‘Not Every Chapter is Supposed to Last Forever’: An Oral History of Dinette

The improbable rise and untimely death of one of Pittsburgh’s favorite restaurants.

When Sonja Finn opened the doors to Dinette, her cozy, casual East Liberty pizzeria in 2008, Pittsburgh’s restaurant scene was on the cusp of a transformation.

A flurry of new chefs had swept into the city, taking advantage of so-not-New York rental prices, and opening ambitious, buzzy restaurants in sleepy neighborhoods like Regent Square and Garfield. At just 28, Finn became the first solo female chef-owner of a notable restaurant in Pittsburgh, ushering Dinette to the top of Pittsburgh’s dining hierarchy. 

The restaurant became a critical darling, known as much for its seasonal menu and sustainability efforts as it was for its progressive employee policies and fair labor practices, and earning Finn a James Beard Rising Star Chef semifinalist nomination — the first Pittsburgh chef to receive a nod, and two years in a row, to boot. National acclaim followed, including a featured spot in the Pittsburgh-centric episode of “Parts Unknown,” with the late Anthony Bourdain, and a mention in a New York Times feature about Pittsburgh’s “youth-driven food boom.” 

Finn established herself as a leader of Pittsburgh’s modern dining era, keeping Dinette a step ahead of the national trends in the industry, like the elimination of tipping and the introduction of on-site gardens. Chefs who served time in Finn’s kitchen went on to open their own critically acclaimed brick-and-mortars, such as Becca Hegarty at Bitter Ends Luncheonette, Lauren Zanardelli at Fairlane, and Jamilka Borges, in the newly-opened Lilith. Throughout its almost 12-year run (which included a sustainability designation from Sustainable Pittsburgh in 2015, a switch to a no-tipping model in 2017, and politically motivated fallout from Finn’s unsuccessful run for City Council office in 2018), Dinette remained a favorite of diners and food writers, earning a place on Pittsburgh Magazine’s Best Restaurants list every year it was eligible. 

And then, during the pandemic, it was gone. 

“Everything sort of works until it doesn’t,” Finn says.

But a restaurant, like a marriage, or a job, or a book, is so much more than its ending. In their own words, those who helped create Dinette share the story of one of Pittsburgh’s most important restaurants.

Sonja Finn (chef/owner, Dinette): I was always interested in food and was always cooking, but I never considered it a career path. But we used to go to Baum Vivant, Toni Pais’ place, and that was our fancy celebration restaurant to go to. And when I graduated from Allerdice [High School], my parents threw my 18th birthday party there. I asked Toni if I could get a job for the summer waiting tables. He was like, ‘No way, you have no experience. But, you can come and do prep in the kitchens.’ I learned how to make these little Portuguese butter cookies, and I made hundreds of them there, and then I’d come home and make hundreds at home, just because I was very excited about it.

Seth Finn (Sonja’s father): We used to get lots of extra butter cookies.

After graduating from Columbia University with a degree in sociology and the Culinary Institute of America, Finn worked at famed restaurants Magnolia Grill in Durhman, N.C., and Pizzeria Delfina in San Francisco. In 2008, she moved back to Pittsburgh with a plan to open her own spot.  

Danielle Novick (Sonja’s best friend, and an early Dinette server): She said, it’s really important for me to cook my favorite foods. And she was like, ‘I like barbecue, but I don’t think it’s sustainable. I like tacos. And I like pizza.’ So, she said, ‘I need to open a restaurant that’s centered around one of those things.’

Sonja Finn: I knew I wanted to do pizzas because of a few reasons. I find main courses a little boring. But I’m never bored of pizza. And I wanted to use as many local ingredients as possible, and stay seasonal. I had just come from restaurants like Zuni, where you have a daily changing menu and I knew that I wanted to do that in order to best facilitate what was available locally and seasonally. To do a daily changing menu, you have to have a canvas. It’s going to be bread and cheese, and then you go from there.

Jim Tinsley (Sonja’s ex-husband): We both really liked this place in San Francisco called Pizzeria del Fina, and she was like, ‘I kind of want to do something like that.’ She started testing dough recipes, or we’d go over to a friend’s house and she would try grilling different pizza recipes.

Novick: We went down to West Virginia and she wanted to grill some pizzas. My then-partner had a family home there, with a pool, and they were away. And that was where, to this day, my favorite pizza came out, with eggplant with salmoriglio, really paper-thin eggplant, no sauce, fresh mozzarella, black olives. And as soon as it came out of the oven, she would pour salmoriglio, I think, it’s like, olive oil, oregano, parsley, capers, and garlic. It would kind of caramelize. And it was just mind-blowing. And Sonja was just like, ‘Ehh… it’s meh. It’s meh. But I think I could do a restaurant around this.’ 

Sonja Finn: I will sit down with you, and pick apart everything that I just put down in front of you. I will make food, and then completely analyze it, because I’m constantly trying to get things perfect. So yeah, that’s likely. I’m always trying to make things better.

Olja Finn (Sonja’s mother): She used us very much as guinea pigs. And she decided to create all the different things she was going to serve, the initial menu, and she tested them all out in our kitchen. And when she was done, and she opened the restaurant, we changed the kitchen. It was well used, well worn out, because you can only run our oven at 500 degrees and make pizzas for so long. But we were great beneficiaries of all these experiments.

After searching across Pittsburgh for a suitable restaurant location, Finn settled on a place close to where she grew up –  5996 Centre Ave., part of a new Eastside of East Liberty development. The space had floor-to-ceiling windows, lots of natural sunlight and was completely raw. Finn signed a lease in early 2008, then got to work designing a kitchen and dining room that would make the most of the limited space. 

Sonja Finn: I could not figure out how to make that space work. I was like, ‘I don’t know, it looks like it needs to be a yoga studio or something.’ To Jim’s credit, throughout all of it, he was like, ‘I think it’s perfect.’ And I said, ‘OK, I’ll make it work then.’

Tinsley: I liked that space because of the parking. There wasn’t really great parking for any of the other restaurants around there. And I thought it had really great parking, so I definitely voted for that space.

Sonja Finn: I knew I wanted an open kitchen because, as a small restaurant, you can sometimes feel like you’re just eating in somebody’s living room, if you don’t see any of the activity happening. I wanted an open kitchen because I think it’s a better quality of life for employees, interacting with customers and watching people be happy.

Olja Finn: We loved the space. It was lovely to see from the street above, you see people having fun and you see lights and you can feel that. There were times when it was snowing outside, you felt like you were in a snow globe.

Sonja Finn: The reason it was called Dinette is because when we finally put in the bar, I looked at how much seating area there was, I was like, ‘Oh my goodness, this place is tiny.’ And so I knew I needed to call it something diminutive.

Dinette opened on Oct. 9, 2008. Its abbreviated menu changed daily, but had a core set of pizzas, vegetable-focused appetizers, salads and soups, and a small-but-mighty wine list, available by the glass. 

Sonja Finn: We did a friends and family night. It was just… hectic. Probably we only did, like, 45 people, but it felt like a lot. The pizza dough just wasn’t stretching, it’s supposed to be six slices, but I said, ‘OK, let’s just cut it into four.’ 

Novick: I remember it being overwhelming to be in this little glass box. And we were slammed. And we didn’t have enough forks, because we thought more people would be eating pizza with their hands.

Sonja Finn: The next day, we opened officially, and nobody came, because everybody who knew me had already had a free meal. Like, they were very proud of it, but they weren’t going to go to the same restaurant two days later. So, it was just sort of like whoever wandered by, whoever was going to Borders. Things slowly grew, but we were probably doing 45 or 60 people on Fridays for about a month and a half. And, that was fine. That was my business model. I expected to open a neighborhood restaurant, and just do my little thing. And then, December 18 [2008], our review with China Millman in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and Pittsburgh Magazine’s review came out and things just exploded that same day.

China Hoffman (née Millman), (Pittsburgh Post-Gazette restaurant critic, 2007-2012): It was a really exciting time to be a restaurant critic in Pittsburgh, because you had all these chefs moving back or moving there because they realized they could afford to open restaurants there. 

Sonja Finn: I had no understanding of how publicity works, and how you need these write-ups. I was like, ‘Oh, my goodness, we’re going to be in Pittsburgh Magazine. We’re going to be in the Post.’ China had basically just started at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, and people were like, ‘Ahhh… she’s giving bad reviews.’ She was getting a lot of flack for it. And the review from the week before us, and, I know, she doesn’t do the titles, but, it was a picture of the chef and the sous chef of the restaurant sitting at a table, proudly displaying their dishes, and across the top it said ‘Lost at Sea.’ And I was like, ‘Oh, dear.’ 

Hoffman: The reason I was such a tough critic, was I basically realized that the only real power I can have is positive power. I can send people to restaurants, but I will have no power if they think I like everything. And I don’t like everything. I know that I really had to just speak up for the restaurants that I really believed in. And, that would mean being fairly harsh to the restaurants that I didn’t.

Olja Finn: We were in Italy when the first review came out. And she emailed us and said, ‘Here it is. I’m attaching the review.’ And we were scared to open it, because we couldn’t tell from Sonja’s tone of the message, whether she was happy or depressed. 

Sonja Finn: We all stayed up until like 2 a.m. to read it. But I read it, and then read it again, and then I could go to sleep. I thought, ‘OK, this is good.’ 

In the review, Millman writes that “Dinette is a member of the new breed of casual fine dining restaurants that earn their “fine” distinction through quality and consistency,” and raves about everything from the ricotta pizza (“mouthwatering”), to the orange Jasper Morrison chairs (“amazingly comfortable”), while taking readers through Finn’s daily quest of sourcing ingredients. 

Sonja Finn: It wasn’t as romantic as, you know, the chef walking around the farmers market. I would be like, I know I can make it to Whole Foods and back from Dinette in 13 minutes and get what I need. As a small restaurant, there were so few places where I could place minimums for orders. I started with a couple purveyors, but they would have, like, $250 as a minimum. And I couldn’t get a 50-pound bag of onions and expect them to continue to be fresh. So there were a lot of people baffled at Whole Foods, who would be like, ‘Why are you buying all our arugula? Like, come on.’

Neil Stauffer (former general manager of Penn’s Corner Farm Alliance): I started working at Penn’s Corner in 2007, and Dinette opened in 2008, so we had kind of parallel trajectories in terms of building businesses around the same time. She was flexible, in that she was always looking for inspiration from the farm, rather than saying, ‘I want it this way,’ or, ‘I want it to be this size.’ It was more like, ‘What’s good at the farm? I can make something delicious with what’s good at the farm.’

Sonja Finn: I just thought, especially when these relationships between farms and restaurants or farms and chefs were first beginning, we were both trying to get our footing. I just thought [Penn’s Corner] had a wonderful model.

Hoffman: One of the things I loved about going there was you could figure out the calendar month from what was on the menu. You could go in late spring, early summer, and there would be zucchini blossoms.

Becca Hegarty (Dinette sous chef, 2012-2015): Sonja would go to the farmers market every Monday, and so I somehow weaseled my way into her letting me follow her over there. I started building on these relationships that she was building with farmers. Literally to this day, farmers I still buy all of my produce from.

Sarah Baugher (Dinette sous chef, 2018-2020): She would let me go and pick up produce from the farmers market. We would get a case of peaches — and her text messages were so funny. She’d be like, ‘There are these two specific guys that you’re looking for. This is what they look like. I want peaches only from them. And if they’re gone, I don’t want them.’

Seth Finn: When she first looked at the property, I took the stairs and saw that roof, and said, ‘Oh, this gets sunshine all the time.’ And she asked me how much it would cost to build a container garden on the roof. So, I said, ‘Oh, maybe $600,’ and she thought that was a great bargain. So we had tomatoes, and peppers. All the herbs, lots of basil and arugula.

Hegarty: I would just show up at Dinette early and follow her dad up to the roof until he agreed to let me take care of his gardens while he was on vacation. And the first year I did it all of his green zebra tomatoes died, and I was just emailing him and calling him the whole time, and going so crazy.

Bauger: I’ve lived in the South my whole life and I’ve learned more from working at Dinette about how to grow a tomato than anywhere in my life. Which is really strange that that’s happening on a rooftop in Pittsburgh, right?

Rebcca Bykoski, (Senior Program Manager, Sustainable Pittsburgh): When I was hired by Sustainable Pittsburgh to create the restaurant program, Sonja was one of the key people I reached out to to be on our advisory committee and help me develop this program. Dinette was actually the first designated sustainable Pittsburgh restaurant when we launched. She was doing these things, like growing food on the roof, which was extremely impressive. 

Dan Gigler (former food writer for Pittsburgh Post-Gazette): By the time that I finally made it into Dinette, it had been open for some time. We were sitting outside, and I ordered a pizza – it had anchovies and fresh jalapenos on it, and when I took a bite, it made me sit up straight and say ‘This was so good.’ Actually, there’s another word that I want to use right now, but I don’t think that I can say the F word.

Keith Fuller (Pittsburgh chef): I grew up in Luxembourg in Europe and her pizza would literally take me back to when I was a little kid, driving down the side of a mountain in Luxembourg to this Italian restaurant that had the best pizza.

Gigler: It really was this ethereal moment of biting into that pizza that I will always remember.

Bauger: The thing I learned the most from her is that she kind of flirts with you a little bit in terms of the way she plates. She likes the ingredients to speak for themselves. She told me once that she doesn’t want a slice of pizza to have every single thing that’s supposed to be on the pizza in one bite, because she wants you to miss the other thing and want more.

Lauren Zandarelli (Dinette sous chef, 2016-2018, owner, Fairlane, 2019-2020): She’s a purist, and so everything that she did was very deliberate and well thought out. She could answer, if you asked her, why she wanted things cut this way instead of that way. And she had a very specific reason. She would talk about the textures and the way the flavors combined, and how she wanted the diner to feel.

Fuller: I know everybody is going to talk about the pizza, but like, the Fritto Misto… I remember having that. It was very simplistic, but very well executed and everything was perfectly cooked.

Sonja Finn: We always had some salads and a soup. But I think sort of in what was on the the main ingredients on the pizzas, and also sort of the extra items that we might put as appetizers changed to be more vegetables-centric. As I continued year after year, I remember there was just one moment where I was watching somebody, like one table, just swooning over the beet gazpacho, and another table eating the grilled Hakurei turnips and, like, the olive oil was dripping off them. And I just thought, ‘Look at all these people loving vegetables.’

Hegarty: I sort of feel like everyone’s going to talk to you about her Shishito peppers, but it’s only mostly funny to me because I have essentially grilled, maybe 300 million Shishito peppers in my life, but a decade ago. And now you go to a restaurant, and everybody has Shishito peppers.

Sonja Finn: It’s not like they weren’t in Japan. But Richard Chen had opened, like a month before Dinette. I went for a tasting menu when chef Chen was there, and there was a halibut dish, and under the halibut were two peppers that were delicious. I ordered them through my seafood supplier, I think, and then the next spring, I ordered seeds for my dad to plant. And they just stayed on the menu because people loved them and we loved them. I’m still trying to claim their birthplace in Pittsburgh.

Olja Finn: For dessert, Sonja always had a pot de creme and a rice pudding as her two standard desserts. And she always wanted a third. So I made the baklava for 12 years. I would make it every two weeks. And you know, a large 60-piece pan. If I’d go out of town and they’d run out, she’d make this snack cake for one of her desserts. And people would say, ‘Oh, your mom must be out of town.’ 

Sonja Finn: It was nice that both my parents contributed, and contributed with something they both loved doing. And because of it, they got an employee discount. Some people must be like, ‘I can’t believe her parents didn’t eat for free!’ I don’t know, maybe they should have. Every once in a while, I’d take them out to dinner. But at Dinette.

Dinette opened with the ethos of being a good employer, offering jobs for front and back-of-the house employees with a living wage, and health insurance for non-tipped employees. 

Sonja: I had a base pay, but I wanted to give my employees at least $1 more an hour than they had gotten at their last place. It was just… a living wage, health insurance, two weeks off paid per year. And we closed two days in a row, one of those days being when other people might have off. And just basic rights for workers. Not being asked to work off the clock. Not having somebody yelling at them. Not having an aggressive environment, and also providing the things that I thought they needed, like their uniforms.

Bykoski: She really tried to pioneer ideas so that her employees were in a place where they could develop and grow and learn, and help to build, and make working in the restaurant industry a respected profession that could actually meet a person’s needs.

Hoffman: We weren’t yet discussing chefs behavior in the kitchen. This sort of culture, yelling, berating people, there were a couple of incidents in other restaurants that I remember hearing about. But it wasn’t really a national conversation yet.

Novick: In 13 years of working at other restaurants, they were much more centered around kind of just making money, or getting drunk or going out. And this was like, no, we’re going to close at a reasonable time so staff can be home, and we’re going to start at a reasonable time so staff can do things during the day. We’re going to have a family meal that’s healthy. We’re not going to just drink or have our phones or smoke during our shift. It just was like a healthier place to work. And there’s not going to be yelling, and if people raise their voice, Sonja kind of gave a warning because that was not tolerated.

Bauger: One of the first things she said to me was ‘You’re not a yeller, are you?’ And she was like, ‘OK, good, because that’s not going to work here.’ 

Hegarty: It was super life-changing for me. It was just so different. There was no aggression, everything was organized. For the first time I felt like I understood what it was like to have a good employer, and how the trickle-down effect could actually be positive and not negative.

Hoffman: It makes sense to me that you have to run a calm kitchen if you’re going to have an open kitchen. And she was at the forefront of understanding that if you could dissolve the boundaries between the back of the house and the front of the house, you could bind your staff together better. They would collaborate more. And that there would be just a wonderful atmosphere in the restaurant, which there was. It always felt like Dinette was a party. And it feels good to go to a place where you feel like the staff enjoys their work.

Less than a year after opening, Finn became the first chef in Pittsburgh to receive a James Beard Award nomination, as as semifinalist for James Beard ‘Rising Star Chef of the Year,’ 

Sonja Finn: It felt huge. The way I found out, though, was that somebody called and left a message that they did not get good service. And, I went online, to what would have been Chowhound, to see if there was an online review. I looked myself up, and it came up. I didn’t know, nobody told me. But, even if nobody in Pittsburgh was paying attention to that nomination, people outside saw it, and Pittsburgh got attention. I think it helped bring attention here, and make it more of a desirable food city. 

Hoffman: I feel like she was one of this group of chefs that didn’t want to compete, they wanted to collaborate. And that hadn’t been the case in Pittsburgh. There was this new generation of chefs that felt like, we have all these great restaurants, and we’ll talk up each other’s restaurants, and people will see that more, and come here. And they were right.

In 2012, Finn gave birth to her son Miles, working on the line up until her due date, and becoming one of the most high-profile chef/owners in the country to have a baby while operating a restaurant. 

Sonja Finn: I was at Dinette, in prep all day, and I ran down to Whole Foods. I’m coming back, and I’m like, ‘Oh, I should grab a pregnancy test.’ I went to the bathroom, and I can still see that pregnancy test on the floor, positive. I just came out, and turned to my manager, and I was like, ‘I’m pregnant. Okay, let’s start service.’ And that was just it. 

Hegarty: I have this memory of her, like a Friday night, and not only is she pregnant, but she was really freaking pregnant. She had to take a break off the line, and I went back and she was just chugging buttermilk. I was like, ‘Oh, my God, are you okay?’ And she said, ‘I’m totally fine, I just really need some nutrients.’ It just never stopped her.

Sonja Finn: In my 38th or 39th week, my sous chef asked for those weeks off, so I was working the line, and a customer came in, and she was like, ‘Your cheeks are purple, they are so overheated.’ And she said, ‘I’m just going to walk around and tell every table not to order pizza.’ And I said, ‘You can’t do that!’

Olja Finn: It was painful for us to watch, but we couldn’t say anything. She just looked exhausted. One night I walked in, she must have been eight and a half, if not nine months pregnant, and she was working the oven. And there were four of my friends, and they saw me come in, and they waved me over and said ‘Please tell Sonja to go home. She’s going to drop.’ And I said, ‘I can’t. I’m her mother, but this is her restaurant. She will go home when she thinks she needs to go.’ 

Hegarty: I remember the day she had Miles, she said the first thing she wanted was a Caesar salad from Dinette, so she could eat raw egg. I think that’s something that has transferred to everywhere in my life. Like, if you’re going to do something, you should be so in love and so behind the thing that you’re doing that you birth a person, and now you think, ‘I need my Caesar salad.’ 

Sonja Finn: I had a C-section and I was in the hospital, and the nurse was checking me out, giving me all the instructions, like ‘This is how you wash the baby,’ and all this stuff. And I was texting my staff, like, ‘No, this is on the menu and this and this and this.’ And I thought, she must think I’m the worst person. But it’s like, you scheduled this at 2:30 p.m.

Tinsley: Miles grew up there from a baby to a small child. The staff would make him off-menu items just for him, so he got special treatment. He was just born into it.

Sonja Finn: I just brought him with me. From a very young age, Miles was doing the Restaurant Depot run, the Strip District run, all that. So Miles was coming with me to those things. And I remember being in my office and pumping, and my staff was outside, and they’re like, (whispers) ‘I think she might be pumping.’

Hegarty: I say for sure that I am the person who saw Miles realize that there was a world above him for the first time in his life. The open kitchen was right there, and he used to sit in his little carrier on a bench, like we would just be facing each other while I prepped. I looked up and his whole mouth was like…. ‘Oh, my God, there’s a whole world up there.’ 

Sonja Finn: It became this great thing for Miles. I really did have a group of people who somehow were so welcoming to a child that I would never imagine as somebody, when I didn’t have a child. I loved giving Miles that childhood. Nobody ever questioned it because, it’s like, if you are sort of the first then you get to… I mean, no one could say ‘Your child is not allowed to be here.’ I had attained a certain level of status as a chef in Pittsburgh that you would need to have that. And so, I also thought it was my responsibility as having this bit of celebrity or status, to make these things okay, because everybody should be able to do that.

Zandarelli: When I got pregnant, I was worried because the timing was awful (Zandarelli and her husband had just opened Fairlane, in Mt. Lebanon), and she said ‘No, this is your business. You can bring her to work with you, it’s yours and she can be here with you. I stayed home for two months, and then brought a pack-and-play to work, and I wore my Baby Bjorn, and I worked full days with an infant. And it was empowering to see that she had done it, and she was an example of how to do that, and do it effectively.”

Sonja Finn: It’s just impossible to be a working mom, especially in the first 10 years. It’s impossible and you just make it possible. And, there was no family running this restaurant. It was me. My husband had his whole own job. It was me.

Olja Finn: We were having dinner at Dinette, and would often take Miles. And we would walk in, and Sonja would be working, and he would sit with us so he could see his mom. But then, he would wiggle out at any chance, and say, ‘I know these people,’ and would go and say hi. And once this couple stopped him to talk to him. And he came back, and he said, ‘Would you like to meet these people? They’re good friends of mine.’ And he just met them. 

Novick: I think that Sonja sort of normalized bringing kids to a restaurant just by having Miles there. Miles, he wasn’t screaming or taking tantrums, but he’d be loud, or he’d be moving around, or standing at the table and eating. And there were people who could be snotty about it. And then, Sonja would come over and be like, ‘Oh, thank you for coming, how’s your food?’ Then she’d say, ‘Hi, Miles,’ and he’d be like, ‘Hi, Mommy,’ and you could totally see them feel bad. Last night, my husband and I were at Soba at like, 8:30 or 9:00, and there was a couple there with a two-year old in the booth. And I was like, ‘Ahh… that’s like Miles.’ Little does that couple know that Sonja paved the way. 

In 2017, Dinette became one of the first restaurants in Pittsburgh to eliminate tipping for front-of-the-house staff, fulfilling a vision that Finn had for the restaurant since its inception.

Sonja Finn: Coming into Pittsburgh, opening a restaurant in 2008. Like, we’re going to have an open kitchen, and not offer bottled water, and you can’t make substitutions, and we’re not taking reservations, and we only serve espresso… I just did not think that I could go no tipping to start. So what I saw in 2017, I just decided that I have had this restaurant for almost nine years, and if I was going to continue with this, I was going to have the restaurant I wanted to have. Which was no tipping.

Gigler: The thing about the no-tipping was that you could tell it was coming from a place where she just exuded care for her staff. She did it for the right reason, and she really was ahead of the curve in that sense.

Sonja Finn: It worked out great. It was amazing. It was difficult in terms of affording it. But the feeling was great there. And my servers were happy. I think everyone should know going into a job how much they’re going to be paid. And I think it just let us get to the very essence of what we are, which is a group of people who enjoy serving people, enjoy offering hospitality, and then a group of customers who enjoy hospitality. There was a mutual respect there that had been established.

In March, 2020, Finn and her staff were paying close attention to news about the COVID-19 pandemic. The restaurant was among the first to close voluntarily in Pittsburgh, before a state-wide mandate closed in-person dining in restaurants across Pennsylvania. 

Sonja Finn: There was some talk about it, obviously it was in New York, and maybe that was the day we had the first case in Allegheny County. So, we removed the paper menus, and we removed all the vases from the table, and then we took out a couple of the tables. I took seats away from the bar. But people came that night. They said, ‘We came out to support you. And this is the place we want to eat, because we know how careful you are, and we trust this place.’” I came in on Sundays and did a detailed cleaning, and it just felt like that Saturday night service, I could tell it was a hurried cleanup, and I just got the feeling my staff was scared. So, I immediately said, ‘We’re going to close.’ We don’t know about this virus, and I want to make sure my staff is safe, and my customers are safe.

Baumer: I think the mindset as a human was like, ‘Oh, OK, this will be three weeks.’ Then, Sonja called me and said, ‘We need to have a conversation, and you need to file for unemployment now.

Sonja Finn: It’s one of those things we could have never foreseen. But it’s one of those things where it’s like, this is why doing the right thing is always good for the long game. It ended with me being able to make this decision, prior to the government telling anyone that we had to shut down, because we didn’t know if it was safe. I had been paying unemployment for 11 years. And since everybody was getting their unemployment based on what they were actually making, not tips, the system worked as well as it could.

After the mandate was lifted and restaurants adopted new practices, including outdoor dining and expanded takeout services, Dinette remained closed throughout 2020. 

Sonja Finn: I didn’t come to the realization until December [2020] that we were closing, because I needed to make sure that I could secure moving out in the lease. So, from April moving on, I realized that it wasn’t just two weeks we were going to be closed. It was such an odd moment. I was in flux, thinking, ‘How am I going to reopen? What is my life going forward?’ When it was finally time to move out, it was sad. I just moved everything. I put everything in a van, and it’s all in my basement. So, if anyone wants some chairs…

Baumer: I went in there, and I did a deep clean of the restaurant, and when I was putting food away and really cleaning, I felt like I was shutting down the restaurant. She did consider a takeout model for a second.

Sonja Finn: The way I could run Dinette in that moment would not allow it to function in that way for me. It was no longer creating, in my opinion, good jobs. It wasn’t promoting sustainability because to go is just not sustainable. So, that was how the immediate shutdown became a permanent shutdown. And it was always up in the air, I was just sort of trying to figure out whether I could bring it back to what it needed the purpose it needed to fulfill. And, I’m a single, working mother, and Miles goes to Pittsburgh Public School. So, when I closed Dinette, his school didn’t begin in person until September 2021. So, I’m also part of the epidemic of middle and lower class women who had to leave their jobs to make up for the childcare that wasn’t provided. So, you know. Everything sort of works until it doesn’t.

Hegarty: It was a huge part of my life, but at the same time, I felt a little bit relieved because I know and trust her, and she’s going to do the right thing for herself and her community and her family. I almost love when things end because I think that’s important, like, not every chapter is supposed to last forever.

Sonja Finn: I think I would have never been able to close Dinette. Because I felt this duty to the customers and community and to my staff. And that was a joy. And so it’s hard to do it, because it does feel like you are failing that community if you make a personal decision to move away. But I think I would have had to figure out a way to expand, for me to grow and do more,  while maintaining Dinette.

Zandarelli: I love Sonja. I mean I would follow her anywhere. She was… it always just felt like one step ahead of what everybody else was doing. It’s just so missed. I mean, I grieved it more than when we closed our own restaurant.

Hoffman: Dinette, it remains one of my favorite restaurants ever. The last time I ate there was in the fall before the pandemic, and I just remember that it always lived up to my memory of it. And that’s sort of rare with restaurants.

Novick: I think Sonja was a little too early for Pittsburgh. I think, had she come two years later, she would be the Alice Waters of Pittsburgh. Sonja was ahead of her time, and really started a change in food culture that I think is under appreciated. Because I really do think she provided the foundation that allowed a lot of these things that are just now expected.

Hegarty: It was this little restaurant that had just the right amount of seats. Like, Sonja truly put care into every aspect of Dinette, and I feel like that just really showed in everything. It was a magical place.

Sonja Finn: Generally, I have this purposeful life, and I’m very dutiful. And so the idea is that I want to add, I know it can sound corny, but I want to create positive change in the world. My life mission is to make the world a better place, and I can do that with my work. Dinette created good jobs, contributed to the local community. It became, and I didn’t realize it at the time, but it became a way to open up opportunities for women. And to promote sustainability, up and down the food chain. And the way that people think of it as simply a restaurant was by design, because the first task in all of this was proving that I could have a business that could run with sustainability and responsibility as its base, and still be competitive, and financially viable. And it was.

Finn graduated with an MBA in May from Tepper School of Business at Carnegie Mellon, and has moved to Seattle for a position with EY-Parthenon, part of Ernst and Young. 

Sonja Finn: I think that I’ve affected small business, affected social change. And now, I can do it with larger businesses. I’m just going to try to change the world while people say it’s impossible.