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| - This Italian-American restaurant has a long and proud history in the Pittsburgh area and is one of the first tenants to help revitalize Carnegie's downtown area. It is absolutely HUGE inside, although you cannot see that from outside. The provide a nice parking lot behind the restaurant that does not charge for parking, but there are also several city-lots within short distances away in case that lot is full.
When you enter the restaurant, you might be a bit bewildered. Right in front of you is a large counter that is used by the servers and is normally stocked full of loaves of bread. To your left is a deli counter with cakes. Many of them appear to be 10 or 12 inches tall! This, by the way, is a hint of how gargantuan the portions served here are! If you go off to the right, around the server counter, you will find the host/hostess table.
There are actually four dining rooms in the place. Two of them are to the right of the host stand and they are finished in pale wood tones, well lit, and with a variety of tables to seat four to ten people. If the host takes you further into the restaurant, you will pass the bar area and then enter a pair of even larger rooms that are separated by an indoor water fountain. The decor here is older and darker, but still light enough to view the menu and food.
The menu is printed on two pages of an oversized sheet of paper. One one side are all the normal pasta, chicken, veal, fish, pork, salads, and meat dishes that one would expect. There are also lots of traditional appetizers. On the other side of the menu you find the beer, wing, and drinks menu. If you are in the wine mood, they have a large selection of bottles for $35 and some specialty wines that start there and go up to about $100. There are also many offered by the glass.
In our case, we were captivated by one of the specials of the day which was a kale and spinach stuffed ravioli. One of us chose to get the dish with the Divine Sauce while another chose the same dish but with the Basil Pesto Cream Sauce. When the food arrived, we all agreed that this dish was excellent. Lots of flavor and the ravioli melded well with either sauce. Oh, by the way, they grill a chicken breast, slice it up, and offer it on top of the dish as well!
The other two members of our party chose to go with the Chicken Marsala and the Baked Salmon. Both of those comes with that day's vegetable - which happened to be Broccoli during our visit. Again, both dishes were very flavorful. The Broccoli was steam but had no special flavorings added to it, so it was a bit bland.
While we got a bread plate as soon as we sat down, we also ordered two appetizers. One of advertised as Portabella caps - but it ended up coming with large chunks of sausage as well as a sauce. The other was the Scallops. Each of those appetizers could have satisfied all four of us, or been used as an entree! they are that large.
Between all the food that we got, the wine we had, and the dessert that we skipped, the bill came to around $50 per person. Service was excellent and we noted the waiter hanging around, just out of hearing range, monitoring whether it was time for him to make an appearance. Perhaps this was due to the relative lack of customers, but it did make the meal's pacing go very well.
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