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Local Chef
Kate Romane brings a little bit of Italy, a little bit of the farm,
and a little bit of Pittsburgh to her new menu at E2.
By Victoria Bradley | Photography by Megan Wylie Ruffing
I’m just getting home from work, riffling my giant bag, empty coffee cup, and spare pair of heels out of my SUV, when a speedy little convertible whips around my Lawrenceville corner and comes to a zippered halt. In the driver’s seat, behind vintage aviators and under a short-brimmed cap, is my friend, Kate Romane. “I didn’t know you lived on my block,” she says coyly. I nod and point to the corner row house. “Yup, right there,” I say, and then add, “Where ya comin’ from?”
“The new restaurant in Highland Park,” she says. “You gotta come in. Let me feed you.” I nod again, this time more agreeably, and manage a high five (even with my hands full). The chef speeds off.
Romane was previously the chef at Enrico Biscotti in the Strip District. The new restaurant she’s talking about is the second in the Enrico family, aptly called “E2” (pronounced E Squared). The café was originally planned as a catering kitchen, but when the locals started knocking on its doors, Romane made the executive decision to open for brunch on Saturdays and Sundays.
I hear rumors that the fare borrows from the classic Italian menu of the Strip District eatery. So on a bright Saturday morning, when the air is biting with fall, I pick up my Italian grandmother and SUV-it over to Highland Park to take Romane up on her offer.
The quaint café is set with a dozen-or-so black tables, scribbled with old Italian sayings. Grandma scoots the bouquet of wild flowers (potted in one of Enrico’s own wine bottles) to read ours: “Mi familia e soldi in tasca il pane nella casa.” This translates to mean “my family is money in my pocket and bread on my table.”
The menu is chalked onto the wall, but on each table is a card branded with “OMG I’m So Hungry,” bearing items that cost $5 and come out in a matter of minutes, to stave off grumbling tummies and allow for further breakfast deliberation. We order the Zeppoli, fried dough rolled in black pepper and Parmesan and stuffed with anchovies. These are a Christmas-Eve tradition in our house. We plunk the doughnuts into thick tomato sauce and smile as we bite them, partly because they’re perfect and partly to release the steam from their so-hot insides. They taste like pizza.
There are more traditional doughnuts on the menu, too, and beignets, with insides thick with the flavor of eggs and so fresh that they’re almost like custard. The dewy centers help to sponge the plate, heavily dusted with powdered sugar.
We share the frisée salad, piled high with crumbles of Gorgonzola and niblets of crunchy bacon. Two fried eggs dribble their insides out, dressing the greens. I sop it up with a scrub of bread, as the chef comes out of the kitchen to check on us.
“It’s kind of our play on bacon and eggs,” she says of the salad. This is one of the dishes she’s brought over from the other restaurant, a favorite of Pittsburgh Italians.
Next is the spicy ricotta frittata. The cheese is rich, but waft-y, lifting the eggs under their crown of peppery farm-fresh greens and the most gorgeous tomatoes I’ve ever seen. They gush with harvest gusto. The spice lingers in the last noshes, as if spaghetti sauce had been deconstructed on the plate and is melding perfectly in my mouth.
We finish with the seasonal bread pudding. Today, it’s topped with blueberries and strawberries, but best of all is the fresh butter cream that is so freshly whipped that it takes on a yeasty smack, almost like goat cheese. I fork big bites, delighting in the crunchy balls of cinnamon that explode like sugar-y grenades in every other chomp.
Romane ambles out again, and we thank her graciously. Grandma, in her food euphoria, spouts sonnets: “I love you. I feel like I’m in Italy, the way we’re eating today.” I give my chef friend another of my nods. It was all so good.
Days later, I am sitting on my patio when Romane rounds the corner again, this time on foot. She’s carrying a six-pack of beer and a palm-sized portion of cheese with crackers. We talk about tattoos, Pittsburgh, and food.
“Being in the Strip District gave me my love for food — and the Steelers,” she says about her first job at Enrico Biscotti.
She and owner Larry Lagattuta have November 7th worked together for more than 13 years and are admittedly an odd pair. “I mean, he’s this big Italian dude, and I’m a little Irish lesbian, but food binds us,” she says. “I’ve learned so much from him. And, as egotistical as chefs can be, we really listen to each other. It’s been a great collaboration. Standing with him in the kitchen every day, that’s what I’ll miss about running the new restaurant.”
I ask her if she gets annoyed that people (myself included) call the restaurant “E Two” instead of “E Squared,” as it was intended.
“Nah, I never mind,” she says. “It kind of sounds like ‘et tu,’ which is ‘and you,’ in French. Plus, it’s the second. And it’s me and Larry, the two of us.” And then her eyes get wide as she describes a third meaning: E2 is actually a wonderful math equation of sustainability. “It’s all-encompassing,” she says. “It goes on forever.”
Then she nods the neck of her beer bottle toward me, waiting for a cheers. “That’d be nice.”
Dinner service begins October 1, Thursday-Saturday, 6-11 p.m. E2, 5904 Bryant St., Highland Park. 412.441.1200.
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