Pittsburgh's Best Food Tours

Burnt Almond Torte, Baklava and a Ghost Story: Pittsburgh's Sweet Treats Food Tour

Fair warning: this isn't a donuts-only tour. It's a Pittsburgh donut tour that also wanders into French pastry, baklava and a milkshake inspired by a holiday side dish, which feels about right for a city built by people who came from everywhere.

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Inside the triangle

Downtown Pittsburgh is a compact wedge of streets pinched between the Allegheny and the Monongahela, small enough to cover on foot in a couple of hours. We meet at Mellon Square Coffee in the lobby of the Omni William Penn, a grand hotel that has put up presidents and steel barons for more than a century.

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Prantl's Bakery, home of the burnt almond torte, opens with a Pittsburgh twist on a donut, with pumpkin and apple joining in come fall. Across the street is Mellon Square itself, a modernist garden sitting on top of a parking garage. Your guide will tell you how that unlikely park came to stand for the city's postwar renaissance.

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Next, buttery croissants at La Gourmandine. Then Market Square, the center of downtown life since the 1700s, for a sweet taste from Nicholas Coffee & Tea, a family roaster right on the square. Milkshake Factory pours shared specialty shakes, one of them inspired by strawberry pretzel salad. (If you didn't grow up here: it's a dessert that somehow ended up on the holiday dinner table, and nobody questions it.) Kids tend to fall for the shakes, or the hot cocoa when it's cold. Sultan Döner Kebab & Baklava brings flaky, honeyed baklava.

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You'll pass the glass spires of PPG Place, and on a nice day the walking tour stretches out to Point State Park, where the two rivers meet and become the Ohio.

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After dark

Once the sun goes down, our Pittsburgh Ghost Tour: Haunted History & Sweet Treats takes a darker route through downtown, with old crimes, lingering spirits and dessert to steady your nerves. By day it's the Pittsburgh Donut & Sweet Treats Tour, five tastings and a lot of downtown history. By night, same sugar, more shivers.