CP Photo: Mars Johnson
Lilith co-owners Dianne DeStefano and Jamilka Borges pose for a portrait in the dining room.
If you don’t like dynamic women, decor featuring mushrooms with callipygian backsides, or craveable, seasonally-driven food, you probably won’t like Lilith. The 36-seat spot at the former Cafe Zinho location in Shadyside is the passion project of Pittsburgh culinary mainstays Jamilka Borges and Dianne DeStefano. With their collective industry knowledge and James Beard-nominated talent, they set out to create a space that’s deeply personal, yet homey and inviting.
When Pittsburgh City Paper chats with Borges and DeStefano on a Friday afternoon before service, they can’t stop yawning. As beat as they are from the previous night, a companionable energy arches between them; they often finish each other’s sentences or interrupt to add details. At one point, Borges nonchalantly brushes some crumbs off of DeStefano’s pant leg.
They have known each other and worked together off and on for 10 years. Their ease of communication is evident in Lilith’s menu, which combines the two chefs’ cultural backgrounds and culinary experiences with an awareness of place and seasonality.
“Collaboration has always been our ethos,” Borges tells City Paper. “We’ve known each other’s styles for so long. There are things that are very much Dianne with a little hint of Jamilka, and then vice-versa. It’s a nice little melting pot of ideas.”
“A lot of the savory foods are very Jamilka, as they should be,” DeStefano tells CP. “I’m really proud of my dessert menu right now.” Here, Borges interjects that the mango torte is amazing (I agree). “We have so much fun playing with textures and colors.”
Borges describes their cuisine as “Sicilian Puerto Rican heritage in Pittsburgh, with Appalachian roots.”
“We said Puerto Rican and Sicilian because they’re both islands, both have flavors that are warm and beautiful. We didn’t want to call it ‘island’ cuisine because people would expect crab fritters or something like that.”
So, no crab fritters, but Lilith does have a pierogi offering. With dough made by DeStefano and a yuca filling inspired by Borges’ Puerto Rican roots, the dish is exemplary of their culinary partnership. While some pierogies are dense like memory foam pillows, this is downy and feather-light thanks to the yuca’s texture and vegetality.
Another dish emblematic of their partnership is the lobster roll with achiote aioli on pan sobao, a Puerto Rican bread that played a key part in the pair’s professional meet-cute in 2014, when, as DeStefano recalls, a local restaurant owner hired her without first consulting Borges.
“He was like, ‘Here Jamilka, here’s a pastry chef.’ … I don’t really know how [Borges] felt about it; I know some of the other kitchen staff were a little annoyed. I just had to prove myself.”
She proved herself by recreating the pan sobao and Mallorca bread, two bakery items from Puerto Rico that Borges couldn’t find elsewhere in Pittsburgh.
“It was like, ‘Surprise, pastry chef!’” says Borges. “But it worked out. We stayed friends. I truly consider her the best pastry chef, not only in town, but I’d put her against anybody. That’s my personal biased opinion.”
DeStefano and Borges note that the dismissive introduction via top-down male management is nothing new for women in a profession where you sometimes have to dance backward and in heels to demonstrate your worth.
“We’ve worked on and off together in difficult kitchens that were owned and run by men, with mostly men as staff,” says Borges. “There’s this undertone that we both have to prove ourselves, even though we’re both extremely accomplished chefs.”
Even the name “Lilith” is a reaction to and reclamation of their experience in male-dominated spaces. The name recalls an apocryphal biblical predecessor to Eve who was booted from the Garden of Eden for refusing to be subservient to Adam. Lilith then moved to the desert, birthed demons, and ate babies — you know, girl things.
But surely, this cozy little restaurant is named for someone’s grandma, and not a monster redeemed as a patron saint of the rebellious feminine?
“Oh, it’s totally that,” laughs Borges and DeStefano, though DeStefano adds, “Sometimes we say it’s Jamilka’s grandmother. You know, depending on the audience.”
“The moment a woman doesn’t quite follow the rules, the story and how she’s perceived is so exaggerated,” Borges says. “‘She’s a bitch, she’s a demon.’ [Lilith] wasn’t subservient, she wanted to gain independence. Meanwhile, the optics of how people perceived her were like ‘She’s a witch, she’s this and that.’ And that happens today. You don’t follow the rules, you’re a bitch, you’re non-conforming, you’re stereotyped, you’re labeled as difficult.”
Lilith the restaurant is a nonconforming space in a sea of spare dining rooms and impersonal counter service. The walls are decadent phthalo green; the dinnerware is a harmonious jumble sale of patterns and shapes. DeStefano and Borges emphasized the pre-pandemic hospitality they missed during COVID, which is why a Lilith meal starts with bread service and could end with a dessert as nostalgic and festive as the can’t-miss baked Alaska. It feels less like a stuffy fine dining establishment and more like you’re at a dinner party at a cherished friend’s house (a friend with great taste and some James Beard nominations, but still).
“That was very intentional,” said Borges. “I think more and more you see these dining rooms that are monochromatic and don’t necessarily have a sense of who’s behind them. This is a very personal restaurant; it’s not for everybody. We had a review where somebody said that we had too much clutter and we should get rid of our plants, and I say to that, well…”
Here, Borges and DeStefano say, practically in unison, “Go to a different restaurant.”
Lilith. 238 Spahr St., Shadyside. instagram.com/lilithpgh
