Two Great Restaurants...in Pittsburgh

Just returned from a weekend in Pittsburgh, and my friends and I were taken to two great restaurants: Pino's Mercato and Sharp Edge. Both off the beaten path, and both tourist free. Those two things sound good as stand alones, but the food at each of these places was excellent as well.

Pino's is a small Italian restaurant in the Point Breeze neighborhood that has a wide variety of pasta, meat, and pizza. We dined with 8 other people and everyone had an entree that they enjoyed. My chicken marsala was outstanding: nice flavored, good portion, and cooked perfectly. My friend had pasta carbonara and it too was excellent. As a plus, Pino's is also BYOB.

Sharp Edge is tucked away in a residential area of Pittsburgh, and is not very crowded even at peak times. Sharp Edge has a large varitey of beers, with the emphasis on Belgium imports. There food is also good and reasonably priced. The menu is large and has emphasis on burgers, steaks, and chops. Four of us had burgers last night, and they were done just right with a good portion of fries to go along with them. The crowd is very laid back, and is a nice place to go for good beer and good food.

Pino's Mercato
6738 Reynolds St.
Point Breeze
412-361-133

Sharp Edge Beer Emporium
302 South St. Clair Street
Pittsburgh, PA 15206
412-661-3537[/b]

I was at NCTE myself, but didn't eat great. Went to Lidia Bastianach's titular restaurant Saturday for lunch; neat three course weekend concept where you pick an entree and get unlimited trips to the antipasto bar and dessert table...yet nothing in particular stood out among the salads and meat, particularly some really weak proscuitto. Got the pasta sampler, which included three different kinds served from a cast iron pan, with the diner ablet to get unlimited refills thereafter--sort of an upmarket Olive Garden, I thought. The raisin, nutmeg was terribly cloying; their version of fruti de mare pretty tame. The lamb ragout was good--had seconds--but certainly not memorable. Excellent tiramisu, however.

Went to Kaya's, a pan-caribbean place, saturday night...a nicely decorated room; I suppose it's quite hip for Pittsburgh, but I appreciated the lack of hipness because the room was relatively quiet. The food, however, did not translate well at all; the only clear flavor profile on everything I tasted--from a ceviche to tilefish--was salt.

btw, do Pittsburghians have a reputation for being surly? I got terrible customer service all weekend, nonstop. It was rather remarkable.

chezbrad wrote:btw, do Pittsburghians have a reputation for being surly? I got terrible customer service all weekend, nonstop. It was rather remarkable.

I was with KatyK and the food was excellent. I had veal scallpini with wild mushroom ravioli. Excellent food. The only strange thing was that the restaurant cleared out by 10:30 on a Friday (which I found was a little early) and the staff looked at us for about 10 minutes. The chef even had his coat on. It was somewhat strange. However the service was good.

Sharp Edge: TODG and I had just a couple hours in Da 'Burgh (sorry sazarac, didn't have advance warning myself...), so we stopped at the Sharp Edge, which has expanded since last we were there. Excellent service, good salads (mine Caesar, Debbie's mixed greens), the burger was cooked perfectly, very beefy flavor, excellent bun, good limp home-cut fries. Debbie had Hoegarten witbier, Lindeman's raspberry. I had:
TWO-HEARTED ALE !!! fresh, on draft. Oh boy oh boy.

Geo