Over the years, Zano’s Pub House has done a little bit of everything, owner Dana Provenzano tells Pittsburgh City Paper.
The red brick building in Greenfield’s Four Mile Run — which sits at the bottom of a steep ravine beneath the Swinburne and Greenfield bridges — has stood since the 1800s, and been open as a neighborhood bar for at least a century.
“Downstairs, we know that there’s tin on the ceilings [and] that it was a speakeasy at some point,” Provenzano says.
The wood-paneled pub with diner-style booths in the back was once a house, then a smoking bar, known for serving steelworkers coming off their shifts at the J&L mill. The place has long hosted dollar wing nights on Mondays, which Zano’s has kept up. In a throwback to the bar’s smoking days, Zano’s maintains a ‘70s-era Kool’s cigarette machine — the only place you can buy cigarettes in the Run, which has no convenience store — two pinball machines (Family Guy and Metallica-themed), and a quarter pusher machine, which Provenzano calls “Chuck E. Cheese for adults.”
Provenzano took over the bar in 2013, and when she wants to know something about its history, she asks one of its many regulars.
“I’m 47, so I’ve been coming here for 47 years,” AJ Gibson, a third-generation Greenfielder, tells City Paper as he polishes off the bar’s signature burger. “My dad and Ronnie Tozzi, one of the former owners, were real good friends, so I’ve literally been coming here since I was in diapers. The first time I can remember being here, [they] had to put a wooden Iron City beer crate on the floor so I could roll balls on the pool table.”
“That sounds horrible, but it was the early ‘80s!” he adds.
Over a century, the bar has gone through many owners, most of them Greenfielders, and a litany of names: Chaser’s in the Run, Hollow Inn (after the Panther Hollow Trail), and McCarthy’s, when it was owned by Joe McCarthy, father of Super Bowl-winning NFL coach Mike McCarthy. The association with McCarthy — who, in a Sports Illustrated profile, said he honed his work ethic at his parents’ bar — still draws in football stars, like Dallas Cowboys quarterback Dak Prescott, hoping to experience a bit of the legend. A picture of Prescott’s visit hangs on a portrait wall alongside photos of Zano’s patrons showing off “ZPH” merch around the world.
“Before the Hollow Inn, there was one in between. It was like Bill’s or Mike’s?” Provenzano asks Gibson. “Ralph’s?”
“No, Ralph was a dead guy next to the one over there,” Gibson laughs. “Before McCarthy’s, it was somebody’s first name for like a year. Before that, it was Soviak’s. Before Soviak’s, it was…”
Recently, like other longtime Pittsburgh establishments, Zano’s is treading a middle path, keeping its regulars and familiar feel while trying to appeal to a new generation, many of whom drink less alcohol.
Provenzano — whose last name is where “Zano’s” comes from — learned the business “very young” from her mother, a bar manager, and “the times have changed,” she says.
Since taking over 12 years ago, “we’ve had book signings here. I have a lot of people that host birthday parties in our back room … retirement parties. We do wakes,” Provenzano says. “We do a little bit of everything. It’s definitely a balance. Some people call [Zano’s] a dive bar. Some people call it an old Pittsburgh bar. I don’t want it to feel like it’s a club or some fancy place you don’t want to walk into, that you don’t want to be there every day.”
“Don’t get me wrong, we still have our bar business and have a good time,” Provenzano explains. “But I don’t want people to think of this as just a bar anymore, because it’s not. We’re moving into a new era here at Zano’s.”
Part of the pivot arose from the pandemic, when the bar was forced to “shift its focus” amidst shutdowns and restrictions.
“We did a lot of outside dining,” Provenzano remembers. “There was, like, six feet of snow, and our deck was full of people. We did hand warmers, made our own pop-up tents, [put up] clear shower curtains, and put heaters out there. And we made it.”
Provenzano says it was the “very diehard regulars” in the neighborhood — among them, Pittsburgh City Councilor Barb Warwick, who lives up the block — that allowed the business to survive. The deck stayed open for smokers year-round, showing Pirates and Steelers games, and soon after, Provenzano looked toward growing Zano’s clientele and expanding its menu.
Around the same time, bar manager Heather Keenan began to wander into Zano’s by way of Big Jim’s, steps across Four Mile Run Park. Provenzano says the two Greenfield mainstays often complement each other, as Big Jim’s was “more of a restaurant that had a bar, and until COVID, we were always a bar that had a little bit of food.”
At first, Keenan came into Zano’s as a customer. But she and Provenzano, who splits her time between Pittsburgh and Altoona, became fast friends, until she was eventually hired on. The two women now run the bar, sharing both bartending and kitchen duties, and “people come here to watch ‘our show’ as we call it,” Provenzano says. “We’re very entertaining. We bicker like we’re married.”
As a point of pride, Provenzano’s divorce certificate hangs framed above the bar.
“I worked very hard for that. I got divorced during COVID,” she says.
“You know what’s funny? Mine’s in the glove box of my car,” says Gibson.
Once Keenan began cooking, “she found a hidden talent she didn’t know she had,” Provenzano says. “Before she worked here, she didn’t know she could cook anything, and now everybody loves everything she makes.”
Through trial and error, running specials at the bar, Keenan developed a permanent menu of “retro-style” sandwiches with fresh-made ingredients. Grilled Reuben and Rachel sandwiches with house-made corned beef or turkey were an early hit. Keenan added a French Dip and Turkey Devonshire, a hot, open-faced sandwich smothered in cheese sauce that was created in Pittsburgh, so it’s “just like your grandma used to make,” Provenzano says. During Picklesburgh this year, Keenan fermented her own pickles, which landed on a now-requested pickle pizza with a garlic butter and ranch drizzle.
“Everything new we’ve added has more of a home-cooked feel,” Provenzano says. “We didn’t want to take shortcuts … We also try to keep our prices reasonable, so everybody can come have a drink and something to eat and still leave without spending $20.”
“Most [people] love the changes. They didn’t at first,” Provenzano says. “If you talk to people from Greenfield, they don’t like change. You need to kind of ease them into it.”
“We’re creatures of habit,” Gibson agrees.
This meant keeping Zano’s classic bar food: two kinds of fries (fresh-cut, Kennywood-style and frozen), the Run Burger, made with fried onions and pierogies, and the bar’s Balloon Burger, made with a pound of meat like a “mini meatloaf on a bun, it’s ridiculous,” Provenzano says.
Zano’s also expanded its service to add a Sunday brunch — Gibson’s son has joined with his 1-year-old granddaughter — and a full slate of events including golf outings, tailgates, live music, and karaoke nights.
Provenzano is the most nervous about setting up the always-cash-only bar to accept credit cards, also allowing it to appear on delivery services like DoorDash.
“For the first time ever in 100 years, credit cards will be taken,” she confirms.
According to Keenan and Provenzano, though the changes were gradual, they’ve already made an impact, shifting the bar more toward its food business, and bringing in a younger crowd with customers from outside the neighborhood.
“We have people from Oakland, Squirrel Hill, and Shadyside coming in. We have a lot of Pitt students coming in, grad students that want a more relaxed bar,” Provenzano says. “It used to be that you would know everybody that walked in the door by name, know what they drank, know what they ate. Now, it’s about 80%, but we’re getting there.”
On a Friday night, Terry Rutherford sits on the deck and eats Zano’s homemade crab cakes with her friend and coworker of nearly 40 years, Stephanie Feolton, who shows off her latest manicure. Feolton brought Rutherford to Zano’s about two years ago. “I’ve stayed past her,” Rutherford tells CP.
“Dana [Provenzano] is amazing. She’s authentic,” Rutherford says. ”It’s Cheers, where everybody knows your name. I’m one of the new people, I am.”
“We’re just trying to make it a Pittsburgh staple, make it part of the Pittsburgh go-to places,” Keenan says.
This article appears in Fall Guide 2025.
