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| - As first-time Pittsburgh visitors, we had just checked into our nearby hotel after almost losing a grueling battle with the city's madcap rush-hour traffic and bewildering tunnels, bridges, and street layout. (Even with GPS, we made an inadvertent trip across the Monongahela and through the Liberty Tunnel.) We'd originally planned to jump right into the city that evening to check out some stuff, but were cowed by the roads, at least in our exhausted state.
I might be overrating OTB Bicycle Café slightly, but it was perfect given our circumstances: A three-block walk, a laid-back pleasant atmosphere, pretty decent comfort food, and beer. The menu consists of burgers, a good variety of sandwiches and wraps, salads, and some bar apps. Most are somewhat more interesting and lean toward more nutritious ingredients than you'd get at a lot of bar and grills. "Bicycle Times BLT," a pressed sandwich, was pretty tasty eating, but then it's pretty hard to screw up bacon, avocado, and fried egg. (FWIW, the wife was less happy with her "Pedal Paddle Panini," which she said registered as too dry.) Big beer list, plus eight or ten rotating taps with a well-balanced selection.
I own a bicycle but don't know a damn thing about bicycle culture, so I'm pretty indifferent to the bicycle-heavy theme of this place. But the owners have done a nice job with it: The colorful front area, with a nice bar, has an airy barn-like feel to it, and the darker back room is a more traditional, narrow barroom area. We middle-agers felt comfortable in here, where the crowd included young urban singles, families, and even seniors.
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