Greensburg's Oliver's Pourhouse back in business after 14-month closure
Tim Zontek was a regular at Oliver’s Pourhouse before the pandemic shutdown.
The Mt. Pleasant resident was seated at the bar of the downtown Greensburg eatery on Wednesday, a day after its reopening.
“It’s good to have them reopen,” he said. “They’re good people, and they have the best sandwiches in town.”
Oliver’s will operate with limited hours and a limited menu for now. Current hours are 3 p.m. to 9 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday.
Owners Roy and Natalie Bodnar are looking to hire about five more people.
“Right now, with our new staff and our limited staff, we’re trying to find the best way to get back into the swing by limiting the menu to our most popular items, until we get comfortable cooking them and then we can, hopefully, bring back our full menu and full hours of operation,” Roy Bodnar said.
Customer favorites like the Pittsburgh-style chicken salad, nachos and full burger lineup are available. They’ll have a limited number of draft beers available, focusing more on bottled beers until they feel customers are comfortable drinking from glasses again.
“Once we get back to our full hours, we’re happily going back to our old menu,” Natalie Bodnar said. “Maybe we’ll keep some old items and add some new. Since we have some new chefs with us, we’d like to give them some opportunity to be creative.”
Oliver’s closed on March 16, 2020. The Bodnars hoped to reopen on May 19, the anniversary of the restaurant opening in 2011, but needed a little more time to get ready.
They also own Robokyo Japanese Steakhouse & Sushi in Greensburg and Wexford, which remained open for takeout throughout the pandemic.
It wasn’t financially feasible to operate Oliver’s under pandemic restrictions, Roy Bodnar said.
“Based on our square footage and our occupancy, with the state restrictions on the amount of customers, in addition to our kitchen staff and our front of the house staff, our capacity would have been limited to, I think, 15 people – including our staff,” he said. “So it just would have been hemorrhaging money throughout. Based on that, it sort of forced us to close.”
The Bodnars took advantage of the down time to spruce up Oliver’s interior.
“The bar top was very deteriorated, so we put the new bar top on, then we removed the old kitchen floor, raised it up 2 inches and put in a new epoxy floor and stainless steel wall panels,” Roy Bodnar said. “We were thinking about doing the renovations beforehand, but the pandemic provided a good opportunity.”
“We did some painting, cleaning and added a few new accessories here and there,” Natalie Bodnar added.
“We’re very happy to be open again, and we’re very fortunate to be able to reopen,” she said. “We have friends that had restaurants that weren’t able to do that. So, through all this, we came out OK.
“Everybody was so excited when they walked in the door (Tuesday) to see (manager Matty Nicolazzo’s) friendly face and to hear his hello,” she said. “We had a lot of our courthouse crew that comes over for happy hour. They were here to support us.
“On social media, it was awesome the response that we got when we announced we were reopening.”
“It’s definitely good to be back and feel appreciated. It’s a family here,” Nicolazzo said. “We’re looking forward to the future and getting things back to as normal as they can be.”
Details: 724-836-7687 or Oliver’s Pourhouse on Facebook
Shirley McMarlin is a Tribune-Review staff writer. You can contact Shirley by email at smcmarlin@triblive.com or via Twitter .
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