I here for dinner this past Friday evening with my girlfriend in order
to celebrate my 30th birthday. I had wanted to come here years ago
whenever I worked nearby but it fell off my radar until it showed up
on Pittsburgh magazine's top 25 list this year. The restaurant itself
is a castle of sorts and quite impressive whenever you drive up to it.
It is secluded from the main road by a long driveway and trees and
gives you the impression that you have been transported over to
Europe. The gardens surrounding the building are beautiful and help
to support this feeling. We were able to walk them after our dinner
service had been completed and thoroughly enjoyed it. The building and
its grounds alone are worth a trip to this restaurant.
Once inside the castle my girlfriend and I were seated in a medium
sized room with a large vaulted ceiling. The plates had a picture of
the Hyeholde on them and the silverware was both ornate and dainty with
intricate holed patterns at the bottom. My girlfriend and I decided
that everything about it reminded us of Victorian England. After a
bit of a wait and some cocktails, we finally got around to ordering.
We decided to start off with soups for our appetizers with my
girlfriend ordering the seasonal soup (a salmon corn chowder) while I
decided on the sherry bisque. My bisque was creamy with a slightly
sour taste from the sherry which I really enjoyed. The corn chowder
was savory and tasted good with the salmon having very little
fishiness at all. For my entree I decided on the Elk cooked medium
rare at the chef's recommendation. It came with sides of roasted
beets and mushroom bread pudding. I had forgotten that the dish had
beets on it whenever it came to our table as they looked like tiny
potatoes. So I was pleasantly surprised by the flavor of beets which
I enjoy in my first bite. The Elk came in two separate pieces and was
very lean. It tasted much like a Fillet Mignon and my only complaint
with it is that I wish it would have been seasoned a bit more. Still,
it was good quality meat. Finally the mushroom bread pudding was
good, albeit quite salty. Whenever it was eaten altogether with the
elk and beets, the salt was cut down and it ended up adding a nice
earthiness to the meal. After dinner I decided to have a cup of
cappuccino in lieu of dessert. It came served with 2 brown sugar cubes
and 2 white cubes on a spoon, a biscotti and was covered with quite a bit of froth. As expected it was not a "fake" cappuccino and tasted quite
good, especially after the use of a sugar cube.
The bottom line for me is that I will definitely come back here in the
future. It was nice to see the beautiful grounds and all by
themselves would have warranted a 5 star rating. The food was also
good in its own way and I am looking forward to trying the salt block
halibut in the near future.