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| - I want to LOVE Zenith. I go there about every 6 months, and I try again, harder each time, to like Zenith. It's an antique shop, and I love antiques! They serve vegan and veggie food, which I love! They are known for their brunch - my lifelong favorite meal! i know everyone loves zenith because it is part antique shop and part vegan restaurant, and there is a buffet of vegan sides, salads, and vegan cakes, and you get a vegan entree, coffee/tea, AND buffet for only $10 on a sunday morning, and a lot of the salads/buffet items are delicious. i respect all of these reasons for loving Zenith.
And yet, I consider Zenith to be the biggest sore disappointment in my Pittsburgh experience.
First of all, I hate waiting in lines. I hate that you have to time the exact moment of your arrival (to beat everyone else) and wait for Zenith to start seating. or you can arrive when they are open, and wait in a 30 person line to be seated. i cannot express how deeply this irritates me.
I hate sitting cafeteria style at tables with strangers -- okay, honestly, I don't hate strangers, but I do hate non-consensual seating with ex-girlfriends, ex-friends, ex-co-workers, and other parties from the past I'd rather put to bed. Pittsburgh is an awful small town for such a big city, certainly I can't be the only one wishing those demons would stay somewhere far away from my brunch table?
Third, their table service is perhaps near the lowest-ranking in the city. If it is 90 degrees in June, and people are sitting in an un-air-conditioned room, with one lazy ceiling fan, and your server literally cannot bring you a glass of water.... well, there's a serious problem.
and finally, the food. The brunch buffet salads/sides are sometimes "Good" but mostly mediocre, and i don't think the entrees are ever very good.
We have a problem where we conflate quantity & quality. Our collective vegan brunch love for Zenith is exactly this issue. As vegans, you are not used to seeing a table full of cake you can eat. So when you do see that, you will rave about it. Even if the cake is dry and flavorless, you will eat it, and you will go back for seconds.
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