Apteka

09/06/2026

lonely no more
every sunday 9-11p

lonely september line-up -—>

tonite!
9.6 The wandering eye of Pittsburgh- Dave Bernabo- builds up with earth music meets paranoid America meets awe and wonder, with selections from where American avant-garde meets pop music, funk that features Junie Morrison, German jazz, calypso, and some soundtrack music.

9.13 Spaghetti Dinner (aka our Anni) wades through a romantic off and on relationship of dense distortion and intimate ambient cadence. Drapery of foggy shoegaze, lonely ballads, frustrated rants, and chewy strings.

9.20 Heartthrob PVKVSV makes dinner- expect ladles of stewed feelings to help usher the transition from summer into fall. Indie pop, jazz-grunge, alt rock & rnb, experimental/instrumental hip-hop.

9/27 Flyswatter Trio +2
Live Jazz!
lineup: Jon Birkholz, Riley Young, Patrick Breiner, Andy Bauer, Nick Larsen
work through compositions of Paul Motian performed by musicians from Baltimore, Pittsburgh, and New York City.
Serious stuff - consider reading something dense before you come or at least wear a cool hat or something.

09/06/2026

Last few days of this year’s short + sweet sunflower season:)

Been running iterations of this dish every year since 2018 when after years of trying with local farms, our bud Todd Tiny Seed Farm grew lovely heads -> picked at the sweet spot where the seeds are almost full size but without shells -> we can grill them and eat the seeds kind of like corn off the cob.

It’s a difficult harvest with a short window when the flowers, all ripening at different moments, are perfect for picking, but few years ago we cracked the code with Reese Medina Sunflower Farm . Reese (awesome dude in slide 4) plants a bunch of fields in two week successions, with the main purpose of being the backdrop for baby/engagement/family/occassional bo***ir photos. It’s an ideal set-up — a quarter of a million flowers all unsprayed, all ripening at slightly different stages, with tons of flowers to pick through for the right ones in spite of whatever nature’s been throwing at season.

This week was the last good picking for the season —> the silver lining that it was one of the loveliest harvests of 300 big beauties.

Truth be told, it’s kind of a pain in the ass to give up 7 hours every week to bring these guys back to Pgh, but it’s a dish we forever dig. It’s a North American native that was brought over to Europe, shopped around until it found a great customer in the Russian empire which helped nail its prominent place in East Euro culinary tradition. Oil & seeds are obvious, but what is really popular at markets and more of a rarity here are whole heads of sunflowers with fully developed seeds for snacking around the table. It’s always felt cool to run a dish that built around this iconic big flower that’s kind of a jazzy echo result between North America and Europe.

Słonecznik
immature sunflower head roast over the wood-fired grill, brushed with a gastrique made mostly from reduced apple scraps and Peachy’s ACV, brushed again with slow roast sunchoke + butter made from cultured sunflower seeds, dusted with dried and pulverized : sun petals + smoked cab + onion + fermented green tomato + coriander + fermented beet.
Sweet/sour/smoky/funky.

Here today & Thursday then next year:)

08/02/2026

Lonely No More
August is living.

Sundays 9-11p

8/2 Mother Mushroom -
soundtracks the depths of chanterelle season with ancient and modern music of the Baltics - expect a fusion of meditative chants, expansive folk, vintage jazz and psychedelia.

8/9 Carrie Sours -
shares heirloom Northeast Ohio Funk, Boogie, New Wave and Electronic Dance Records 1979-1989.
Picked ripe, still good!

8/16 Amy Weiland
chews on the bone- and leans hard into the blue Chernobyl dog days of summer. atmospheric dub, hip hop, and a healthy shake of girl power.

8/23 Davis Galvin
puts in the work- expect god’s favorite angel to lay out a patchwork of cog works, atmospheres, canyons.
Leave the headlamps- D’s got glowing oscillations.

8/30 jazzteka vol.2!
Dylan Zeh, Derek Bendel, Eli Weidman-
LIVE FREE JAZZ-
Back to prove a point- Kinetic improvised jazz inspired sounds- group scribbling and free hand.

👁️👁️

08/02/2026

been loving the ig break- but we got to post some food pics before we throw up another lonely no more schedule :/

desserts this week—>

Ciasto Drożdżowe z Morelą
yeasted cake baked with roast apricots + roast apricot jam + crumb with apricot cream
^only here for the weekend

Lody z Pestek Wiśni z Pieczonymi Czereśniami
(pictured melting in the sun)
cherry pit + almond ice cream with roast sweet cherries + walnuts roast in post-cordial black walnut molasses

Ciasto Malinowe
layered sponge with raspberry jam, oat creme pat, light set raspberry flax meringue

>>>>>>

Every year, we head up to our buddy Jim’s orchard on Lake Ontario to pick some of bulk fruit we process for the year. Tomasz’s parents, Maria i Marek, plus the two of us and our occasional bonus picker ~my sister Claire!~ spend a day picking two RAV4s worth of fruit — dark tart cherries (mostly Jubileum & Balatons), apricots, and early plums.

This year has been bad for fruit —> a late frost ruining fruit crops across a lot of the eastern US. Jim lost almost all of his apricot crop and about 25% of cherries:( We came back with a little less than normal —> the 600 # of apricots from last year shrunk to a tough 100 # this year —> just 400 # dark tarts made it back this year —> tried to make up for a bit of the volume loss with 300 # of sweet cherries. (Apricot pic is some of the 2025 haul)

Most of the fruit gets processed for the year —> cordials for the bar, steam juiced for kompot musujacy, jam and sorbets for desserts. A small allotment goes toward the moment —> as always running a few weeks of sour cherry pierogi (maybe through next week?), plus a couple sweet things on the menu right now 😋

07/04/2026

🌝

Lonely No More 
Sundays 9-11p

deep summer. 
The start of the big stick.

July 5-  Il duo iItaliano - Zonamorta- piece together dark parts for a nocturnal celebration. 
Coolgoths4coolgoths. 

July 12- Alvin Row is making a late dinner- guy cooks for a big family- eat jazz, folk, electronic- no room for dessert. 

July 19- Indigo Baloch lingers in the maybe memory haze of late night drives and last kisses. Adrift in the tragical magical. 

July 26- Good Dude Lojack brings hope. 
Special rhythm rider extraordinaire makes it fun. 

C u soon
:*

07/04/2026

Closed today 7/4
Open tomorrow 7/5

📷 ꥟ ོ :)

07/04/2026

06/06/2026

oooOOOooo

Sundays 9-11p @ Apteka is Lonely No More.

June lineup:

6/7 (Tomorrow) : Jazzteka -
avant jazz exploration - live free jazz 3 piece-
Dylan Zeh, Eli Weidman, Derek Bendel.

6/14 Ziad Adamo shares post Arab spring awakening.
Traditional rhythms and music interpreted by contemporary artists and new instruments.

6/21 Michael Parente lingers for this last chance for a slow dance.
MP’s last weekend in Pittsburgh- set to soundtrack of techno> ambient> instrumental>
house> techno.

6/28 Dana Bishop Root plays Resistance songs.
>> A kind of breath work, a call to each other in rage, in grief, in tire.
Jubilation is inevitable.

c u soon:*

05/28/2026

Closed this Saturday, May 30th for a private event.

Regular hours otherwise:
Thursday 5/28 Vinoteka 5-9p
Friday 5/29 regular dinner service 5-10p
Sunday 5/31 regular dinner service 5-10p

C u soon:*

05/16/2026

Late start to spring this year is Pittsburgh. Hot then cold — some things got frost early, some things germinated late. Still relying on the last bit of root veg stores while more green makes it to the building:)

Asparagus made it to us a few weeks ago-
the set we’re running this year is a green tasty one —>
Amish + Mason Farms asparagus sauteed in smoked onion+BP/WP+++ vin
paste at the bottom from mostly blanched fresh mint + boiled sunseeds
green jus from blanched TRG spinach + parsley with coriander heavy light stock-
with a spent flax + onion bun for soppin up the mess-
in ever so slightly limited supply while we are only getting about 65 #/ week to tide us over

+ perennial favorite back for the season —> sparkling mint tea from Coldco mint + dried peppermint and our fresh peppermint

C u sooooon:*