Classic area bakery and cafe opens Mt. Lebo location
If you’ve walked down Beverly Road in Mt. Lebanon in the last couple of months, you may have found yourself in front of the newly opened Mediterra Cafe. The cafe boasts, in addition to expected fare like coffee and breakfast sandwiches, a market filled with harder to find pantry items as well as a full bar and restaurant space.
While the bar and restaurant have not been fully engaged due to the ongoing pandemic, the cafe is already home to a loyal cast of neighborhood locals.
The Mt. Lebanon cafe, a more fully realized echo of the original and beloved Sewickley spot, is a paradox of sorts. To walk through the space is to be transported to an upscale restaurant. However, Mediterra Cafe prides itself on truly being a neighborhood institution. Thoughtfully themed dinners imagined by executive chef Aniceto Sousa are in the works, featured in the same building where you can find little kids leaving behind harmless messes as they happily skip out the front door. Similarly, an impressive cocktail program waits behind the bar, while a dozen farm-raised eggs can be purchased steps away in the market before you stumble back out onto the street.
The Mediterra story starts in Ohio three generations ago when owner and President Nicholas Ambeliotis took over a grocery store from his own father and started stocking it with obscure provisions he was drawn to from around the world. Along the way, the Ambeliotis family continued to grow alongside the family business, which has come to include an Arizona wheat farm and an almost two-decade-old Pittsburgh bakehouse that provides baked goods to businesses around the city and up and down the East Coast. The outpost at 292 Beverly Road is only the latest chapter of the Mediterra story.
This empire’s keystone is bread, but what makes something that is only three ingredients (flour, salt and water) a conduit for such ambitious expansion?
Nicole Ambeliotis, vice president and co-owner, explains, “We have a thirty year old starter that we bought from France. We have to feed it every day, so we’re not just using blocks of yeast, we’re using a live, living sourdough starter.” While you could create a loaf of bread from scratch in as little as three hours, the bread that has been the backbone of the Mediterra cafes and bakehouse has gone through an intensive 16 hours of care and maturation.
This ethos is ever-present. The starting place for all of the bread that has made Mediterra thrive is a wheat farm in Arizona. Saint Anthony’s Greek Orthodox Monastery drew Nicholas to Arizona. After years of visits and ingratiating himself to the community, he found himself opening a bakery and partnering with a local farmer to grow wheat. Mediterra mills the grain, a process that turns it into flour, and by Nicole’s estimation supplies as much as 70% of Italy’s baking flour.
That kind of attention to detail is sewn into every aspect of the business, from the beautiful speckled coffee mugs at the espresso bar to the robust social media presence, which often incorporates fun giveaways and prizes. A recent post indicated that a lucky customer that found a hidden Mediterra ticket in the cafe would go home with a dozen of the farm fresh eggs this story continues to mention.
Another dependable way to experience this attention to detail is to try a slice of the Roman-style pizza that sits behind the glass in the cafe. This pizza is a result of a multi-day process that starts at the bakehouse in Robinson, and when it runs out, it runs out.
Admittedly, I had expected to be disappointed. The pizza sits in a case at room temperature akin to ordering from a food court, employed by necessity, not quality. A Margherita slice (and calling it a slice is misleading as it’s more tile-like in shape) is a simple joy. The doughy crust has the perfect amount of resistance as you tear into it but could never be mistaken for tough or chewy. The sauce is flavorful and ever-present, without being overwhelmingly “saucy.” The cheese boasts the perfect amount of brown spots to balance the salt and dairy. I’m not one of those “there is no such thing as bad pizza” kind of people, but one could eat this Roman treat every day without complaint.
You can always expect to find Margherita and pepperoni in the case, but in an exciting twist, whoever is working in the kitchen will develop a third inspired option sourced from ingredients found to be in excess in preparing other menu items. So, for instance, an asparagus salad special might yield a feta and asparagus pizza option on a random visit. Sound advice would be to check back daily.
And while Mediterra Cafe is primarily a family business that currently relies on six of Nicholas’s children or their partners in pivotal and ownership positions, the family has added from outside as well.
Aniceto Sousa is the executive chef and a partner in the Mediterra Cafes. A Massachusetts bred cook who most notably came up at Eleven Madison Park in New York City found himself in Pittsburgh with his wife, born and raised here, looking to start his own venture. Sousa was tired of working at restaurants that were so stuffy, his own friends and family felt intimidated to visit. Pittsburgh and the burgeoning restaurant scene, which is both unfussy while still being inventive and, more importantly, delicious, seemed like the promised land.
After relocating from Boston, Aniceto took over the stay at home parenting duties with his young child while keeping an eye out for a space to make his own. At the same time, Mediterra Cafe was opening its Sewickley location and looking for help. At the urging of his wife, Aniceto answered the call. A few tryout dinners later and he found himself welcomed into the Mediterra family. He spends most of his time behind the curtain at the Mt. Lebanon address, the location with considerably more space than its Sewickley counterpart, and is eager to capitalize on that square footage.
When asked about post-pandemic plans for the cafe, Sousa said he was looking forward to “flex some muscles that we don’t usually use, do things a little bit more refined, and maybe bring some ingredients that we don’t usually have in house. We have a very talented team in the kitchen and I’m hoping that we can all have fun with it, and build a relationship with the community where they come in and say, hey, I don’t have to go downtown, this is right in my backyard here in Mt. Lebanon.”
Sousa is not the only one excited to see what a fully realized Mediterra Cafe will bring. In the meantime, the cafe is open for sit down and takeaway service.