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| - The Hard Rock Cafe in Station Square offers a brunch buffet on the mornings when the Pittsburgh Steelers have a home game playing at 1 pm. This review is specifically about their buffet, not the regular menu.
Following the genre of music, I'd say to the Hard Rock Cafe, "Don't quit your day job." Most of the other guests in the restaurant were ordering off the menu, so I'd say its a pretty universal opinion.
For about $16, the buffet was unremarkable. In the warmers, they had premade scrambled eggs, sausage, bacon, hash browns, french toast sticks and pierogies. There was a small collection of pastries, muffins, and bagels -- only butter and cream cheese for the bagels. Two cooks helped with omelets -- they had their pans filled with a partially cooked egg and cheese mixture, to which they would add peppers, tomatoes, ham or bacon. The result was a very fast but very dense/flat "cooked-to-order" omelet. There was also a bowl of cut up fruit.
Next to the omelets was also some kind of beef roast that would be carved on request. I guess this is what made the buffet "brunch" instead of "breakfast."
Basic institutional fare: the french toast was dry (there was some warm syrup you could add), scrambled eggs in big cakes of egg, selection of pastries/muffins very minimal (e.g., two kinds of Danish), no toast, no English muffins, no cereal (hot or cold), no pancakes, no waffles, few bagel toppings. No egg beaters, egg whites or eggs besides omelets/scrambled. The fruit looked (and tasted) like it came from a can with the usual syrup. No other deserts or fresh fruit. The beef was well cooked (i.e., well done) and a bit dry but tasted ok -- it would help if they had knives to cut the meat rather than just the butter knife provided. Perhaps the one outstanding good thing was the pierogies with onions. If you got the ones on top, they were pretty good. The ones on the bottom of the warming tray got so hard that you could barely cut them with the utensils.
Service was fine -- the cooks at the buffet were prompt and the servers took away plates and refilled drinks. I don't think they refilled the buffet table -- looks like it got filled in the morning and stayed that way thru game time. I did hear a football trivia game going on in the room next door, if you like that kind of thing.
Be aware of parking -- it's hourly at the east end and a flat $10 "event" at the west. If you are there only for the food, go east. Staying for the game, head west.
If you want the Hard Rock menu, I'd say "enjoy." If you'd like something in a buffet before the game (or on Sundays without games), I'd point you to the Grand Concourse just down the block. It's $25, but a lot more for your money.
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