On Saturday afternoons, Dillner Family Farm sets up a table at the Lawrenceville farmers market. One late summer day there were bright heirloom tomatoes, sweet corn, stone fruits and greens neatly organized into a dazzling array of food. Lining the ground just to the right of the table were bins of produce labeled.

It's 10 on a humid Saturday morning in early October, and I'm eating spoonfuls of a locally-grown fruit called a pawpaw that tastes like toasted custard mixed with mangos. I'm not on vacation in an equatorial paradise; the pawpaw grows wild right here in Western Pennsylvania. In fact, I shook mine from a tree not too far from where I live.

Darrell Frey, a lanky 55-year-old farmer with a goatee and ponytail, peels back overgrown brush to reveal blueberry bushes. "I guess they call me 'The Original Gangsta' of Pittsburgh permaculture," he jokes as he plucks a near-ripe berry from one of the bushes at Three Sisters Farm, Mr. Frey's five acres in Sandy Lake, Mercer County.

My weekly drinks column, "On the Rocks," in Pittsburgh City Paper.

I was face-deep in a plate of fried chicken at Dooky Chase, the iconic restaurant best known for its Creole-soul lunch buffet and stunning collection of African-American art. A friend of mine from San Francisco had just piled on a second helping of collard greens and red beans and rice. We were geeking out about the finer points of climate control in a whisky warehouse in Scotland versus a bourbon warehouse in Kentucky.

Across the street from a steel mill billowing blue smoke in Braddock, Pa., Rick Easton peers into a wood-fired brick oven. The lanky baker's overcoat is dusty with flour. This is no ordinary flour, however. It's Italian Tipo 00, and it's specially blended to give the pizza crust its characteristic chew.

Cavan Patterson, co-owner of Lawrenceville's Wild Purveyors, returned to his store late on Dec. 20 from a two-day Pennsylvania road trip. His 16-foot refrigerated truck was packed with artisan-produced meat, cheese and mushrooms he bought from small Pennsylvania farms and producers with whom he has personal relationships.

"There are still people who come in and say 'Oh, Kevin must be off tonight,' " says Mr. Townsend, referring to Kevin Sousa, the restaurant's much more famous owner and executive chef. Mr. Sousa checks in with the restaurant daily, but he's focused on numerous other projects: Union Pig & Chicken, Harvard & Highland, Station Street Hot Dogs, and his forthcoming Braddock flagship restaurant Magarac. The day-to-day operations of Salt of the Earth fall to Mr. Townsend. He's just one of a legion of mostly-unheralded helms -- people who are essential to the continued growth of Pittsburgh's booming restaurant scene. Their names might not be recognizable to those outside the restaurant industry, but it's this crew that maintains continuity at area restaurants while the head honchos are experimenting with new techniques or are off working on other endeavors. Mr. Townsend is a chef de cuisine. In the lists of restaurant hierarchy, that puts him one step below the executive chef. Unlike the executive, chefs de cuisine almost never have an ownership stake in the restaurant; yet in all practicality these colonels of the kitchen run their respective eateries. They don't need to ask for permission to make any but the most major decisions, and even when they create a new dish for the menu it's generally subject to just a quick check before going into rotation. The trust between an executive chef and a chef de cuisine needs to be near absolute.

Trevett Hooper was one of the first chefs in Pittsburgh to promote the local food movement. Now he and other chefs around the country are expanding their locally grown menus to include meat. But it's been a challenge to embrace this hot new ranch-to-table trend while still meeting customers' expectations for a fancy night out.