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| - Are you ready for manly man food served in a manly man setting? I am! And thankfully, so was Belle.
I say manly man with my tongue in cheek since M&P owes much to chefs like Gabrielle Hamilton and April Bloomfield, both of whom have been kicking ass in NYC for a few years now. Bone marrow on toast may be the single most ripped off dish of the last decade or so--this place takes it from Hamilton, who stole it from Fergus Henderson. Is that a problem? No! Bone marrow isn't something you really expect to see on many Pittsburgh menus, so I won't call into question any cook's motives if I end up eating it.
Smack in the middle of the theater district, M&P is a good date spot--the lighting ranges from "romantic" to "theoretical." Yes, it's convenient, but more importantly it offers you many chances to put your date in situations in which you can evaluate him/her as a prospect.
1. It has a good bar. If I have to explain to a bartender on Carson St. what goes into a Blood & Sand, I don't want that guy making a Blood & Sand. Or anything. But that's not the case here, so you can observe what your date drinks given a wide array of options. Guys manage to screw this up all the time and yes, girls notice. Beer (12 oz? Before dinner?) and lite [sic] beer (ever?) will doom you. Ordering something like absinthe (available here) is doable, but for God's sake don't go into some overly-long explanation about the green fairy. Absinthe hasn't been like that for ages. That's like getting excited about drinking dairy because before refrigeration, it was a risky proposition.
2. Its menu takes a small token of skill to decode. Every restaurant is required by law (-ish) to have the following items on the menu: random, bland chicken breast dish; chocolate dessert with a lavish description (pick from: forbidden/dream/fantasy/some other erotic term that reinforces the unhealthy cultural relationship between women and food); fish with really boring sides; pasta (usually vegetarian, giving non-carnivores and the thrifty an option). At a bad restaurant, you stick to these because it's hard to really really screw up pasta, but at a good restaurant, you skip these because the cook just put them on the menu as a nod to less adventurous eaters--certainly not you! I have never had the salmon at M&P. I'm sure it's fine. Salmon is tough to screw up. I will never have M&P's salmon. Why would you ever go to a place with pictures of cows and pigs on the wall, a place obviously intended to be a shrine to all things pork and beef and order fish? It's clearly not the passion of the chef and can be safely skipped. So if your date orders the salmon, the ravioli, or even the "Plain Jane" burger, be wary.
3. If your dining companion orders any beef dish from a place like this well done, make an excuse and leave. M&P is not a pretentious place, but it takes its meat seriously. Don't let someone insult the cooks or the food like that. When I order something well done (once every 3 years), I'm saying, "I assume the kitchen in this diner is a festering pit of bacteria and this is the only way I can think of to kill it all."
With all these lessons in mind, Belle and I ordered a sea of appetizers (marrow, tartare, and so on) and a lamb entree to split. Aside from perhaps a little too much binder in the tartare and slightly uninspiring accompaniments with the lamb, everything was excellent. Nothing life altering, just tasty, solid food that was fun to eat.
This place takes its muscular eating seriously--steaks are served on cutting boards, wine is served in jars, everything has capers. It's a gastropub, which means no one is going to be blown away by some intricate little molecular trick the kitchen uses. But if you're in the mood for a plate of bones straight out of the Flintstones to be placed in front of you, this is your place.
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