Karen Lillis’ Pittsburgh When I’m Hungry serves up the city’s most inviting restaurants in photos

When Karen Lillis and her boyfriend moved to Pittsburgh from New York City in 2005, they frequented a now-closed diner in Greenfield. Though the food tasted great, she says, and the neighborhood restaurant was “a sweet little community,” its white-walled interior struck Lillis as plain and “cut and dry.”

“I was like, where are the design restaurants that New York is full of?” she says. Soon after, the couple visited Pittsburgh mainstays like Mineo’s Pizza and the former Kazansky’s Deli in Squirrel Hill, appreciating how inviting they were.

“There were these really charming, longstanding [restaurants] that [were also] really cool spaces, visually,” Lillis tells Pittsburgh City Paper. “And so they just captured my eye.”

A writer, bookseller, and photographer since the 1980s, Lillis started taking pictures. What began as quick snaps of her boyfriend across restaurant tables evolved into “sneak[ing] art shots in off moments” over nearly 20 years.

Lillis’ latest book, Pittsburgh When I’m Hungry, collects photographs she shot at Pittsburgh restaurants from 2006 to 2024. Released in September, the self-published photography book features 67 full-color, full-page photos of classic Pittsburgh restaurants. Described in a press release as “an ode to charming restaurants of Pittsburgh past and present,” the book captures eateries “from diners to tablecloth establishments, from pizza joints to Lenten fish fry, from yinzer dives to ethnic eats.”

Restaurants depicted include since-closed favorites like Tom’s Diner in the South Side and Kopec’s in Lawrenceville, revived spaces like Lombardozzi’s in Bloomfield (now Fet-Fisk) and Brillobox, and decades-old institutions like Klavon’s Ice Cream Parlor and Downtown’s Chinatown Inn. Of the establishments featured, about 25 remain open, while at least 17 have closed, giving the book an air of nostalgia and a look into earlier eras of Pittsburgh’s food scene.

Lillis’ favorites photos are of the Beehive Coffeehouse, which closed in 2019. Beloved by Gen X Pittsburghers, the South Side coffee shop felt like “walking into the ‘90s and having the echoes of the pre-Wi-Fi experience in a cafe,” Lillis says. Particularly evocative for her is a shot of a tea kettle being placed on one of the Beehive’s famously retro tables.

The idea for a photography book came after Lillis launched a postcard series at the first annual Pittsburgh Art Book Fair in 2023. Her first postcard of the Original Oyster House — Pittsburgh’s oldest restaurant — “stood out to people,” Lillis says, showing the oyster bar’s old-school heart-back chairs and a red radiator. The book debuted at the Art Book Fair the following year.

Lillis says the photos in Pittsburgh When I’m Hungry intentionally emphasize local restaurants’ interiors and signage, directing the viewer to look at what she calls “the architecture of hospitality.”

“That’s what drew me to the [restaurants] I took pictures of, is ‘this feels like a space that I’m invited into,’” Lillis tells City Paper. “This feels like I want to be here, I want to spend time here. [These places] intentionally did that. There’s these little condiments on the table, and I love booths, and I just love good design.”

In contemplating what makes architecture hospitable, Pittsburgh’s changing urban landscape and gentrification were also top of mind as Lillis put the book together.

“The beauty of New York when I lived there was always the mom-and-pop shops everywhere. And so I was delighted to have that here,” Lillis says. “Every time an older restaurant closes and another mini-mall comes with [restaurant] chains, [I think], that’s not the beauty of Pittsburgh. To me, visually, there’s just no contest.”

Further inspiration for Pittsburgh When I’m Hungry came after the pandemic brought a wave of restaurant closures, making Lillis appreciate them that much more. In the years since Pittsburgh restaurants have reopened, she questions if the industry has fully recovered. Lillis — who manages Caliban Book Shop and operates its permanent pop-up, Karen’s Book Row — has noticed a quieter Craig St., home to classic Pittsburgh restaurants like 50-year-old Ali Baba, that once saw a bustling “worker lunch hour block.” “It was just so convivial, the world before the pandemic,” Lillis says. “And then just to have it so emptied out — it was just like the memory was always there to me. When is that going to come back? Is it going to come back?”

Though few people appear in Lillis’ Pittsburgh restaurant photos, they nonetheless commemorate a pre-pandemic era. “Definitely my motivation to to publish a love letter to Pittsburgh restaurants was the hospitality that I’ve been seeking,” Lillis tells CP. “What I see when I look at the[se] pictures is this warm vitality of [Pittsburgh’s] restaurant spaces. The way that they arrange things for the customer and make them want to be there.”

This article appears in Jan 8-14, 2025.