Carrick food guide: Brownsville Road, neighborhood bars and the steps of the South Hills

The short version

Carrick sits on a crest on the southeastern edge of the city, west of the Monongahela, with Brownsville Road running along the top¹. Our directory lists 36 places to eat and drink there². It is the only neighborhood in this top ten list on the city's southern edge, and its food scene is built for the people who live there.

17 of the 36 listings have a full bar, and Bars and pubs are by far the largest category at 13 listings². After that come breakfast and brunch (4), pizza (3) and sandwiches and delis (3). 72% of listings are independent: this is a corner bar and diner neighborhood more than a dining destination.

Brownsville Road

33 of the 36 listings have a Brownsville Road address². The Carrick section of Brownsville Road is about 2.2 miles long, made up of three separate business districts with houses in between¹. That makes Carrick easy to map: if a place is not on Brownsville, it is probably one of a handful of exceptions.

Since the early 2000s Carrick has also become a center of Pittsburgh's Nepali and Bhutanese communities, and the neighborhood includes Hindu, Catholic, Protestant and other places of worship¹. The directory's single Indian listing is a small signal of that; the community grocery stores and restaurants are a gap we want correspondents to help fill.

The neighborhood is served by two ZIP codes, 15210 and 15227¹.

Carrick is well served by public transportation, sitting between the South Hills suburbs and Downtown, with nine borders that include Knoxville, Mt. Oliver, St. Clair, Overbrook, Brookline and Bon Air, plus the boroughs of Mt. Oliver, Baldwin and Brentwood¹. Many of those neighborhoods have their own guides on this site.

How Carrick got its name

The land was part of a grant to Major John Ormsby from King George III in 1763, and Carrick and Mt. Oliver were once known together as the Ormsby Tract¹. In 1853 Dr. John H. O'Brien won permission to open a post office and named it after his hometown, Carrick-on-Suir in Ireland¹.

Carrick became a borough in 1904 and voted to join Pittsburgh in 1926¹. In 1997 it was named the first "Cool Community" in the northern United States by the U.S. Department of Energy, for strategic tree planting¹.

In 1927, a year after the vote, Carrick officially became the city's 29th Ward¹.

Parks and the stairs

Carrick is a stairs neighborhood. There are 39 sets of public city steps here, with 839 steps in total, one of the larger stair networks on this site³. The longest, Custer Ave from Brinwood Ave to Kirk Ave, has 101 steps.

The city lists 3 parks, Leolyn Park, Phillips Park, and Volunteers Park, and 3 playgrounds⁴⁵. Phillips Park has walking paths, a disc golf course, a recreation center and a pool¹. The Carrick branch is on Brownsville Road⁶, and the county's farmers market list includes Carrick Citiparks Farmers Market⁷.

Carrick also has Volunteers Field, with a baseball field and a multipurpose field, and the Emma Lazarus Sensory Garden, home to Brian Gonnella's Columbia of Carrick mural¹. The area once had coal mines and a glassworks near the Presbyterian Church and Volunteers Field, in a section called Crailo or Spiketown¹.

Who lives here

Carrick had 10,290 residents in 2020, against 10,113 in 2010 (+2%)⁸. It is less dense and more owner occupied than the inner neighborhoods: about 42% of occupied homes are rentals and about 18% of residents are 65 or older⁹.

At about 3.5 listings per 1,000 residents, Carrick has far fewer places to eat per person than the neighborhoods above it in this list²⁸. That is a reason to support the ones that are there.

How Carrick compares

Set against the 78 city neighborhoods and areas on this site, Carrick ranks 10th by number of listings and 28th by listings per square mile. The typical (median) one has 6 listings and about 12 per square mile; Carrick has 36 and 22²¹⁰. Its independent share, 72%, is below the median of 80%, and 47% of its listings have a full bar, against a median of 25%.

For getting around, 5% of working residents walk to work and 12% take transit; the medians across these neighborhoods are 4% and 12%⁹. Carrick has 44 active transit stops, 18th on this list, and about 21,483 scheduled trips a week (15th)¹¹.

Picks, inspections and new places

This week's Spotlight picks are Characters (bars & pubs), The Breakfast Spot (breakfast & brunch), Amili's Pizzeria (pizza), Coco Wawa Hot Chicken (sandwiches & delis), South Hills Italian Club (clubs, posts & fire halls), and Nepali Asian Restaurant (Indian). Each is independent and its latest county inspection on file reads “Inspected & Permitted”¹². Picks rotate every week.

We matched 20 of Carrick's 36 listings to Allegheny County Health Department records from Aug 11, 2025 to Jul 28, 2026¹². Every matched listing's most recent placard is “Inspected & Permitted”. No preoperational inspections were recorded here in that window.

Getting there

The transit file lists 44 active stops in Carrick, 5 route codes including light rail, and about 21,483 scheduled weekly trips¹¹. The busiest is Brownsville Rd opp. The Boulevard (670 weekly trips). Carrick sits between the South Hills suburbs and Downtown and is well served by transit¹.

20 Carrick listings could be matched to county inspection records; the spot pages show the latest date and placard result¹².

Carrick by the numbers

Counts from our directory². Land area from the City's neighborhood boundaries¹⁰.

Listings by category

Main food streets: Brownsville Road (33).

Things to do nearby

Transit details

How working residents commute

Percent of workers 16+, 2018-2022 estimates⁹.

Who lives here