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| - Caveat lector: I'm giving this place 3 stars because I'm comparing it to other similar restaurants in Pittsburgh within the same price range. So in effect I'm rating them not on an absolute scale but relative to what they try to be.
I'll say right off the bat that I was very underwhelmed by Avenue B. It was hyped to me by some friends and the fact that it was a pain to get a reservation for this place for a Friday night made me think that it was worth the hype. Unfortunately, that turned out not to be the case. I came here with my girlfriend, and as appetizers we got the tartare and the mussels. The tartare was perhaps the most disappointing part of the whole meal: entirely bland with almost no dressing. There was a sort of slight smoky flavor to the meat tartare (there was also a salmon tartare as well) but otherwise it was pretty tasteless (the salmon wasn't any better). The mussels were very small, though the sauce was pretty decent. I found it mostly unexceptional, though my girlfriend liked it, but for the same price you can get a much better dish at either Point Brugge or Brasserie 33.
For the mains I had the hanger steak and she had the monkfish. I am not terribly familiar with monkfish so I don't know what the "right" way to prepare it is, but when I tried a piece, it was rather flavorless. My girlfriend thought that it was tougher than it should have been and that the taste of the fish was watered down by the sauce. It seems to me that when you have a fish that is not naturally full of flavor, you have to prepare a sauce for it that enhances it, but it didn't seem to me like that was the case with that dish. The hanger steak was fine, and the lobster mac and cheese was a nice touch, but again, there wasn't anything particularly special about it. The meat was of decent quality and prepared nicely, but overall I found it less juicy and flavorful than the hanger steaks I had at Salt and Meat & Potatoes. We also had a side dish of brussels sprouts to share, which I thought were ok, if a little too well done and too drenched with sauce.
The only really good part of the meal was the dessert. We split the chocolate salt bar with the olive oil ice cream, which was very nice.
Overall, we both felt that Avenue B was overrated relative to other good restaurants in Pittsburgh. It's not that anything was bad per se, but if you're interested in getting a good meal in the 412, there are any number of restaurants that you could go to that would cost you the same amount but have much better quality of food. Just to list a few: Salt, Meat & Potatoes, and Legume, all of which have a comparable style of food, are much better and not more expensive. In addition, all those places have great cocktails, whereas Avenue B is BYOB; nothing wrong with that, but it's not like I'm going to be mixing a bourbon drink at my table. You could do worse than eat here, but you could also do a lot better.
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