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Wednesday 5pm - 8pm Thursday 12pm - 12am Friday 5pm - 10pm Saturday 5pm - 8pm Sunday 5pm - 12am

Apteka

APTEKA is a Central & Eastern European cuisine focused restaurant +bar + natural wine bottle shop. This is a vegetable restaurant. Everything is vegan. ( * )
(603)

11/01/2026

Lonely No More

November brings opportunity.

11/1 hometown hero - dj Cutups - soundtracks night shoveling and the opening of trapdoors in basements with dark ambient, occult synth, witch house, goth and death rock.

11/8 Dylan Cooper
‘Full Plate for a light palate’
With fingers spread wide and arms stretched out into thick mist- Dylan works out what’s in front and all around. Record spinning - deep atmospheric breaths and jazzy woodwinds with stringed embellishments paint pictures of surreal pastoral nights.

11/15
Iris Kang & Alice Hu put in the time, connect the dots, map out the plan, and work with what they know- downtempo/dubwise/experimental electronic.
Heady but you want to move your body.
Healthy and fun.
Fruit smoothie.

11/22
Alanoma is broadcasting the news on the far end of the AM dial. A surprise old ‘how to’ handbook in a funny place. Expect where’s-that-even-from electronics, future jazz, music for the people -as long as those people are weird.

11/29 Dave Zak & Brian Sieworek dress for an all vinyl Sunday - down to the un**es.
On the star weekend of November- these cats are winding up and winding down at the same time
🤔
These lovely souls explore what a good soundtrack and helpful lighting can do for thanksgiving leftovers.

9-11p every Sunday.
C u then :)

10/22/2026

The legendary Zsolt Sütő- aka Strekov 1075- aka ‘Strekov’ - is at Apteka next Friday 10/30.
🫢

The great warrior poet w**emaker from Slovakia is in North America and is taking the classic road trip from Montreal to Pittsburgh to spend the night with us:p

Next Friday - we’re celebrating his w**es- - and setting the scene with a ✨special✨ Hungarian/Slovak dinner.

Truly hard to believe- to say we’re thrilled is an understatement. Been super fans since we opened

10/14/2026

Apteka is on vacation for the next 2 weeks for our annual Fall break.
Closed October 15-25.

Don’t worry- back before you know it:)

10/04/2026

Lonely No More
Every Sunday 9-11p

~except~

Only 2 Lonely No More nights this month because the restaurant is taking its fall break October 15-25th!

10.4- Barbara Broadcast - unparalleled expert and enthusiast of sound - has planned a journey into the world of European library records tonight. Dear friend and unmatched vinyl collector of the rare and barely known- take the hand being held out to you and go along with this special daisy chain guided history tour of music crafted for tv and film.

10.11- DJ b-CZAR - like the first house on the block with carved pumpkins- it’s heroes like this that make October what it is. Expect spooky electronica, midnight musings, and other worldly vibes with a whole bag of beats that crawl up walls and creep down streets😈.

The rest of the month is up to you😘

09/27/2026

Made a special thing for Making Time in Philadelphia last week- have a little bit left to cozy up to our current N/A drink line up with a few extra special treats —>

A. *Allegheny Ade*
fun one -> purchased green yaupon (the only naturally caffeinated native plant in North America!) carbonated with a mountain of we-picked tall & fragrant goldenrod and linden flower, Zach picked swamp rose and barberry + little things here and there.
Naturally caffeinated-> rolls in like a club mate 💪💪

B. Kompot Musujący
sparkling dark tart cherry kompot made from our annual cherry picking pilgrimage at Jim’s on Lake Ontario. Steam juiced -> lightly sweetened -> carbed. Damson plum on the decks when we run through our stock:)

C. Chmielówa Ogrodowa
sparkling hops lemonade made from sun tea steeped hops grown and picked from the Apteka garden:) The gentle and long extraction pulls out some of the tropical fruit notes with just a waft of bitterness.

D. Kwas Chlebowy
fermented rye bread soda made from our bread scraps. Last bit until it retires until likely next spring/summer. Slavic warm weather crusher

Sodas —>
E. limited run of blueberry + spruce
plus the regular line up:
F. black pepper
G. poppyseed
H. celeryseed:)

c u soon :^)

09/06/2026

lonely no more
every sunday 9-11p

lonely september line-up -—>

tonite!
9.6 The wandering eye of Pittsburgh- Dave Bernabo- builds up with earth music meets paranoid America meets awe and wonder, with selections from where American avant-garde meets pop music, funk that features Junie Morrison, German jazz, calypso, and some soundtrack music.

9.13 Spaghetti Dinner (aka our Anni) wades through a romantic off and on relationship of dense distortion and intimate ambient cadence. Drapery of foggy shoegaze, lonely ballads, frustrated rants, and chewy strings.

9.20 Heartthrob PVKVSV makes dinner- expect ladles of stewed feelings to help usher the transition from summer into fall. Indie pop, jazz-grunge, alt rock & rnb, experimental/instrumental hip-hop.

9/27 Flyswatter Trio +2
Live Jazz!
lineup: Jon Birkholz, Riley Young, Patrick Breiner, Andy Bauer, Nick Larsen
work through compositions of Paul Motian performed by musicians from Baltimore, Pittsburgh, and New York City.
Serious stuff - consider reading something dense before you come or at least wear a cool hat or something.

09/06/2026

Last few days of this year’s short + sweet sunflower season:)

Been running iterations of this dish every year since 2018 when after years of trying with local farms, our bud Todd Tiny Seed Farm grew lovely heads -> picked at the sweet spot where the seeds are almost full size but without shells -> we can grill them and eat the seeds kind of like corn off the cob.

It’s a difficult harvest with a short window when the flowers, all ripening at different moments, are perfect for picking, but few years ago we cracked the code with Reese Medina Sunflower Farm . Reese (awesome dude in slide 4) plants a bunch of fields in two week successions, with the main purpose of being the backdrop for baby/engagement/family/occassional bo***ir photos. It’s an ideal set-up — a quarter of a million flowers all unsprayed, all ripening at slightly different stages, with tons of flowers to pick through for the right ones in spite of whatever nature’s been throwing at season.

This week was the last good picking for the season —> the silver lining that it was one of the loveliest harvests of 300 big beauties.

Truth be told, it’s kind of a pain in the ass to give up 7 hours every week to bring these guys back to Pgh, but it’s a dish we forever dig. It’s a North American native that was brought over to Europe, shopped around until it found a great customer in the Russian empire which helped nail its prominent place in East Euro culinary tradition. Oil & seeds are obvious, but what is really popular at markets and more of a rarity here are whole heads of sunflowers with fully developed seeds for snacking around the table. It’s always felt cool to run a dish that built around this iconic big flower that’s kind of a jazzy echo result between North America and Europe.

Słonecznik
immature sunflower head roast over the wood-fired grill, brushed with a gastrique made mostly from reduced apple scraps and Peachy’s ACV, brushed again with slow roast sunchoke + butter made from cultured sunflower seeds, dusted with dried and pulverized : sun petals + smoked cab + onion + fermented green tomato + coriander + fermented beet.
Sweet/sour/smoky/funky.

Here today & Thursday then next year:)

08/02/2026

Lonely No More
August is living.

Sundays 9-11p

8/2 Mother Mushroom -
soundtracks the depths of chanterelle season with ancient and modern music of the Baltics - expect a fusion of meditative chants, expansive folk, vintage jazz and psychedelia.

8/9 Carrie Sours -
shares heirloom Northeast Ohio Funk, Boogie, New Wave and Electronic Dance Records 1979-1989.
Picked ripe, still good!

8/16 Amy Weiland
chews on the bone- and leans hard into the blue Chernobyl dog days of summer. atmospheric dub, hip hop, and a healthy shake of girl power.

8/23 Davis Galvin
puts in the work- expect god’s favorite angel to lay out a patchwork of cog works, atmospheres, canyons.
Leave the headlamps- D’s got glowing oscillations.

8/30 jazzteka vol.2!
Dylan Zeh, Derek Bendel, Eli Weidman-
LIVE FREE JAZZ-
Back to prove a point- Kinetic improvised jazz inspired sounds- group scribbling and free hand.

👁️👁️

08/02/2026

been loving the ig break- but we got to post some food pics before we throw up another lonely no more schedule :/

desserts this week—>

Ciasto Drożdżowe z Morelą
yeasted cake baked with roast apricots + roast apricot jam + crumb with apricot cream
^only here for the weekend

Lody z Pestek Wiśni z Pieczonymi Czereśniami
(pictured melting in the sun)
cherry pit + almond ice cream with roast sweet cherries + walnuts roast in post-cordial black walnut molasses

Ciasto Malinowe
layered sponge with raspberry jam, oat creme pat, light set raspberry flax meringue

>>>>>>

Every year, we head up to our buddy Jim’s orchard on Lake Ontario to pick some of bulk fruit we process for the year. Tomasz’s parents, Maria i Marek, plus the two of us and our occasional bonus picker ~my sister Claire!~ spend a day picking two RAV4s worth of fruit — dark tart cherries (mostly Jubileum & Balatons), apricots, and early plums.

This year has been bad for fruit —> a late frost ruining fruit crops across a lot of the eastern US. Jim lost almost all of his apricot crop and about 25% of cherries:( We came back with a little less than normal —> the 600 # of apricots from last year shrunk to a tough 100 # this year —> just 400 # dark tarts made it back this year —> tried to make up for a bit of the volume loss with 300 # of sweet cherries. (Apricot pic is some of the 2025 haul)

Most of the fruit gets processed for the year —> cordials for the bar, steam juiced for kompot musujacy, jam and sorbets for desserts. A small allotment goes toward the moment —> as always running a few weeks of sour cherry pierogi (maybe through next week?), plus a couple sweet things on the menu right now 😋

07/04/2026

🌝

Lonely No More
Sundays 9-11p

deep summer.
The start of the big stick.

July 5- Il duo iItaliano - Zonamorta- piece together dark parts for a nocturnal celebration.
Coolgoths4coolgoths.

July 12- Alvin Row is making a late dinner- guy cooks for a big family- eat jazz, folk, electronic- no room for dessert.

July 19- Indigo Baloch lingers in the maybe memory haze of late night drives and last kisses. Adrift in the tragical magical.

July 26- Good Dude Lojack brings hope.
Special rhythm rider extraordinaire makes it fun.

C u soon
:*

Address

4606 Penn Avenue
Pittsburgh, PA
15224

Opening Hours

Wednesday	5pm - 8pm
Thursday	12pm - 12am
Friday	5pm - 10pm
Saturday	5pm - 8pm
Sunday	5pm - 12am

Website

http://aptekapgh.com/

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