| rev:text
| - We've been coming here for awhile and, frankly, it is a schizophrenic place. The ambience is nice. The addition of the louvered screen over the patio make much of the outdoor seating much more useable.
But there have been dramatic changes since the restaurant first opened. Overall, the menu has become much more "safe" at the expense of being creative. Seafood preparations are inconsistent (but so are Pittsburgh tastes with respect to how seafood should be prepared).
Expensive seafood (such as scallops) have been replace with cheaper alternatives (chicken) with no change in price. A few weeks ago someone asked for shrimp to be added to the salad and was told that it would be $3/shrimp. 21/30 ct shrimp are $13/lb meaning that 4 shrimp would have bought between 21 and 30 in a bag.
The restaurant's main recommendations are the servers and bartenders, who show the customers great respect and attention, but they seem to be hampered by a management more interested in profit than value. They remember what you like and try, very hard, to remember names, but they seem far less motivated than before (and watch our for surveillance cameras which seem to be everywhere in this place, in case you are in witness protection).
Case in point. A few weeks ago another customer was treated to a glass of white wine which replaced the "premium" wine by the glass that they normally serve (if people read my other reviews they'll know that I am of the opinion that Pittsburgh restaurants gouge their customers on wine, charging more than 4x/bottle off the wine store price). The glass price was more than $8, but the wine, which was on sale at the local PLCB store was $9.99 for a 1.5 liter bottle! So ONE GLASS cost the equivalent of 8 pours!
In essence, they substituted a cheaper wine for their "house" price, but failed to pass the savings onto the customer. Pittsburghers used to understand value. Perhaps they will, again.
This is not the first time that I have seen this. Awhile back they offered a "bluefin" tuna dish as the special but claimed that they had run out and that they would offer a yellowfin for the same price.
Now, there is not THAT much difference in taste between bluefin and yellowfin (since all the good bluefin goes to Japan), but there is certainly a difference in price. And to offer the latter at the same price as the former is ludicrous.
There is lot to recommend this place. The ambience and the staff are at the top of the list. But this was the flagship restaurant of the (now) chain and it seems to have lost a lot of its luster.
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