
Story by Gretchen McKay. Reprinted from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Originally published Tuesday, June 19, 2012 at www.post-gazette.com.
Photo: Chef Kevin Sousa stands in the Braddock space he will convert into a restaurant. Photo by Steve Mellon for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.
Even more people are going to think Chef Kevin Sousa is nuts: He's not only opening his next restaurant in busted-down Braddock, he's also moving his family there.
At a press conference today at County Executive Rich Fitzgerald's office, the multi-tasking co-owner of Salt of the Earth in Garfield -- and Station Street Hot Dogs and Union Pig and Chicken in East Liberty -- announced that he's opening a restaurant in the former Cuda's Italian Market building at Eighth and Braddock avenues, a desolate corner in one of the region's most desolate business districts.
As a sign of his commitment to this broke but the once-bustling borough on the Monongahela River, Mr. Sousa decided he's going to live there, too, in the old Ohringer Building just down the street.
"A lot of people tell me I'm crazy," he said last week while taking visitors on a tour of the squat corner market, which was marked for demolition until Mr. Fitzgerald stepped in with development money. "But they thought that about Salt being in Garfield, and a white kid doing BBQ and my opening a hot dog shop across the street from what used to be one of the worst projects in the city."
Photo: Chef Kevin Sousa stands in the Braddock space he will convert into a restaurant. Photo by Steve Mellon for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.
Even more people are going to think Chef Kevin Sousa is nuts: He's not only opening his next restaurant in busted-down Braddock, he's also moving his family there.
At a press conference today at County Executive Rich Fitzgerald's office, the multi-tasking co-owner of Salt of the Earth in Garfield -- and Station Street Hot Dogs and Union Pig and Chicken in East Liberty -- announced that he's opening a restaurant in the former Cuda's Italian Market building at Eighth and Braddock avenues, a desolate corner in one of the region's most desolate business districts.
As a sign of his commitment to this broke but the once-bustling borough on the Monongahela River, Mr. Sousa decided he's going to live there, too, in the old Ohringer Building just down the street.
"A lot of people tell me I'm crazy," he said last week while taking visitors on a tour of the squat corner market, which was marked for demolition until Mr. Fitzgerald stepped in with development money. "But they thought that about Salt being in Garfield, and a white kid doing BBQ and my opening a hot dog shop across the street from what used to be one of the worst projects in the city."