, but anticipates cutting it down to somewhere between 20 to 30 dishes for the restaurant, which will be open for dinner service with extended bar hours. Expect staples such as oysters, fish, steaks and handmade pasta dishes, as well as a rotation of seasonal dishes informed by what’s growing on the Fet Fisk farm.
“The last year I’ve found I’ve really found my voice with the food and know exactly what I want it to be,” he says.
Hal B. Klein: hklein@post-gazette.com, Twitter @halbklein and IG @halbklein.
First Published: January 9, 2023, 10:00 a.m.
Updated: January 9, 2023, 10:48 a.m.