How Pittsburgh Is Becoming the Rust Belt's Social Innovation Test Kitchen

With an underused steel mill hulking behind him, the chef Kevin Sousa points to a tangle of buckwheat growing on the roof of Superior Motors, his new restaurant. Sousa has a shaved head, a missionary’s intensity, and HARD WORK tattooed across his knuckles. He’s standing above the 2,000-person riverfront town of Braddock, near Pittsburgh. The town struggled after the old steel mills mills scaled down; now, even pawn shops flounder there.

Sousa is building out a high-end restaurant in Braddock. Produce will be sourced from the rooftop he’s planted, as well as from a community garden one block away. Local residents will get living-wage work and free culinary training. “You have to use your imagination,” he says. “This can go from the Wild, Wild West to a golden land of opportunity where, with a little elbow grease, you can build something. That’s how I see us adding value to the community.”