This story was first published in sister publication Pop City.
It’s 10 a.m. on Friday and Kate Romane, chef-owner of e2 in Highland Park, is chugging a green energy drink while chatting up the guys at La Prima Espresso in the Strip District. Clad in skinny black jeans, a camel-colored leather jacket and wool ski hat, she’s the epitome of urban cool but her look belies a warmth and sensitivity key to the success of her 28-seat Italian restaurant. It’s a staple for East Enders that counts fans across the region.
Exiting the cafe, Romane heads to Penn Mac, part of a weekly ritual that has her shopping for specialty items in favored Strip District haunts. Cheese and beans in hand, it’s over to the Pittsburgh Public Market, where Crested Duck has crafted lamb and rosemary sausage that will be paired with a potato cake and rapini as a starter on this evening’s menu. She exits the market with a hunk of beef bresaola and three small (frozen) rabbits weighing down an ample sack.
“I got interested in food from being in this environment,” says Romane, who started working at Enrico Biscotti in the Strip shortly after arriving in Pittsburgh in 1997. Her tiny apartment was across the street. “There was a stove in the back of Enrico’s when there was still a car garage back there. That’s where I learned how to make red sauce.”
She went from counter help to baker at Enrico’s and then helped open their cafe, learning the basics of catering along the way. A stint in the Bidwell culinary program, which utilizes the same curriculum as Le Cordon Bleu, served to hone her skills.
Making the leap to her own restaurant wasn’t easy, and Romane envisioned doing so with a partner but was ultimately standing alone after signing a lease for the entire building where e2 is located. With $4,000 in the bank, she opened her doors during Snowmageddon in February 2010. “No one could even open their doors!” she recalls. “They couldn’t get anywhere, they were just walking around. I had a big truck so I went out and bought food and hand-painted a sign that said ‘HOT SOUP.’ We sold out in an hour. It was great for getting our feet wet.”
A more formal opening positioned e2 as a weekend brunch destination. “The plan all along was to grow this thing organically. I was already doing catering but this place took over.” The restaurant opened for dinner five nights a week in October 2010. “We’re that neighborhood Italian restaurant. That’s what they wanted.”
While the restaurant hummed along as the little engine that could, it still wasn’t enough to carry a balance sheet laden with costs including those of heating an entire building. That reality prompted Romane to launch a Kickstarter campaign in March 2012 that quickly caught on with social media mavens. The objective of the campaign was to build out the downstairs and turn it into a communal dining/party space.
“It had a hideous old bar and bad lighting,” laughs Romane. “In 30 days, 280 people contributed and we raised $22,000. I did this with a lot of help: all of my friends, the Highland Park community. I feel really indebted.” Scouring Construction Junction for materials, the moody, softly-lit space was completed last fall and is now an integral part of the restaurant. “We also suffered with appliance catastrophe in the first day. The large quadruple sized American fridge broke. We spent the next hour trying to find somebody who could carry out a fridge repair the same day. An easier challenge said, than done.”
The restaurant business wasn’t top of mind for Romane early on. A native of northeast Pennsylvania, the 36-year-old grew up in an Irish-Lithuanian household and attended high school in Columbus, Ohio. She tried her hand at art school but left after a year. “I was a really bad artist so probably would have worked in a restaurant anyway!” Romane moved to Pittsburgh owing to an aunt and uncle on the North Side. “I started to like Pittsburgh,” she recalls, somewhat surprised. “People here are so generous. They helped me every step of the way.”
The chef now lives on Churchview Farm in Baldwin, a 10-acre spread owned and farmed by her girlfriend, Tara Rockacy. A former librarian, Rockacy primarily farms heirlooms and sells to local restaurants including Dish and Root 174.
By early afternoon, Romane has put on a long black apron and ditched the wool cap in favor of pigtails. She stands at a long butcher block counter in the restaurant’s compact kitchen and forms the pork and beef meatballs that are among the restaurant’s more popular items, served in a rich red sauce or, if the diner prefers, as the hunkier half of spaghetti and meatballs.
“I do a lot of the prep, but not as much as I’d like to anymore. Some days there’s paperwork, the Internet. But weekends, Thursday through Saturday, I just cook.” Romane writes the menus yet gives her kitchen staff freedom on specials. Menus are updated monthly and each gets its own name: the current one is titled “almost,” as in “it’s almost Spring.”
Leslie Addis, who handles the ever-popular Saturday and Sunday brunch at e2, has already been in the kitchen for a couple hours on this day, doing prep for the weekend. Addis sprints from one side of the kitchen to the other, stirring a berry compote, making beignet mix and cracking what seems like a thousand eggs.
By 2 p.m., all three line cooks have arrived and Romane and her crew are poetry in motion as they slice, dice and blanch for the evening ahead. The banter is lighthearted but focused and if everything’s “the jamz,” well, it’s because this collection of hipsters is having fun.
Cook Greg Austin sends around a bowl of arancini, softball-sized risotto rounds stuffed with anchovy and a dollop of red sauce and deep fried, to a round of oohs and aahs. Similarly, local Amish chickens perched atop rosemary-mashed redskin potatoes ladled with sauteed leeks, chard and roasted shallots are utterly comforting.
Romane browns the lamb and rosemary sausage as budding chef de cuisine Devin Tucker composes its plate, then considers the flavors before asking for an extra spritz of lemon on slivers of shiny green rapini. Not to be outdone, Tucker slices watermelon radishes into paper-thin discs and fries them with paprika, salt and pepper. The resulting “chips” are one of the many OMG’s – you guessed it, omigosh – that serve as munchies for hungry diners, and it’s safe to say that no one eats at e2 without ordering at least three OMGs from a list of nearly twenty including mouth-watering fried Brussels sprouts, Etrusco cheese from Penn Mac, and caraway onions.
Romane leaves the restaurant early, headed for the David L. Lawrence Convention Center and the annual Farm-to-Table show. It’s a way to extend the brand, which the chef will also do in an upcoming series of farm dinners alongside fellow chefs and good friends Keith Fuller of Root 174 and Danielle Cain of Soba.
“Everybody’s helping out, it’s all positive,” says Romane of the Pittsburgh chef community. “The more, the merrier. It elevates everyone.”