rev:text
| - I loved this place. I've been here about a hundred times in the last couple years. When they recently closed for renovations, it had been well over a year since the last time I woke up at home on a Saturday and didn't go to Nu. But when they reopened, everything had changed. My previous review, a well-deserved 5-star celebration of one of the best menus in the city, is now but an elegiac memory that will likely haunt me for the rest of my days in Pittsburgh.
I praised the babkas, now reformulated into bread pudding or kugel like cubes that don't hold a candle to what used to be one of the best desserts I've ever had in Western Pennsylvania.
I declared the latkes an unarguably superior breakfast potato, but they too are gone, replaced by an OK potato kugel.
The Jewbano, that creative and delicious fusion sandwich I recommended to every first-timer? Gone, along with the ability to get the smoked meat it contained.
I scanned the new chalkboard menu (which honestly isn't easy to read from some of the seats, and there's no printed alternative), looking for my favorites, only to determine one by one that they had all vanished. The turkey? Gone. The matzo balls? Gone. The kreplach, the grown-up grilled cheese, the fantastic omelette that had become an early Saturday go-to...all gone.
By my count, the 11 strongest items on the menu had either vanished or been replaced by a far inferior substitute. It's possible not every item is gone forever. I was told they'd change the menu regularly and update the website and/or their Facebook page with the menu each week...though sadly, that turned out not to be true. The website still has the old menu (dated 6 months ago), and 2 weeks after the big reopening, the Facebook page has no relevant information on what might be served on any given day.
Right now, Nu is...OK. It's not bad. Pretty good. Decent. If I had walked in for the first time this month, I'd be reasonably pleased. But given what it was, I'm sadder to write this 3-star review than I ever have been for a 1 or a 2.
|