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| - As a lover of pasta--I love to eat it, I love to make it, I love to cook with it--this restaurant is heaven. Just outside of downtown Pittsburgh (by Wholey's and The Heinz History Museum), this restaurant has soaring ceilings, a beautiful Chihuly-style glass chandelier, and friendly waitstaff. It's great for a date night, business lunch/dinner, or celebratory dinner (we've celebrated new jobs, birthdays, and anniversaries here over the years). It was started by famous chef Lidia Bastianich and features a wonderful selection of pastas, wines, and desserts. The meal always starts with a bread basket filled with crunchy cheese bread sticks (they taste like gourmet Cheez-Its), herbed foccacia, and Italian bread and the breads are served alongside two different "butters" (olive and pesto, I believe). There are some amazing dishes on the menu (my mom loves their gnocchi with duck ragu and the arugula salad and rarely gets anything else, while my dad and brother are more willing to try different things from the menu, like wild boar ravioli or caprese salad), but the best choice on the menu by far is Lidia's Pasta Tasting Trio. Offered either on its own or paired with a Caesar salad and choice of dessert, this meal consists of endless servings of three different, freshly made pastas. The pastas and their sauces change each day, but you can usually count on at least one butter-based sauce (usually butter and sage or butter and thyme) and one tomato-based sauce. The pastas are always different--last night, they had bucatini, papardelle, and ravioli--and they are always freshly made. The servers bring out steaming saute pans filled with the fresh pasta and you can eat as much pasta as you want (the servers will stop by every so often to offer another serving). This meal is a great way to try new types of pastas and new sauces and, with three types served each time, you're bound to like one. I've had spinach and ricotta ravioli, tagliatelle in a thyme-butter sauce, linguine in a creamy tomato sauce, bucatini in a spicy tomato sauce with caramelized onions and bacon...I've had too many pastas and sauces to count and I've always enjoyed this meal. I highly recommend getting it with the salad and dessert--the Caesar salad is lovely and they usually have some tasty desserts. They always offer delicious ice creams and sorbets (we've had lemon sorbet, olive oil ice cream, chocolate espresso ice cream, and strawberry sorbet, to name a few) and they usually have some sort of decadent chocolate dessert available.
The restaurant is definitely dressy, but there's always the one table with the idiots who came dressed in jeans and a tee shirt--please don't be one of those idiots (wear a cute dress or khakis and a polo). They offer valet parking, but there's a large, relatively inexpensive parking lot right across the street. Reservations help, but usually you can get in without one (unless it's a weekend evening). I recommend coming in with an empty stomach, because with all of that pasta, you'll need some room in there.
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