Picklesburgh returns for 11th year this weekend

By RACHEL WILKINSON
TribLive

The oldest pickles connected to Picklesburgh sit in a refrigerated case at the Senator John Heinz History Center — just a few miles from where Henry John Heinz founded his company as the Anchor Pickle and Vinegar Works in 1869. But the sweet pickles predate even the Heinz Company, discovered aboard a Pittsburgh-built steamboat that sank in the Missouri River in 1856. Excavated more than a century later, the 160-year-old pickles remain bright green and still edible in their original glass jars.

We know this, said Heinz History Center President and CEO Andrew Masich, because when one of the archaeologists first found a jar, “he popped the cork out of the top, reached in, ate one of the pickles and didn’t die.

“In Pittsburgh, we count that as edible,” Masich said.

While those pickles remain behind glass, the region’s pickle obsession continues as Picklesburgh returns for its 11th year from Thursday to Sunday. More than 200,000 people are expected to fill Downtown to celebrate the region’s century-and-a-halfold pickle tradition. Slated to be the largest-ever Picklesburgh, the free annual festival will expand last year’s footprint to the newly renovated Market Square and Arts Landing.

Among this year’s creations are pickle pizza, egg rolls stuffed with pickle and kimchi, fried pickles on a stick, pickle cotton candy and classic dill and sweet pickles.

For dessert lovers, pickle sweets include Patti’s Pastries pickle-flavored cupcakes, pickle fudge by Copper Coast Confections and Millie’s Homemade Ice Cream’s polarizing pickle sorbet, a blend of dill pickle brine and sugar.

The Brinery at Two Acre Farm, based in Uniontown, will debut a root beer-flavored pickle called the Rusty Root Beer Stampede. The root beer pickle is made with ginger beer, sarsaparilla candies and root beer extract — evoking the taste of old-fashioned, barrel-aged root beer — to contrast the sourness of pickle brine.

The specialty pickle is part of The Brinery at Two Acre Farm’s “Boots and Brine” Western theme, including souvenir cups, an annual “gimmick” the family-run business chooses each year to stand out at Picklesburgh. The Olson family started at the festival 11 years ago doing food demonstrations and came on as a vendor in the festival’s second year. Like many returning vendors, they expect Picklesburgh to be their largest event of the year and plan to serve 18,000 people.

“I can’t wait to be wearing a cowboy hat for four days,” Wyatt Olson said of working the family’s Picklesburgh booth. “Pittsburgh loves some pickles … and nothing’s as big as Picklesburgh.”

Outside the festival footprint, 14 Downtown businesses are serving pickled delights as the A Taste of Picklesburgh event continues through July 19. Organized by the Pittsburgh Downtown Partnership as a “pickle-infused preview” of the festival, participating restaurants include the Original Oyster House, Space Bar, Las Velas (which is serving a pickle taco) and Olive or Twist, where diners can toast with a gherkin martini.

Beyond the food lineup, pickleball joins Picklesburgh for the first time as the pickleball courts at Arts Landing open. Another staple, Picklesburgh’s Dill-Cathlon Games, returns on Thursday, featuring three brine-filled competitions: the now decade-old pickle juice drinking contest, pickle eating and bobbing for pickles.

Farther afield, The Plaza at North Shore debuts Pickle! At the Silent Disco on July 18 — a pickle-themed silent disco party with late-night pickled food and drink specials.

During the festival, Downtown hotel occupancy is expected to rival April’s NFL Draft, according to Visit Pittsburgh, providing another economic boost.

Last year, Picklesburgh generated about $20 million in direct visitor spending with just under $1 million in sales tax revenue.

Amid the modern festivities, the Heinz History Center maintains a booth where it tells visitors about Pittsburgh’s pickle history. The bigger draw, said Masich, is the chance to buy a pickle pin — a throwback to the ones Henry John Heinz passed out at the 1893 World’s Fair in Chicago. Stuck with a booth 100 steps up on an upper floor, the young food purveyor couldn’t attract anyone to try his pickles. Heinz hired local boys to throw gold-colored flyers that invited spectators up to claim a prize: the original pickle pin. More than a million people came, and Heinz and his pickles got a write-up in The New York Times.

“That really catapulted the marketing genius of H.J. Heinz and the pickle image,” Masich said.

To Masich, Heinz’s ingenuity lives on at Picklesburgh, where someone is always finding a way to get people excited about pickles.

“He would love the enterprise that is evident in all these pickle products out there, and I think he’d jump in with both feet,” Masich said. “So it’s altogether fitting and proper to me that Pittsburgh should be known as Picklesburgh, at least for a weekend in the summer, and that we should honor our dill tradition here.”