Bacon and more on Bakn menu
Bakn, with the strip of bacon to denote proper pronunciation
Bakn patrons Byron Calvert, Dan Wiltrout and Brian Hooper, all of Robinson Township
A Bakn staff shirt features a popular bacon saying
Bakn is in the former Carnegie Granite Works building on East Main Street.
Pig-themed items abound at Bakn.
If you like bacon, you’ll like Bakn.
Even if you’re not that crazy about the popular pork-belly product, Carnegie’s newest restaurant is aiming to please.
“We have some things on the menu for the health-conscious, too,” assures co-owner Susan McMahon of Mt. Lebanon, referencing stuff like salads and steel-cut oats.
Ah, but those sizzling strips and slices are what inspires her partner and Bakn’s head chef, Randy Tozzie.
“I like bacon,” he admits. “I think a lot of people love bacon, so that was the cornerstone of the menu. From there, I took off on a path to find things that people would like using bacon, which included pork belly, where bacon comes from.”
So patrons who look back into Bakn’s kitchen area periodically will see Tozzie pulling pans of pork belly from the oven, ready to serve in dishes such as pork-belly tacos, pork-belly Cubans or pork-belly Reubens.
For those whose bellies are rumbling at the mention of such cuisine, welcome to Bakn, which is spelled complete with a strip of bacon representing the long vowel mark – you remember that from English class! – over the “a.”
“A friend of ours actually suggested this to us about five years ago, and we were kind of holding on to it all this time,” McMahon says.
Time finally came for Bakn to open on Aug. 22, after the co-owners had created a successful social media buzz for the region’s bacon boosters.
“The opening week went fantastic,” Tozzie, an Upper St. Clair High School graduate, says. “We had a great crowd. It was just a wonderful time, seeing people expressing such happiness and joy to come in and try our food, and to meet with us and chat with us.”
Beyond the bacon, Bakn patrons will notice staff members wearing shirts bearing distinctive sayings.
“There are a lot of bacon sayings out there,” Tozzie says. “We settled on three of them that we like:”
• “meet. eat. repeat.”
• “praise the lård,” with a halo over the second “a”
• “I like pig butts and I cannot lie”
The latter just might be with apologies to Sir Mix-a-Lot.
Tozzie and McMahon make no apologies about where they chose to set up shop, as they’re enthusiastic about Carnegie, where Tozzie has lived for 12 years.
“We looked at a lot of places, a lot of different areas,” McMahon says, mentioning Lawrenceville, Mt. Lebanon, Beechview and Pittsburgh’s South Side, where she has her dental office.
“We realized that this Main Street area was really, really developing,” she says. “The business development corporation here in Carnegie has some real visionaries. They wanted to make Main Street filled with independent restaurants and shops, and they were welcoming.”
Bakn welcomes patrons into the former Carnegie Granite Works building – the name still is inscribed prominently on the façade – from which the well-known-locally Ferri family operated for decades.
“We wanted that light industrial feel, and because this is a former granite showroom and shop, it was exactly what we were looking for,” McMahon explains.
Plans call for the second floor to become event space and for a roof garden with seating on the third.
In the meantime, Tozzie and McMahon are enjoying the flurry of activity surrounding Bakn’s successful opening.
“It makes us feel wonderful,” McMahon says. “It makes us feel like we are doing something that people are enjoying.”