Grandma B's

Pittsburgh's Hill District is one of the most storied Black neighbourhoods in America — the place that raised August Wilson and a whole era of jazz — and when Anthony Bourdain brought Parts Unknown here he was looking past the skyline at the neighbourhoods that made the city. A few blocks from where the Crawford Grill once booked the biggest names in jazz, on Wylie Avenue, sits a small soul-food kitchen called Grandma B's, and it is the sort of place that feeds its own community first and visitors second.

You come for the fish sandwich: a thick fillet, seasoned, dredged and fried to order until the crust crackles, laid on soft white bread with hot sauce and a squeeze of lemon, and served with a pile of fries. It is a working lunch, built to be eaten with your hands and finished in ten minutes. Alongside it, the grits are the other reason to sit down — slow-cooked until creamy, then seasoned and topped the way the kitchen does it, which is a world away from the bland porridge the dish is often reduced to elsewhere. Order both, and you have the measure of the place.

There is nothing designed about the room. It is a counter and a few tables, a television, and the regular rhythm of a neighbourhood eating together. That is the appeal. Grandma B's is not a destination restaurant and does not pretend to be; it is the kind of kitchen that makes a city liveable.

Bourdain's gift as a host was to treat places like this with the same seriousness as a three-star dining room, and the Hill District hour is one of the clearest examples of it. Come for the fish sandwich and the grits, but come understanding that you are also visiting a piece of Pittsburgh that survived a great deal, and that still cooks like it matters.