Immigrant restaurateurs create a buffet of options across Pittsburgh

Ulric Joseph, owner of ShadoBeni, prepares vegan Trinidadian food at his Central North Side restaurant, Friday, July 19, 2024. (Photo by Jess Daninhirsch/PublicSource)

Foreign-born entrepreneurs are making their mark across Allegheny County through food, a medium that translates across all languages. It’s a hard road, but there’s help available.

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by Briana Bindus, PublicSource
August 5, 2024

Ulric Joseph emigrated from Trinidad to the United States in 1995 to start his studies at the Maryland Institute College of Art. After marrying a Pittsburgh native, Joseph decided to open what he found was Pittsburgh’s first vegan Trinidadian restaurant, ShadoBeni, in 2019.

Despite a background in academia, Joseph entered the restaurant business, something which he described as “a nightmare.” ShadoBeni opened a year later than planned, due in part to architectural issues with the space, but mostly because of challenges navigating the complexities of getting permits and clearances. 

Joseph felt that the process of opening a restaurant was much harder for a non-native resident. “Once people hear my accent, I get a lot of friction — they act like I don’t know what I’m talking about,” Joseph said. 

To work around this reaction, Joseph would have his wife, an American-born white woman, talk to government and business representatives, such as insurance agents. “I started realizing that, it might not be right, but that’s one of the ways you navigate the space,” Joseph said. 

Despite these initial challenges, Joseph reported that the Central North Side neighborhood, including other businesses, has been entirely welcoming. “From the business community, man, I don’t feel any kind of racism or any prejudice from them. I feel nothing but love to tell you the truth,” Joseph said. “The part about calling and having a bad experience is not indicative of Pittsburgh, it’s indicative of America.” 

Immigrant restaurateurs are spicing up the region’s food scene with their cuisine, but also with their tenacity, creativity and collaboration — both with the communities in which they’re based and with other restaurants. Many of these restaurant owners are able to launch their food businesses with the help of local resources, such as Small Business Development Centers [SBDC], including ones based at University of Pittsburgh and Duquesne University. 

PublicSource spoke to several immigrant owners about their experiences opening a food business — often while learning a city, a culture and even a language.

According to the 2021 Annual Business Survey conducted by the U.S. Census Bureau, 37% of total accommodation and food service businesses in the U.S. have foreign-born owners. This entrepreneurial avenue is one that Catherine Murray, director of commercial lending at the Urban Redevelopment Authority [URA] of Pittsburgh, said she suspects will increase in the coming years. 

The city’s restaurant scene thrives with locally owned eateries, outshining national chains. Murray suggested that this could be because of Pittsburgh’s hilly topography or a smaller amount of foot traffic compared to other metropolitan areas.

David Geiger, the URA’s director of government and strategic affairs, said he thinks it has more to do with Pittsburgh’s city pride. 

“Pittsburghers love to be unique and stand out,” Geiger said, “and so I think we have an overwhelming amount of support for our independent business community, and we like to see local chains thrive and emerge. When it comes to those national chains, it’s not that it’s a bad thing, it’s just not something that’s exciting.”

As his wife encouraged him to open a restaurant, Joseph started off “just selling a few items from Trinidad,” like popular street food doubles and aloo pie, at farmer’s markets in Squirrel Hill and the North Side, where he lives. Business boomed at the markets and Joseph realized, “it was time to make that jump.” 

Joseph decided to base ShadoBeni in the North Side because of community support and few restaurants being located in the Mexican War Streets section. 

Business has been “nonstop,” Joseph said, despite starting to sell food just before the pandemic. He started off with an online ordering system and contactless delivery, which he described as a “saving grace” for getting his business started, officially opening the restaurant space in 2022.

The restaurant’s menu was curated by Joseph and highlights the range of flavors in Trinidadian cuisine, influenced by Trinidad’s colonial past, but with tweaks to appeal to Pittsburgh tastes.

“As a foreigner, you have to be very open to change — with cultural foods and stuff,” Joseph said. “You have to understand that you’re in a different environment and you need to be serving this culture.”

Joseph partners with local farmers instead of going to big food and beverage provisioners. He works with Kretschmann Farms, which helped to concoct a fermented pepper sauce sold at ShadoBeni. Similarly, he’s partnered with Maggie’s Farm to create cocktails. 

“I’m trying to keep it local. I’m a big believer in moving forward and being cognizant of sustainability and the planet,” Joseph said. 

Joseph even worked hand-in-hand with another immigrant-owned restaurant, Jak’s Bakery, on a sandwich called the “Jak Attack.” It had cone-shaped bread made by Bulgarian-influenced Jak’s, which Joseph filled with homemade seitan. 

The Jak Attack ended up being one of ShadoBeni’s best sellers. 

“I think people like the fact that you collaborate locally and that they know these people,” Joseph said, “so I try to keep it fresh. And my immigrant friends, the ones who’ve opened restaurants and stuff, even the American ones, I try to work with them always.” 

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After migrating from Peru to the U.S. on a student visa in 2001, Shelbin Santos’s first priority was learning English. 

Once Santos got to know the language, she started working for a corporation, but soon realized she was feeling unfulfilled. In 2007, Santos pursued her lifelong dream and opened her Peruvian restaurant, Chicken Latino, in the Strip District, where the menu featured pollo a la brasa, or Peruvian rotisserie chicken. 

“Just like in the United States, you have pizza shops on every corner, right? In Peru, you have chicken places,” Santos said, “so there are chicken joints in every neighborhood. … That’s something very, very common on the weekend, for a family to just go grab some chicken.”

Santos recounted how difficult it was to get on her feet, including 16-hour days because she didn’t have employees to help her out.

“People don’t realize you have to do the accounting, the managing part. The cooking is the easiest part — the paperwork is the hardest part,” Santos said.

Santos had to take a food certification exam despite not being fluent in English. Each step of the way was a challenge for her: “Trust me, I had tears coming out of my eyes for every single step,” Santos said. 

Chicken Latino grew to be a huge success in her eyes, but they had to leave the Strip District because of rising rents before the pandemic. Santos found a new location in Beechview, where there’s a growing Latino community, and stayed afloat during COVID. 

“It makes me happy to be in the kitchen and making meals for someone who is really appreciative and thanks me because they can feel the love that I put in the food,” Santos said. “Sometimes I go home with $5 in my pocket, but I’m happy that I’m doing something that I love instead of waking up and dreading to go to work.” 

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Marlyn Parra came to Pittsburgh in 2015 with her family to escape the political climate in Venezuela. When the family couldn’t find Venezuelan cuisine in the area, they decided to put their expertise to the test locally. 

The family had run a restaurant, called Gusto Criollo, back in Venezuela. Now they’ve been sharing traditional Venezuelan food with the Pittsburgh community for six years from a South Side location, adding a food truck along the way and planning a second location in Lawrenceville.

“When our food truck goes to a festival, people already know our empanadas there,” Parra said. 

The bodega-style layout inside the restaurant features racks of snacks, candy and foods native to Venezuela and other Latin countries. 

“I think diversity is good, especially in a country like this one, where you can have so many people coming from everywhere,” Parra said. “If you don’t have the chance to travel to another country, at least you can have the food … so if you come in here, you have a chance to have Venezuela.” 

Many of the employees at Cilantro y Ajo are Venezuelan. Because of temporary legal protection, Venezuelans have the chance to work locally. 

“They can stay with me for a year, maybe two,” Parra said.  “But, at least I had the chance to give them the chance to have a job, and feel like home, because most of them come here by themselves and it can be hard.” 

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Bener Ozen went to culinary high school in his native Turkey before studying hospitality management. 

Ozen made his way to Pittsburgh 12 years ago, guided by a friend who lived here, to participate in English language training. Originally, he was planning to finish his training and work in a hotel, but his passion for food changed that. 

Now Ozen is the owner of two restaurants: Cafe Moulin in Shadyside and Upstreet Diner in Squirrel Hill. 

In 2013, it was difficult to navigate the process of opening Cafe Moulin. He started preparing the restaurant space before getting clearances, and despite trying to take two steps forward, the requirements he needed set him two steps back.

“Maybe right now, it’s not as hard,” Ozen said, “but back in 2013, it was hard to find how to open a place, what is the process — it was troubling. Going to the Health Department, the fire department, then city permits. In Turkey, it was all in one [place]. But, it was a good experience for me, because every day I learned something new.” 

Ozen catered the restaurant’s cuisine options to the neighborhoods they were in. Shadyside, he noted, has a lot more “European-style” establishments, and Squirrel Hill has more “ethnic people,” from Jewish to Middle Eastern communities.

Ozen’s goal isn’t to open a multitude of restaurants for the “money grab,” but instead, to create an experience and satisfy his customers. 

“I’m happy that Pittsburgh gave me that chance,” Ozen said. “I came here from Turkey — different country, different origin, different mentality — but they welcomed me. That’s why I’m always appreciative.” 

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Tzveti Gintcheva came from Bulgaria to the U.S. in 1999 for a full scholarship to Chatham University. Gintcheva worked in a corporate job for about a year after graduating, but followed her dreams into the food industry and is now a 24-year veteran.

Toni Pais, her early mentor and an immigrant from Portugal, sponsored her for an H1B visa. Later, in November 2021, Gintcheva opened Bocadillos. Her menu’s “garmo,” or cold appetizer, options are inspired by Balkan influences, along with Spanish, Portuguese, Italian and Asian flavors.

For the first year and a half, Gintcheva had to grapple with the reputation for “roughness” of the previous bar at the location, the Stone Front Witch Way Inn. Bocadillos, Gintcheva explains, is a “collaboration” with the clientele: “We bring the food and beverage, but they bring the cheer and the diversity and the positive aspect of the community.” 

Gintcheva is continuing to grow the bar’s community with specially curated foods. In July, she spotlighted Puerto Rico in a photo essay displayed on the bar’s walls, and the chef did a pop-up event with mofongo, a Puerto Rican dish featuring plantains. 

Lately, Gintcheva has been reflecting on her past and sense of belonging.

“As an immigrant, those are the sort of things that have been on my mind lately: Do I belong in Bulgaria? I went [back] and tried to live there,” she said. “Do I belong here? Is [Pittsburgh] home for me? And my answer to that question is, this is home for me. I want to do the best that I can for this community.”

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Walk into Jak’s Bakery and prepare for freshly baked Bulgarian pastries, followed by genuine conversation with the shop’s owner, Jak Latinova. He believes in something more than just “grab and go,” and thinks that it’s in a bakery’s nature to bring the community together.

In his native country, Bulgaria, Latinova owned a bakery for 15 years before migrating to the U.S., and then continued running the shop for seven years from across the world. He and his wife, Molly Freedman Latinova, now focus on the Bloomfield location they opened in November after doing pop-ups and farmers markets for more than six years. 

Latinova didn’t know any English when he moved to Pittsburgh in 2015 at age 34. He said he was able to overcome that “because baking is universal.” 

As Latinova gained popularity around Pittsburgh, the county Health Department reached out, advising him that he needed a certificate to be a food vendor. Latinova found the permitting process relatively straightforward. 

“People think it’s stressful to deal with the city and the Health Department,  but go back to Bulgaria and you’ll see what is freaking scary: to talk to the health department,” Latinova said. 

“I can relate to a lot of immigrants that have a fear of authorities … but here it’s so easy and communicative. In Bulgaria, the health department will come and kind of try everything possible just to give you a fine. In one year, I had 13 inspections from the health department on a political reason.” 

Latinova’s primary focus in Bloomfield is building a team of employees. He has customers who come from places all over the world, from the Netherlands to other neighborhoods — something, he recalls, was “never a thing” in Bulgaria. 

Latinova takes pride in being a small-business owner in Pittsburgh, because, in his eyes, “it’s a crime to go to [chain] restaurants in Pittsburgh.

“Chain restaurants have their purposes, their customers, [but] in the city, in a place like this – urban, very walkable place — I don’t see a reason.”

Briana Bindus is an editorial intern at PublicSource and can be reached at [email protected] 

This story was fact-checked by Ladimir Garcia

This article first appeared on PublicSource and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

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