What are the opening hours?

Thursday 11:30am - 7pm Friday 11:30am - 8:30pm Saturday 11:30am - 8:30pm Sunday 11am - 2:30pm

Zenith

Name: Zenith
Address: 86 South 26th Street, Pittsburgh, PA, 15203, US
Telephone: +14124814833
Price range: $$
Rating: 4.7

Call Directions Website

Pittsburgh's oldest vegetarian restaurant. We sell antiques, vintage clothing & jewelry
(440)

10/31/2026

The Zenith would like to apologize for having to close so early tonight.

We were unusually busy and rapidly running out of food.

I would like to say we closed early so that we could go do festive Halloween things, but instead we scrambled to catch up on all of the things we couldn’t do because we were so busy, then did all of the things we still needed to do to prepare for brunch, on top of replenishing whatever we could so that we might actually have something to serve Sunday morning.

Which we will.

We will be ready to open at 11:00 a.m.

Which will feel like noon.

But it will, in fact, be 11:00 a.m.

Because in a strange twist of fate, Halloween is actually the night we set the clocks back, which means you get an extra hour to enjoy all of your parties.

Which now makes me think I probably shouldn’t have worried so much about running out of food, because nobody will show up tomorrow anyway because you all stayed up an hour later than normal having fun.

But here at Zenith Labs we must be prepared for all contingencies.

Which, now that I think about it, almost certainly means we won’t be busy…

because we are, in fact, prepared.

But if you do show up,

we’ll have the coffee ready for you.

10/31/2026

Sorry, folks — The Zenith is closing early tonight for Halloween at 4:00.

Which kinda works out, because we’re running out of food.

Talk about horror.

10/23/2026

🎃 THE VEGAN QUEEN OF PITTSBURGH IS ALSO THE HALLOWEEN QUEEN OF PITTSBURGH! 👻

And she’s at it again!

Our dear friend Amy is conjuring up her annual Pittsburgh Halloween & Samhain Festival next Friday, October 30th, at the South Park Fairgrounds!

Now, Amy has graciously invited the Zenith to participate as a vendor on numerous occasions, but alas, we’ve become far too old, grumpy, and set in our ways to pack up our cauldrons and venture beyond the confines of our own haunted establishment. 😂

But don’t let our advanced state of curmudgeonry discourage you!

There’ll be a haunted house, live music, belly dancing, spooky vendors, metaphysical goodies, costume contests, trick-or-treating for humans AND dogs, and enough Halloween mischief to raise the dead!

And best of all? ADMISSION IS FREE!

📅 Friday, October 30, 2026

🕒 3–9 PM

📍 South Park Fairgrounds

Amy has been a tireless champion of Pittsburgh’s vegan community for decades, and we’re always happy to support the wonderful things she brings to our city.

So grab your broomsticks, polish your fangs, and go show the Halloween Queen some love!

We’ll be back at the Zenith, guarding the antiques and yelling at the occasional cloud. 🦇

Happy haunting from all of us at the Zenith! 💜

PittsburghVegan.com

10/22/2026

I don’t know about you guys, but my television screen has been inundated with AI-generated virtual candidates saying virtually nothing except virtual lies and false narratives in an effort to persuade you to vote for the other guy.

This latest tactic has been making me virtually sick to my stomach.

It was bad enough getting five gazillion political ads stuffed between your breakfast cereal and the morning news, but now apparently we are getting an extra helping of disingenuous with our corn flakes to swallow.

So in the interest of transparency, I wanted to be completely clear and forthright about this week’s menu.

The menu image above is, in fact, a virtual menu.

Insofar as it is not an actual physical menu currently resting in your hand.

However, I would like to assure everyone that its contents are virtually what is actually on the menu this week.

In no way were we attempting to mislead you into believing you could order the Seitan Stir Fry only to discover that, after careful investigation, you had actually been served Mediterranean Stew.

Zenith Labs understands that in these confusing times it can be difficult to distinguish between what is real, what is virtual, what is virtually real, and what somebody simply repeated enough times that it began to sound true.

Fortunately, in our case there is a fairly simple test.

If you order the Seitan Stir Fry and we bring you the Seitan Stir Fry…

that is what we here at Zenith Labs like to call evidence.

10/15/2026

This is my favorite time of year.

All of the fall colors finally coming into bloom, the rustle of dead leaves underfoot, that earthy smell of decay politely announcing that everything is beautiful because it is in the process of dying.

Cheery stuff.

Then there are the cheesy Halloween decorations, the gross overabundance of unhealthy confections, apple cider…

yum.

And, of course, bad horror movies.

Although this year I’m beginning to think the truly horrifying event arrives a few days after Halloween:

the midterm elections.

No horror writer could possibly invent anything more disturbing than a bunch of politicians clawing for votes while promising happiness, salvation, prosperity, lower prices, safer streets, eternal youth, shinier teeth, and presumably a complimentary tote bag…

all while quietly eating our souls.

Oh wait.

They already wrote that.

Dracula.

Never mind.

Although now I’m wondering if the zombie apocalypse was really just a clever metaphor for the constituents.

Anyway, while civilization continues gnawing on its own leg, we did manage to make a pretty nice menu this week.

And fortunately The Zenith has an unusually large collection of crosses, saints, religious figures, and assorted ecclesiastical debris scattered throughout the store.

So if any politicians come through the door, we should at least have a fighting chance.

Happy fall.

10/07/2026

Well, look who wandered into The Zenith… 👀

A lovely little feature from PublicSource about our strange corner of Pittsburgh — the food, the antiques, the art, the communal tables, and all the assorted wonderful weirdness that has somehow accumulated here over the years.

We’re especially fond of this line:

“The sight of it all is worth a visit beyond the food.”

That might be one of the nicest descriptions of The Zenith we’ve ever received.

Thank you, PublicSource, for stopping by and for including us in your Pittsburgh Meal Map. ❤️

Read the full story here:
https://www.publicsource.org/pittsburgh-meal-map-zenith-south-side/

10/04/2026

The good news is we managed to make more Seitan Fajitas for Sunday brunch.

The bad news is I did not manage to grill another small agricultural district worth of vegetables for the Veggie Melt because, after making the extra Fajitas, I was so tired my eyes fell out of their sockets and had to be retrieved from somewhere near the dish area.

So a decision had to be made.

I figured I was statistically less likely to be assaulted for not having Veggie Melts than I would be for running out of Fajitas.

The Veggie Melt faction is generally much more docile.

They can usually be distracted with Banana Pancakes and, if necessary, a reassuring nod from across the buffet.

The Fajita people are another matter entirely.

In this business you have to make these kinds of strategic decisions if you intend to survive.

Still, in the interest of caution, I will be wearing protective gear throughout brunch day and avoiding any sudden movements near the peanut noodles.

On an unrelated but equally poorly managed front, I did manage to get all of the Halloween decorations down from storage.

At the rate we are going, I figure we should have the place completely decorated just in time to take everything back down for Christmas.

Another flawless week of operational excellence here at Zenith Labs.

10/01/2026

I have no idea what the folks at Zenith Labs were thinking when they put together this week’s menu.

This one is work.

I was here until 10 o’clock last night grilling vegetables for the Veggie Melt.

Then we had to make salsa.

Then make the seitan, slice it into strips for the Fajitas, make the Fiesta Corn—which, despite the name, is not particularly festive—and then make the sauce for the Linguine.

This is a very good menu.

It is also an unnecessarily laborious menu.

Which, now that I think about it, makes it a pretty accurate representation of The Zenith.

Also, if you happened to see that earlier post about the article written about us, you may notice that three of the dishes mentioned in the article just happen to be on this week’s menu.

Pure coincidence.

Which does make me wonder what strange rift in the cosmos causes things like that to happen.

We have well over 200 dishes that we make on a revolving basis, a tradition we started years ago to keep things fresh and interesting for our customers back when there were only one or two vegetarian restaurants in the city.

Of course, that is no longer the case.

There are lots of vegetarian and vegan options now.

So naturally, rather than simplifying anything, Zenith Labs has decided to continue doing things the difficult way anyway.

Yes folks, it’s true.

Just another example of The Zenith’s lackluster business planning in action:

Doing things that are no longer particularly necessary, take twice as much work, and make absolutely no economic sense…

all in a continuing effort to keep our customers happy in an unnecessarily complicated way.

Which, come to think of it, may actually be our business model.

09/30/2026

Well this was a rather nice surprise.

Apparently The Zenith has been declared “too weird for words.”

After 25 years of collecting, cooking, hanging things from ceilings, filling rooms with objects nobody else quite knew what to do with, and generally refusing to behave like a normal restaurant… I suppose we’ll take that as a compliment.

Thank you to Family Destinations Guide for this wonderfully kind piece about our little corner of Pittsburgh.

They even called Sunday brunch “almost mythical,” which may be the nicest way anyone has ever described pancakes and organized chaos.

If you’d like to read the whole article, the link is in our bio.

09/27/2026

There is a tightly knit choreography required for three people to do the work of five or six—depending, of course, on how well the previous day’s dance went.

The situation is always fluid.

Unknown factors can and do occur with alarming regularity.

The toilet explodes.

A cooler breaks down.

My memory breaks down and I forget an essential ingredient.

Flash flooding.

An old friend walks through the door and suddenly that important list of things you were supposed to be doing disappears into a sort of collective denial.

The list is endless.

Today, however, the interruptions were considerably more entertaining.

First I got a message from Nephele, a great local progressive-rock band that filmed a music video here at The Zenith a while back, letting me know the video was finished.

So naturally I had to stop everything and show it to everyone.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kgLCzS2tUDw

I should probably confess that I am a hopeless prog-rock nerd.

Neil Peart from Rush even ate here once while passing through Pittsburgh on one of his motorcycle tours.

I was so completely star-struck I could barely say a word.

Anyone who knows me understands just how medically improbable that is.

Anyway, small disruption in the choreography.

Then the phone rang.

Some film students wanted to know if they could come in and shoot something here for a 24-hour film festival.

Naturally we said yes.

So suddenly there were cameras, filmmakers, restaurant people, antiques, brunch preparations, and whatever other pieces of organized chaos happened to be occupying the building at the time.

They were a great group of guys, and I cannot wait to see what they made.

Needless to say, by this point the carefully choreographed dance had become considerably more interpretive.

But somehow, despite all of it, three people still managed to produce Sunday brunch.

The brunch is ready.

The music video is excellent.

A movie was made.

Everyone survived.

We did not, however, fix the toilet.

Address

86 South 26th Street
Pittsburgh, PA
15203

Opening Hours

Thursday	11:30am - 7pm
Friday	11:30am - 8:30pm
Saturday	11:30am - 8:30pm
Sunday	11am - 2:30pm

Telephone

+14124814833

Website

http://www.zenithpgh.com/

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