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2 weeks ago | 
nextpittsburgh.com | Aakanksha Agarwal
Memorial Day weekend is behind us and the summer solstice is nearly here, bringing with it everything good about summer: alfresco dinners, spontaneous road trips and long, slow afternoons in the park. It’s the start of getaway season, and Washington, D.C., makes for the perfect first stop if you ask me. Just far enough from Pittsburgh to feel like a proper escape (four hours by car), but close enough that you can roll in before dinner.
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3 weeks ago | 
nextpittsburgh.com | Aakanksha Agarwal
June is, inarguably, the best month to be in Pittsburgh. The air’s just warm enough to make patio dining feel like a vacation, but not so hot that you’re sticking to your seat. The nights are long and there’s something about those first real tastes of summer. This month’s new openings bring a personal touch to the table.
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4 weeks ago | 
oregonwinepress.com | Aakanksha Agarwal
NEWS / FEATURESMay 31, 2025How tragedy united one family to achieve a shared wine goal
By Aakanksha Agarwal
“There hasn’t been a single year when I haven’t spent at least a month in Napa Valley,” notes Brooke Delmas Robertson, recalling childhood crush pad memories of barefoot grape stomping.
Delmas Robertson was born there, growing up amid the rhythms of vineyard life, even when her family moved away from the vines.
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1 month ago | 
pghcitypaper.com | Aakanksha Agarwal
A sugar cookie changed everything in Jasmine Cho’s life. It was simple — its surface covered in smooth white icing, and a portrait of a protestor piped with a delicate tip. She’d been making portrait cookies for a while: figures like Grace Lee Boggs, Yuri Kochiyama, astronauts, authors, changemakers she’d admired from afar. She even hand-delivered a cookie to Hines Ward, the Korean American NFL star celebrated on and off the field.“That was fun,” Cho tells Pittsburgh City Paper.
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1 month ago | 
nextpittsburgh.com | Aakanksha Agarwal
Once, facades like this were common along Second and Third avenues in Downtown Pittsburgh. The red-tiled awning with jade green trim, shaped like a small pagoda, still juts confidently over Third Avenue, wedged between office towers and parking lots. A simple rectangular sign hangs over the sidewalk: Chinese characters in red above blocky English lettering: CHINATOWN INN. For generations of Pittsburghers, Chinatown Inn has been a gateway to a Chinatown that once was.
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1 month ago | 
kidsburgh.org | Aakanksha Agarwal
Photo above courtesy of Eastland Alpacas. The days are longer, the skies are bluer and weekend adventures are calling. For families used to the noise and rush of city life, this corner of Pennsylvania Dutch Country offers something unexpected: stillness without boredom, and a vacation that feels refreshingly real. It's the kind of place where you can meet alpacas, ride a vintage train, snack on French pastries, and pick up jars of jam straight from the hands that made them.
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1 month ago | 
nextpittsburgh.com | Aakanksha Agarwal
You’re asked to move like a kangaroo. To flow like waves. Nearby, there’s a quiet prompt: What are you carrying today? You can write down a worry — something small or something that’s been gnawing at you — and feed it into a cylindrical, white machine. It devours your words and shreds them into teeny, tiny pieces. It’s a moment of release, one of many in Mental Health: Mind Matters, the Carnegie Science Center’s newest exhibit. Launched March 1 and running through Aug.
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1 month ago | 
pghcitypaper.com | Aakanksha Agarwal
The strip of land between Penn Avenue and Fort Duquesne Boulevard has been a no-man’s-land, more concrete cut-through than community hangout. But next year, Pittsburghers might start planning picnics there. Construction began on Arts Landing, a four-acre public space in the Cultural District set to transform Downtown’s Eighth Street block. Arts Landing marks one of the Cultural District’s most ambitious projects in 25 years.
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1 month ago | 
kidsburgh.org | Aakanksha Agarwal
Photo above of kids in Kindermusik Class courtesy of Kathy's Music. For many parents, the hardest part of helping kids with big feelings is getting them to say what they're feeling in the first place. Is it frustration? Fear? Embarrassment? Or just plain tiredness? For a toddler who's still figuring out how to form sentences, or a 7-year-old who's been holding it all in, the answer isn't always clear. But crayons, clay, music and even puppets can help.
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1 month ago | 
nextpittsburgh.com | Aakanksha Agarwal
The first tear of injera always feels like a small ceremony. I pinch a piece from the spongy, slightly sour flatbread laid out like a soft, edible tablecloth. Made from teff, an ancient, iron-rich grain cultivated in Ethiopia for thousands of years, injera is gluten free and unlike any other bread in the world. It reminds me instantly of the rotis and naans of my childhood in India. Not in taste, but in purpose.
