Looking for up scale suburb with reasonable commute to East Liberty (Pittsburgh: house, buying)

[robrobrob]

Originally Posted by h_curtis

It is a section of Fox Chapel on the hill off Powers Run Road. You can go up Powers Run and take a right on Field Club and you are going to be up in the Forest up around the bend. I am not sure why anyone would pick that over something else. We all have favorite places in neighborhoods. I like to be close in, so Hunt Road, Guyasuta, Waldheim/Windsor area. Those areas are my favorites. I am not sure how much homes are going for on Rockwood Drive as well. That is close in, but the prices might have gone up too high there. It is just personal preference and some would rather be out on Old Mill or Squaw Run East, one of my favorite streets. Oh there are way to many to list and I know them all.

My favorite would be Windsor/Waldheim too but what you get for their budget max 600 isn't that great. The Forest really has the best bang for the buck basically because the houses are newer. Wilmar is afforable too but too far out and the housese are smaller than the Forest, same goes fow West Chapel Ridge etc. Hunt is tricky because at some point you feed to Kerr, which is a bad thing if you do public schools like us.

Squaw Run Eas is nice but I don't think there is much you can afford there with their budget. There was that one house that sat on the market an then got foreclosed but after that one there probably won't be a house that cheap again.

[slackbox]

Perhaps this is a dumb question, but what grocery store do people in Fox Chapel go to? I don't see any giant eagles around there.

[SteelCityRising]

Originally Posted by slackbox

Perhaps this is a dumb question, but what grocery store do people in Fox Chapel go to? I don't see any giant eagles around there.

There's a Giant Eagle within The Waterworks shopping center.

[PeterRabbit]

There's also a Community Supermarket in Fox Chapel Plaza.

[gg]

I shop at Community Market, that huge Giant Eagle because it is so close, but do most of my big shopping at Trader Joes which is about 10 minutes away. Depending on your location you might even be closer to Aldi and Shop and Save on Rt. 8. That is if you live in the Sharps Hill area, which is in O'Hara. Plenty of grocery shopping in this area.

[JayDiFiore]

There's also a Whole Foods right in East Liberty. Just drop by on your way home from work...

[caroline2]

Originally Posted by RestonRunner86

There's a Giant Eagle within The Waterworks shopping center.

That GE doesn’t look like much from the outside, but it’s one of the best in the Pgh area. I prefer it to the Market Districts, which take up so much space with their (admittedly great) giant home goods offerings, candy stores, and flower shops that the square footage dedicated to day-to-day food is really underwhelming (I can go to Target if I want specialty candy or new oven mitts). When we first moved I was still going to Whole Foods for awhile (it’s only about 15 minutes on the weekend), but that GE eventually won me over… it has great produce, great prepared foods, and plenty of variety in all our other staples. It’s similar to the GE at the Waterfront, which is also not a Market District and is the better for it.

Trader Joes has never been my thing, but it’s even closer than Whole Foods.

[gg]

Originally Posted by caroline2

Trader Joes has never been my thing, but it’s even closer than Whole Foods.

No doubt if you have plenty of money GE is fine. I can't afford their expensive stuff all the time, so I go to Trader Joes. I save a ton of money and get better quality other than the meat section. For veggies, TJ's is hard to beat for quality and price. I don't shop at Whole Foods anymore. The prices are similar to GE, but maybe even a little higher. The stuff I used to buy there I can get at TJ's.

Just personal preference and not a big deal. Glad we have some choices.

[caroline2]

Oh, my Trader Joe's comment wasn't a dig at it's price point -- to be honest, I didn't even know that TJ was considered affordable!

Every time I hear someone rave about a TJ's product or bring/serve one at a gathering, it's usually junk food related. Appealing junk food, things like, say, gourment frozen mac and cheese or their blue corn chips or Mexican chocolate-covered so-and-sos... that was also the impression I got the few times I went in. I've never heard someone praise their produce or other staples before, so maybe I'll give them another try and look beyond all the snack foods.

[greg42]

Produce has generally been seen as a weak point for Trader Joe's, actually, in terms of quality. But I think it has been getting better. Still, I pick and choose carefully in what I would buy there and generally err on the side of not buying produce there. A bag of this or that greens once in a while, especially off-season when that's mostly what you can get anyway, generally works okay. But a lot of what is normally loose is packaged, and sometimes that packaging can hide stuff like mold already growing on it.

I wish there were more sources of off-season local produce, you know, greens grown in greenhouses, etc. It's kind of odd to me that there isn't a lot of that.

Trader Joe's does have a lot of good "junk" food (with somewhat less junky ingredients generally; nothing in the store has high fructose corn syrup for example) but also good staples, great cheese at great prices. Some people don't like the reduced variety concept or the private labels (80-90% of the stuff in there is house brand) but there are enough interesting items in there that we go back periodically even though it's out of the way.