On the Fourth of July, Ted and I tried a new-to-us fine (semi-fine?) dining restaurant, Braddock’s American Brasserie & Streetside Bar. It’s the hotel restaurant and bar in the Renaissance Hotel downtown, and we had a Groupon. Our plan was to have dinner and then walk out and watch the fireworks. Braddock’s claims that its aim is to serve updated and upscaled meals based on the traditional cooking of Pittsburgh’s many early immigrant communities, and it also touts itself as having the largest selection of whiskeys of any bar in Pittsburgh. This sounded like a super set up.
The bar is separated from the restaurant proper by the hotel lobby (which is beautiful). I like this arrangement, because the noise from the bar doesn’t intrude on the dining room. The dining room itself was done up with big leather booths and dark walls, a sort of more cleanly lined take on old-school fancy restaurant decor. Including Ted and I, there were perhaps seven or eight tables. Ted noticed that despite the fact that the dining room was perhaps only one/fifth full, the three servers were running around frantically as though the place were packed – this was not a good omen, it turned out.
We spent a long time waiting for service with the menu and drink menu. They did have perhaps two or three dozen whiskeys on their list, but frankly, having recently been at McCormack’s Whisky Grill in Richmond, VA, and Village Whiskey in Philadelphia, the selection just wasn’t comparatively all that impressive. I ordered a Blanton’s, though, which I’ve had before and enjoyed.
It came with lipstick on the rim of the glass. Not just a whisper of gloss, either. Bold red lipstick stains, that the bartender and the server both should have noticed. I sent it back. I mean, come on, if I’m spending upwards of $15 on a pour of whiskey, the glass should be clean and sparkling.
The server was very apologetic and hurried a new glass back to me, though, so there was that. Then Ted and I ordered the cheese plate. Frankly, it was uninspired. There were six cheeses, one of which I could identify straight away as Beemster XO, which is a good cheese, but readily available at Giant Eagle – I like my cheese plate experiences to offer me something I can’t pick up readily at the grocery store. There was also a very young gouda that was bland and frankly had no business being on an upscale cheese plate. There were two good goat cheeses, but here we ran into another problem: the bread served with the tray was grilled in garlic butter. Now, don’t get me wrong, I like a nice buttery garlic bread. But the flavor of the bread itself completely overwhelmed the subtle tastes of the soft, light goat cheeses. So we asked for more bread, plain.
Here commences a 20-minute wait for bread.
The server came over and apologized after about seven minutes; he apologized again when the bread finally came out after twenty. Guys: it’s fucking bread. How on earth could it take 20 fucking minutes to get me some plain baguette slices? Honestly – how?
Shortly afterward, our entrees came. Ted ordered the special, swordfish steak served with roasted roma tomatoes and a hearty rice pilaf. I ordered the “Housemade Potato Gnocchi and Lobster,” described as coming with “three types of mushrooms, artichokes, and parmesan cream sauce”.
The food was less bad than it was incompetent. Ted’s roasted tomatoes were very good, the tomato flavor being nicely condensed by the roasting and flavored with olive oil. His pilaf was a nice blend of heartier rices, but it was underseasoned. His swordfish was also dreadfully underseasoned, as well as overcooked.
On my plate, the gnocchi themselves were excellent, perhaps the best I’ve had – they were buttery, hearty without being starchy, semi-soft and just generally deliciously potato-y. But then things went awry. For one thing, there were absolutely no artichokes – perhaps they got lost wherever the bread went missing. The cream sauce was fine, delicately flavored, though noting noteworthy; the lobster was dropped onto the dish in artless chunks, but otherwise fine. But then the mushrooms – oh, the mushrooms. There were a million of them, heaped over all the rest of the dish, and their strong umami taste completely overwhelmed the light cream sauce and delicate lobster flavor. It was just a terrible idea – who put this dish together? I tried a gnocchi with a bite of Ted’s roasted tomato and it was excellent. Braddock’s – simplify. Since clearly, when you try to get “fancy” you go awry. (Of course, how simple is a rice pilaf and a fish steak, and that, too, went awry. So … I don’t know what to tell you.)
With my meal I had a glass of wine, a $13 pinot noir that was fine, but nothing to write home about – Braddock’s wine list, in fact, was not particularly impressive at all. Ted had a cocktail of whiskey and fresh muddled berries that he liked a lot. We took a look at the bar menu, and it seemed to have simpler fair, sandwiches and moules frites. Perhaps we should have taken our Groupon to the Streetside Bar.
We won’t be returning to Braddock’s. The whiskey list the bar touts doesn’t stack up to other whiskey bars I’ve been to, and the wine list was dismal compared to what I’d expect for a restaurant holding itself out as traditional fine dining. The kitchen was incompetent during our visit, both in terms of getting our food out to us, and in the composition and execution of the dishes. There were a few quality moments in the meal, but at Braddock’s prices, they simply weren’t worth it. Even discounting our $40 Groupon, our meal, with two drinks apiece, one appetizer, and two entrees came in at $107. At this price point, any of the upscale Big Burrito restaurants – Eleven, Soba, Casbah – is a much better, tastier dining experience, and you can have much better food for much less money at Point Brugge or (the BYOB) Piccolo Forno, to name just two better values off the top of my head.
The fireworks were nice, though.