Legume Moving to North Oakland

When chef Trevett Hooper and his wife, Sarah, opened Legume in Regent Square in 2007, they wanted it to be a friendly neighborhood restaurant focused on selecting the freshest local food and making its flavors shine.

Quickly, Legume did become a favorite neighborhood restaurant – a favorite of people from neighborhoods all over Pittsburgh.

It became so popular, in fact, that Legume outgrew its current location on South Braddock Avenue, and will be moving into a much larger space in North Oakland by the end of May, according to Hooper. He and his wife love Regent Square and looked for a bigger space in the area, but just couldn’t find the right fit for their needs, he said. 

“Legume, where it is now, is a great starter home,” Hooper said. “But our business and what we do really grew in a way we hadn’t anticipated.”

The restaurant, which seats 36, is bursting at the seams with good things to eat and drink, as well as with diners. Last week, a bucket of homemade sauerkraut perched on the top step of the stairs leading to the basement, where pans of freshly made gingerbread lay cooling and nearby, stems from cremini, shiitake and oyster mushrooms were drying for eventual use in mushroom stock.

Overhead, bunches of thyme in brown paper bags hung from the rafters. And against a back wall, jar upon Mason jar of peach jam and pepper jelly and preserved Meyer lemons and pickles of every description – including tiny homemade cornichons – filled a metal rack, the produce of the staff’s busy hours inside Legume’s tiny kitchen last summer and fall.

The new location, in the building at the corner of North Craig and Bayard streets that formerly housed Moré, is about four times the size of Legume’s current space, with room for about 100 seats in the dining room and a bar with seats for about 30 more.

And the kitchen – well, the kitchen is big enough for the current kitchen staff of four, plus Hooper on busy nights, to have enough elbow room, even at the height of the weekend dinner rush.

But while staff and diners will enjoy more room, Legume’s chefs plan to continue providing the same dining experience – “little things done well,” as a sign taped to the kitchen’s back door reminds.

“We just needed to find space so everyone can work,” said sous chef Jamilka Borges. “We’re going to be doing the same thing, but on a bigger scale.”

As Hooper works to open his new space on time – right around when his third child is due, by the way – he is also trying hard to find a new tenant for Legume’s current location on South Braddock, he said. The Hoopers own the lease rights to the space, and hope to sell it as a turnkey operation to a restaurant.

“We want our loyal followers in Regent Square to have a good replacement for us in the neighborhood,” he said.