Brighton Heights has been quietly building something special on California Avenue. On April 16, 2026, two openings on the same afternoon confirmed what many Pittsburgh food enthusiasts had suspected: this hillside neighborhood on the city’s North Side has arrived as a serious dining destination.
Mun’s Pizza opened its first brick-and-mortar location at 3627 California Ave., ending years of anticipation from fans who had followed the pop-up operation across commissary kitchens, farmers markets, and neighborhood events. Right next door, Allegheny City Brewing unveiled its second taproom, connected to Mun’s by a service window that functions as both a practical amenity and a symbol of the friendship between two local food businesses that have grown up together.
A Name With a Story
Behind Mun’s Pizza is Dan Tomcik, a Pittsburgh pizza maker with a background that reads like a tour of the city’s culinary underground. He learned to stretch dough at Pepperoncini’s Pub in Oakdale, where he met Zak “Mun” Jones, a friend and culinary mentor who passed away before he could see what he had helped set in motion. The pizzeria bears Jones’s nickname as a tribute, turning every pie into something more than dinner.
Tomcik calls his style “Yinzerpolitian” — a name that earns its portmanteau. It is a cross between traditional Neapolitan technique and the old-school Pittsburgh pizza tradition: crisp, flavorful, made with care, and rooted in the specific character of this city. The Tomato Pie topped with long hot peppers has quickly drawn attention as the signature order, a composition that balances heat and simplicity in the way the best Pittsburgh food always has.
“Yinzerpolitian” — a cross between traditional Neapolitan and old-school Pittsburgh pizza, made by a man who learned his craft from a friend he wanted to honor.
Mun’s Pizza, Brighton Heights
During the pop-up years, Tomcik ran prep work out of a commissary kitchen inside Badamo’s Pizza on Federal Street. He was a regular vendor at Allegheny City Brewing’s North Side location on East Ohio Street, which is where the partnership between the two businesses first developed. That history made the Brighton Heights co-opening feel less like a coincidence and more like a natural progression.
A Taproom Built for the Neighborhood
Allegheny City Brewing’s Brighton Heights outpost seats 40 and serves the full range of what has made the brewery a fixture on the North Side: beer, cocktails, wine, hard seltzers, ciders, and non-alcoholic options, along with snacks that include Forge Fried peanuts. The space is counter-service and unpretentious, designed to fit into the rhythms of the neighborhood rather than announce itself.
The service window between the taproom and Mun’s is the detail that captures the collaboration best. Walk in, order a pie from one side, grab a beer from the other, and take a seat. No reservations, no ceremony, just the straightforward pleasure of good food and drink in a neighborhood that has earned both.
What This Means for Pittsburgh’s Neighborhoods
Pittsburgh’s food culture has long been understood through a handful of marquee neighborhoods: Lawrenceville, the Strip District, the South Side, Shadyside. But for years now, a different kind of growth has been taking root in the places that don’t typically make the lists. Brighton Heights, Brookline, Millvale, and similar communities have been quietly accumulating the kind of local, owner-operated businesses that define a neighborhood’s character in lasting ways.
The Mun’s and Allegheny City Brewing opening fits that pattern precisely. Neither business is trying to become a destination in the conventional sense. What they are doing is giving Brighton Heights residents a reason to stay in their neighborhood on a Thursday evening and inviting people from across the city to make the trip up California Avenue. That distinction matters. The best local food scenes grow outward from neighborhoods, not inward from tourism.
For Dan Tomcik, the brick-and-mortar opening represents the conclusion of a patient journey and the start of something he likely did not dare put a timeline on. For Zak “Mun” Jones, whose name is now on a menu on California Avenue, it is a different kind of permanence entirely.