Shepherdess' Pies

I'd like to invite my favorite guest blogger back to tag team this experience with me. Take it away, K:

I’m not sure where to start this post.  So many points would be pertinent choices from which to jump.  Let’s try a seriously abridged crack at each one and see how that shakes out for us.  *Ahem*

1.        Since puberty, I have had crazy, jacked up hair, defying not just my wishes, but really nature itself, and all reason, to boot.  Nobody fucking knows how to cut my hair.  I can say and have said, that I have never gotten a good haircut anywhere besides Philip Pelusi (a local salon chain that has some signature (“volumetric”) way of hair-cutting, the details of which are a total mystery to me).  I can also say, and have also said, that I have only gotten good haircuts at Pelusi salons.  Wild.

2.       Pittsburgh’s South Side is the urban neighborhood equivalent of a cum dumpster.  It’s precisely where people go when they’re looking to drink til they blackout/ vomit in the street/ have sex with a stranger in a public bathroom. Parking there is the worst nightmare you could produce from the sickest recesses of your nasty little mind.  I hate the South Side and seize every opportunity to never fucking go anywhere near it.

3.       British food has a reputation for being terrible.  Actually, it’s very delicious.  Pittsburgh’s very own British Pub (Piper’s) has a glowing reputation for its delectable English/Irish fare.

4.        BA and I do most things together, most of the time.  Surely you knew that already.

This seems like a decent foundation for the tale I’ll now begin.

Once every 6 weeks to 4 months, I make a pilgrimage to Pittsburgh’s South Side for a haircut.  I usually try to do this at a time when the nonstop bacchanal over there hits a lull.  As I really do my best to not go to the South Side for any other reason, I often have other things in mind that I wouldn’t mind doing, since I’m there anyway.  On this particular occasion, I convinced BA to meet me over there after work for a trip to the CD Exchange to sell some crap movies for tuppence, a pop-in to the Milkshake Factory for some red velvet ice cream (what?!), and a post-haircut trip to Piper’s, where BA had somehow never yet been.

Ice Cream Not Pictured

That the ice cream was delicious goes without saying.  No one is terribly surprised that the haircut was a great success.  The real heart of this post is what happened once B and I rolled into Piper’s.

The hair cut, BTW, is completely amazing. I literally squealed with delight upon seeing it.

Our waiter was a preposterously genial Irish fellow who flirted like mad with both of us the entire time and earned every cent of his tip.  We started with a couple of beers (Full Pint White Lightning and a Summer LOve which actually tastes exactly like Love) and an appetizer that could best be described as some kind of cheese, some kind of butter, and some kind of mountain of bread and apples.  I don’t know if she remembers more specifics than that.  Whatever kind of whatever it was, it was ridonkulicious.

 Ploughman's Platter

Complete with a discussion about the difference between Merkins and Gherkins. 

I learned what a Merkin was and K learned what a Gherkin was. The More You Know, I guess.

The main event, and really the point of the trip to Piper’s in the first place, was the magnificent order we subsequently placed for 

HERS AND HERS SHEPHERDS' PIE

Mine was lamb and roasted chestnut and sheer heaven.  B’s was a more traditional beef triumph.  Both would’ve been monstrous in size even if we hadn’t eaten a thing all day.  From the perspective of two classy broads who had snarfed ice cream an hour before and just put away a small village’s worth of some-kind-of-appetizer, the task at hand was, shall we say, imposing.

Oh come on, were you really wondering if we ate it all?  BITCH PLZ. We housed that shit, and that Irish waiter couldn’t have been prouder. (At one point, distressed beyond the telling of it, staring down about half of a shepherd's pie, I contemplated throwing in the towel. After much chiding from my lovely counterpart and the also lovely in a very different way waiter, I grabbed my fork with conviction, declared MAN UP!, and continued to visibly distend myself).  It took us days to return to our original size, shape and level of abdominal comfort.  But our glory has never been more vast.


So a new tradition is born. Coiffures and Copious Consumption.