Every Saturday morning through late October, Washington Road fills with the kind of scene Mount Lebanon likes to see itself in: tables of Simmons Farm produce, a stroller or two, someone's dog waiting patiently outside Rose Henry Bake Shop's table for a dropped sugar cookie. It's the version of Uptown that shows up in the borough's own promotional language, and it's earned, but it's also the easy part of the story. A few blocks away, on Beverly Road, something quieter and more consequential has been happening since the pandemic. Three storefronts have changed hands, and each one tells you something different about what residents actually wanted from the neighborhood once the old version of it stopped working.
Two Streets, Two Kinds of Change
Washington Road is where Mount Lebanon performs its civic life in public. The Mt. Lebanon Partnership runs its Uptown Market there on Saturdays from 9 a.m. to noon, a season that opened May 30 and closes October 24 this year. A few hundred feet away, the Lions Club has been running its own Wednesday market at the United Lutheran Church parking lot on 975 Washington Road for 36 consecutive years now, from 4 to 7 p.m., through the end of October. Both are genuinely good markets. Neither one is where the interesting change happened.
Beverly Road is a shorter, less photographed stretch, and it's where three anchor businesses turned over in the space of about three years: a Mexican restaurant that opened the day before COVID shutdowns began, a longtime pizza-and-ale-house institution, and a restaurant that had occupied the same building since before most current residents were born. All three reopened as something different. Read together, they say more about what Uptown wants next than any single ribbon-cutting does on its own.
Three Storefronts, Three Reinventions
| Old business | New business | What changed | When |
|---|---|---|---|
| Taco Diablo (297 Beverly Rd) | Mullett's | Mexican taqueria became a cocktail-and-shareables lounge | Closed Dec. 31, 2022; opened March 2023 |
| Bado's Pizza Grill and Ale House | F&F Pizzeria | Local ale house became a Brooklyn import's first expansion outside New York | Opened Oct. 27, 2025 |
| Atria's (110 Beverly Rd) | 1930 by Atria's | 1998-era upscale casual restaurant rebranded around its 1930 origin story | Closed Dec. 31, 2024; reopened Feb. 2025 |
The timing is not a coincidence so much as a pattern of businesses testing whether Beverly Road could support something more specific than what it had before.
Colin and Marissa Mullett opened Taco Diablo on March 15, 2020, the day before the state's pandemic shutdown order took effect. They ran it as a taqueria for two more years before deciding the concept had run its course, then spent the winter of 2022 into 2023 repainting, replacing the flooring and bar shelves, and covering the old sugar-skull mural in black paint flecked with gold leaf. What emerged was a smaller, later-opening cocktail bar with a fully gluten-free kitchen, seating for 56, and a bourbon-heavy drink list built by chef Gabe Bevilacqua, a high school friend of the Mulletts who had spent years cooking gluten-free food for a partner with food allergies.
"I've always heard this stretch needed a bar like this. I think we've delivered."
That's Colin Mullett, describing the gap he thought Beverly Road had before his family filled it.
Down the block, Bado's Pizza Grill and Ale House gave way to something with a very different pedigree. F&F Pizzeria is the Brooklyn restaurant group's first location outside New York, brought here by chefs Frank Falcinelli and Frank Castronovo, whose Frankies 457 Spuntino in Carroll Gardens is well known in New York dining circles. The New York Times had already named F&F one of the city's best pizzerias before the Mount Lebanon location opened its doors on October 27, 2025, drawing a line out the door on opening day. The space now runs a slice counter with visible electric ovens on the ground floor and a full-service dining room with a second-floor event space above it, a considerably bigger footprint than the ale house it replaced.
The third change is the one with the longest memory attached to it. The building at 110 Beverly Road has operated continuously since 1930, first as Joe Atria's grocery store, then, once Prohibition ended, as a bar. Pat and Nancy McDonnell turned it into an upscale casual restaurant in 1998, and it ran that way for over two decades before closing on New Year's Eve 2024 for a remodel. It reopened in February 2025 as 1930 by Atria's, a name chosen specifically to point back at the building's origin year rather than its more recent restaurant era. The bar program is now run by Spencer Warren, a Mount Lebanon native who opened Embury Lounge in the Strip District and is widely credited with helping start Pittsburgh's modern cocktail movement. Some of the old menu survived the transition, including the pot roast nachos regulars didn't want to lose, but the space now leans into a Prohibition-era feel that its 1998 version never attempted.
Why the Next Seven Weeks Are the Window to See Both Versions at Once
What makes this fall a specific moment rather than a general observation is that the two Uptown eras are about to stop overlapping. The daytime, market-driven version of Uptown that residents already know closes out its calendar year in the next seven weeks. The nighttime, Beverly Road version is just getting into its stride as the weather turns, which is exactly the kind of night that suits a cocktail bar with a Prohibition theme more than a patio.
In between, the Mt. Lebanon Partnership's Artists' Market takes over the Academy Lot, tucked behind The Saloon and across from Rollier Hardware, on September 26 and 27, with more than 65 juried artists showing work in a two-day run from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. It's the kind of event that pulls people who'd otherwise only ever see Washington Road into walking past Beverly Road on their way there or back, which is arguably the best way to notice how much that block has actually changed since 2022.
If you're mapping out the next month and a half, the compressed version looks like this:
- September 26-27: Mt. Lebanon Partnership Artists' Market, Academy Lot, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., free admission
- Saturdays through October 24: Uptown Market, Washington Road, 9 a.m. to noon
- Wednesdays through late October: Lions Club Farmers Market, 975 Washington Road, 4 to 7 p.m.
- Ongoing: Beverly Road's newer additions, including live music at Houlihan's on Thursdays and Sundays, and Mullett's Wednesday-through-Saturday evening hours
None of this requires deciding anything about the neighborhood. It's just a more accurate map of it than the one built entirely around Saturday mornings on Washington Road. The businesses that have chosen to bet on Beverly Road in the last three years, from a family-run gluten-free cocktail bar to a Brooklyn pizzeria with a New York Times recommendation behind it to a 96-year-old building leaning back into its own history, are telling you something about what this stretch of Uptown can support now that it couldn't a few years ago.
If you're new enough to Mount Lebanon that Beverly Road hasn't made it into your regular rotation yet, or you've lived here long enough to remember when 110 Beverly Road was still just Atria's, this is a good season to walk the block again and see what's actually there now.
Wendy Weaver has spent more than a decade watching Mount Lebanon's business districts evolve block by block. If you're curious what a specific street or listing in the South Hills is really worth right now, Wendy Weaver is a good place to start.
