Get ready East Liberty – new restaurants are on the way!
The owners of Muddy Waters, the East Liberty oyster bar that you’ve come to know and love, are currently working on not one, but two new projects, planned to open later in 2017.
As we reported in early March, the Twisted Frenchman, Muddy Water’s neighbor on the right, is in the process of moving around the corner to a new Baum Boulevard location. Their new two-story location will feature two restaurants, with the more casual “Bar Frenchman,” on the first floor, and the world-class “Twisted Frenchman” tasting restaurant on the floor above.
Though Muddy Waters will surely miss their neighbor, they are taking advantage of the vacancy to open a 90s hip-hop themed fried chicken restaurant called “the Coop.” Owner Adam Kucenic states that the concept is simple, but very delicious.
“We want to make a fast, casual, fried chicken spot,” says Kucenic. “We have been traveling around the country, visiting different fried chicken restaurants, and practicing our own thing. It will be an urban, street style type of place. The menu will be small, but full of flavor. We also want to have frozen cocktails.”
On the other side of Muddy Waters, where the “Global Food Market” stood for many years, Muddy Waters is working on a Poke Bowl restaurant called “the Big Kahuna.”
Inspired by the fast paced Poke Bowl restaurants that are popping up across the country, Muddy Waters hopes this spot will provide the fast and healthy lunch option that East Liberty is currently lacking. The Big Kahuna will have a Hawaiian feel, and serve customers fresh fish and fresh juices. This location will be more of a “take out” spot with limited seating.
Kucenic is very excited to be adding this new restaurants to the booming East Liberty food scene.
“This area is coming along so fast, even in just the past two years, so much as changed. We try to find the next thing that the city needs, and work to contribute it. We started with the oyster bar, and now we want to do a fried chicken spot, and a poke bowl restaurant,” says Kucenic.
If you can’t wait to try their fried chicken, Good Food Pittsburgh has a secret for you – Muddy Waters is testing their fried chicken sandwiches on a secret late night menu, Friday nights from 11:00 PM to 1:00 AM.
The Coop and the Big Kahuna hope to be open by the end of 2017. For updates on the progress, follow Muddy Water’s Facebook page.
UPDATE, Tuesday, May 9: In response to community backlash on social media and online, Muddy Water’s owner Adam Kucenic tells the Pittsburgh City Paper and WESA that the restaurant will be changing concepts, and names.
Nice diverse options. Keep it coming to East Liberty
‘Diverse’…???
Yes diverse, Jesus it’s only a fricking restaurant not a political statement, what is your problem, they will employ local people.
The people who can afford to live in that area probably don’t need to work at a ‘fast casual’ chicken joint to make ends meet and those who can’t probably won’t be helped much by working for minimum wage or tips at a restaurant where nothing on the menu will cost more than ten bucks sooo yea. And that word ‘politics’, I’m not sure you’re using it right.
Kick black people out of east liberty and appropriate their culture too? Sounds about right Pittsburgh…
The owners apparently believe that the concept of appropriation is a “liberal fantasy” as they have been forwarding a link to an article stating just that to people who are raising concerns with them.
Misappropriation with a side of gentrification. Neither will stop until Black people buy back/own the neighborhoods they live in and reinvest in them. Ownership provides the political power to stop gentrification. Without it we survive by other people’s “good will”.
People are fighting for their homes and you are making a mockery out of it! Disturbing.
You probably will remove my comment because you’re biased median only show the responses that agree with you’re article
Wow. Just wow. Clueless appropriation and gentrification at its absolute worst. These are terrible people.
“This area is coming along so fast, even in just the past two years, so much as changed. We try to find the next thing that the city needs, and work to contribute it.”
What the city needs…
What Pittsburgh needs is affordable, stable housing market. I know Muddy Waters isn’t ACTION Housing, but they do deal a lot with real estate…
This is a totally tone-deaf venture on several levels. Co-oping black culture/food to open a restaurant in a black neighborhood? Bad idea. Opening a restaurant that clearly caters to the yuppy brunch clique (i see the pics of the $9 cockatails) and not to the residents of the neighborhood whose real estate and culture you are theiving? Worse idea. What world are the owners of this venture inhabiting? It surely isnt the reality that the rest of us live in.
Also, didnt you learn anything from what happened to Union Pig and Chicken?
Shame on you.
YOU moved shadow lounge for this crap BOOOOOOOOOOOOO!
Cultural appropriation at its finest!
Pittsburgh, the city where white people are free to be whoever they want to be while POC are swept under the rug and beat up by police. #shame
Because development in a struggling neighborhood is bad?? East Liberty was a sea of boarded-up abandoned buildings and riddle with crime. Since 2008 development has helped lower the crime rate a staggering 49%. Look it up in a report by the East Liberty Development, Inc. That’s a non-profit created in 1979 with a mission of fostering the revitalization of the community – by working WITH neighborhood stakeholders like the residents. So I don’t understand how it is a bad thing, especially a small idea by a restaurant owner. When neighborhoods sit in ruins for decades because the people living in them don’t change it, so groups are formed to by the neighborhood to better the neighborhood – all in line with financial assistance and affordable housing for residents of course. Don’t take it out on a restaurant owner – blame federal, state or local government, blame crappy landlords who give no notice the building lease is up and *they* tell residents they have to leave. Saying a fried chicken restaurant makes a mockery of people fighting for their homes makes NO sense. Guess what – I’m from the south, I love fried chicken. And I’m white. Am I angry because he’s “culture appropriating” the south?? Should I get angry when the owner decides to add grits to the menu?? Or play just Debbie Gibson and Tiffany as the 90’s theme?? No. Stop trying to make this into something it’s not.
They aren’t reducing crime. They’re displacing a community. If you want to reduce crime, then you need programs that help alleviate impoverishment. All this does is raise housing costs so high that the impoverished are forced elsewhere. Let’s not dust our neighbors under the rug, shall we?
Well sure… Unless you work for a living…
Then those programs are what – A.) Prevents poor people from getting ahead by raising the first rung of the ladder. And B.) creates more poor from the ranks of those who were barely making ends meet before the program was funded.
Rejection of jobs in your neighborhood keeps property values down, as well as preventing the poor people who own them from selling them at a *profit* and becoming less poor, or rich…
Rejection of jobs is folly and the cause of your own crisis…
“Rejection of jobs?”
Please. As if some suburbanite Chad from Churchill knows ANYTHING about what people in the city, let alone any people of color or people of poverty, experience on a day to day basis in ANY aspect of their lives.
I’m sure you’ll go on and on as if you have even a tiny modicum of expertise about how awful “city” people (we know what that’s code for) are when you put on your GOOD sweatpants to waddle into Eat ‘n Park. You can share your unremarkable brand of certain moral judgment with other people who have only ever seen people of color on the news or that one time at a stop light dahntahn (oooh, close call!)
East Liberty 2017 is a repeat of too many past “urban renewal” mistakes to even count. People care and will continue to care. Don’t trouble yourself, Chad.
Do you know why people are upset?
That sounds like the way to go – Kick the people of low means, power, access and ability to make change in the nieghborhood/community they actually do not own but call home, appropriate their culture, blame them for the situation they did not cause, then tell them to do something about it when none of us, not even some of us who have more means and access, don’t have a seat anywhere near the table.. F.U.
There is a clear disconnect between what ever was started in ’79 and what ultimately happened. The developers who had the final word in the white hipster utopia that has blossomed clearly didn’t care about the community that existed before.
East Liberty Development, Inc is a community development corporation that has systematically bought abandoned homes and buildings that are criminal hotspots, bought out slumlords throughout the neighborhood and redeveloped the properties into stable, affordable and market-rate housing. The non-profit met regularly with residents to hear their concerns and ideas. Most of the housing the group has developed or renovated is permanent affordable housing for people with low incomes. And they did it with a huge risk of having to borrow most of the money for the purchases and renovations for the residents.. Do you call that a disconnect?? As for the community that existed before – one of the most dangerous and crime-ridden in the city riddled with abandoned buildings and vacants lots and some of the worst public housing projects in the entire city – where some residents would throw things at you for just walking by. So let’s not hold the residents accountable. You don’t want residents to be blamed for even having a fraction of an impact on the downturn of the community. But you’ll easily *blame* a small business owner and a business that hasn’t even opened up yet?? What sense does that make. Your “blame” is misdirected. Playing the victim doesn’t get anyone anywhere. EVERYONE has the power to make a difference, everyone has a choice.
This is why Donald Trump won. This is why voting rights will be stripped. This why programs for those in need will be stripped. This is why women will be treated terribly. This why education will be cut. This is why certain groups of people will be openly treated terribly.
We are fighting about a restaurant. Blaming a restaurant for poverty.
I’m a POC and as liberal as they come, and I 100% agree with you. People need to pick their battles!!!
why we lost is because people like you think it’s a different issue. It’s a product of systematic racism and classism. but if it’s your issue in particular, then it’s not a “big deal”.
I agree that this is why Donald Trump won, and why liberal Democrats will continue to lose. The nonstop meltdowns and ‘outrage of the day’ by the political Left is tiresome and old.
As a person of color myself who also happens to live in the area, I, for one, support the continued development of East Liberty. The anger of the people commenting on this page is totally misdirected! Stop attacking small business owners and other people who are contributing to the improvement of the neighborhood and stimulating the local economy,
What cracks me up is the fried chicken place is going to be casual with meals under $10. Would these SJW’s be happier if they dude opened a French-themed restaurant serving French food that started at $30-a-plate????
Mon Dieux! Too many people with too much time on theirs hands just looking to be offended, rather than pursuing the entrepreneurial spirit and opening their own restaurant – seems like we have a plethora of people posting here who are experts as to how to own and operate a restraint…..
Can’t wait to eat at the Coop! Big fan of 90s hip hop and fried chicken. If its good they will have tons of business in sure! 🙂
Please cultural appropriation is left wing ignorant nonsense… Egyptians wore dreadlocks long before the Rastafarians existed, and I hate to break it to you, but Fried Chicken was brought to the United States by the Scottish immigrants to the south.
Personally I grew up on Southern Fried Chicken, not the swill that get served in Pittsburgh, and honestly lived here for over 30 years now and haven’t found a restaurant run by anyone of any ethnicity in this town that knows how to make halfway decent fried chicken.
Not a fan of hip hop, to me hip hop is to music, what McDonald’s is to fine dining, but I will give the coop a shot, provided they put out a decent product. My guess is, however, it will be like most of the stuff in this area, mediocre product being wrapped up in some “experience” to try to justify highly overpriced offerings to wanna be yinzer hipsters.
Funny you mention Egyptians with dreadlocks. I’ve never seen that in movies where Egyptians are played by Sigourney Weaver, Elizabeth Taylor, and Christian Bale. Why is that? And were the Scottish immigrants that brought fried chicken to the South cooking it themselves and that’s what we’re eating today, or were slaves cooking it? (with seasoning).
I’m confused here. “Co-opting black culture”, “appropriating black culture”, “clueless appropriation and gentrification at its worst”. Don’t cultures want other cultures to adopt their ways? Wouldn’t it be better if “white” Pittsburgh became more “black” culturally? But more to the point. A restaurant whose entrees range from $29 to $50 (http://thetwistedfrenchman.com/) is being replaced by one who’s entrees are all under $10 is gentrification? This palce will be imminently more affordable for the neighborhho. If the KFC that used to be on Penn near Negley moved in here would that be OK or would that be culturally insensitve too? Its a storefront – its not going to be affordable housing so why is that part of the discussion? And this space was never The Shadow Lounge. And the concept of “black neighborhoods”. Aren’t we all trying to get away from segregation – we’re not there and have a long way to go but if your mindset is “black” and “white” neighborhoods its never going to change
I think all of you people defending the appropriation are missing the point. No one is against small business or economic development. We are against being raped and robbed yet again. How is this any different than record companies stealing our music then the money as well. Or the DeBeers and the diamonds? And on and on. It’s not that you don’t see that, you won’t, and there is a difference. The anger isn’t about chicken and hip-hop, it’s a symptom of the larger issue. Pissing on the “little/black” guy and telling him he should be happy about it. So just go ahead and say, “I didn’t steal it, they gave it to me” While we say, “it wasn’t theirs to give”. Then you say, “oh well I like it, so I’m keeping it”. or “it’s not my fault I’m going to profit from systematic racism, at least I’m doing in to your face”
I promise to never eat there.