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| - I've always seen Cafe Notte when I drive 65, which is not often and why I never remember to come here until I drive past again. I always thought it was a coffee shop, but when I looked it up, it turns out its a restaurant with a menu that looks amazing.
Recently a friend mentioned it and we decided to plan a visit. Upon arriving, I fell in love with the decor and the overall vibe of the place. It's exactly my style and I wanted to move in. Haha. The ceiling has these fun LED lights that look like stars in the sky. Everything about the appearance turned me on. Until the food....
I asked about the lobster bisque and was told it's wonderful so being our first painfully cold and snowy day in Pgh, def wanted that in my belly. When it arrived at our table, the presentation was great and excited my mouth even more. Turns out, the soup is extremely thick with barely any lobster, but an abundance of shell. I picked shell out of my mouth no less than 4 times. Also, because the soup was so thick, literally glue-like, I had to keep washing my mouth with water. $9 for this glue soup is absolutely absurd.
For my entree I went eith a side salad and crab cake. I was told the "homemade balsamic" was unbelievable so of course I had to try it. Turns out, the "balsamic" dressing is 100% NOT balsamic, but rather appears to be a tomato based oily dressing that neither looks nor tastes anything like balsamic. In fact, it had barely any identifiable flavor.
As for the crab cake...what an epic disappointment. It was a $12 crab cake patty filled with breading, no chunks of crab, and literally looked like it came out of the freezer section of a grocery store. The red pepper remoulade was again, paste-like and 0.0 flavor.
The 2 stars are only bc I loved the appearance and our server handled our disappointment without question.
Cafe Notte should consider hiring a legit chef or skipping food and going with coffee shop, which would have been a much better experience.
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