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| - I absolutely love Whitfield. I hate that it's in the Ace.
The hotel itself was clearly rushed to the finish with the construction trailers and dumpsters outside up until, and after, opening night. With this, Whitfield is not separate space from Ace. It's literally dumped right in the lobby with a shoddy trellis separating the bar/lounge from the dining seating. They do weird hotel stuff like make you wait until your reservation time to seat you at a table that has been empty since you arrived (actually happened; I almost lost my damn mind) and have almost obnoxiously friendly service. Luckily, the food is beyond all this surface annoyance.
Like.. The smoked chicken. I swear they dug into my dreams of dumplings and gravy and huge hunks of chicken to create this plate of new style comfort food. The +1 usually gets a burger but is most impressed with the french onion soup. Haven't tried it personally, but he's a pretty good indicator of what is popular.
Luckily for me, they have a French 75 on the cocktail menu as well as a few ciders on the list I had never even heard of. The cocktail menu was mostly a whiskey in a rocks glass heavy selection but still impressive.
With the worst thing about Whitfield being how crowded the lobby/bar is, I'd say it's pretty great. Make sure you have time to hang out; this is not quick service (not even in a negative way, enjoy yourself!). The Ace brings a loud, out of town, older crowd making it an odd spot in Pittsburgh, but the dumplings are enough to ignore the over the top attempt to be hip with an odd placement.
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