7 April 2024
Although I did have a bit of a hangover after that delicious and fun night at Parlor Dim Sum, I had a busy Sunday in and around Pittsburgh. Sunny and warm, a perfect day. I rolled into my hotel mid-afternoon and dealt with some trip logistics for tomorrow early in the morning. I need to stop doing these Monday early AM flights…
But I was looking forward to a good dinner tonight at the very highly-rated DiAnoia’s Eatery. I first had to return my car to the airport, which was all good, but the crazy prices on rideshare into town. $80 on Lyft, really? I luckily found something a bit less on Uber, but this is ridiculous.
We rolled into the city and I walked into DiAnoia’s on a busy Sunday night. It was still hopping, and they squeezed me into a bar seat. I’m hoping it will go as well as last night! A cocktail in hand and I looked over the menu and ordered. I relaxed and some bread came out.
Not bad to fill my stomach with this cocktail. Soon after my starter came, carciofi.
These artichokes were excellent, wonderful texture and flavour, yum! I’m quite excited for this dinner now…but where is it? I shifted to a nice wine and kept waiting. And waiting… At about the half hour point I was starting to get annoyed, then I noticed they tried to deliver some food to the wrong people…
That’s my food. But wait, why two plates?
They brought my primo and secondo out at the same time. You gotta be kidding me. So they took the secondo back. And when I looked at the primo, my pasta dish, my heart sank. I thought this place was supposed to be good with Italian food?
They clearly messed up somewhere because this cacio e pepe is more like a soup. What a mess. They took a half hour to make something that most Italian restaurants would be horrified to bring out?
Look at this, it’s like I’m eating soup noodles or ramen or something.
This is how much liquid was left over afterwards. They should have called this cacio e pepe con acqua.
And when they brought my secondo out, the server just spilled the jus all over the place with no care in the world. Seriously, really?
As you can see the plate is flooded with the jus, a total soggy mess. This is their take on porchetta. Fine, but frankly this probably sat under the heat lamp because they screwed up the pasta and order, so it was really meh. I ended up pairing this with a grappa because I lost my appetite and want to forget about this evening.
Now the staff have made themselves scarce. After last night’s wonderful service by the city’s friendliest FoH crew, now I get a set of people who don’t care, and have really turned what could have been a salvageable night into one that I will remember for all the wrong reasons.
They took the pasta off the bill, as they should, because it was a joke. But with the bad food that took forever to come out, throw in the dismissive attitude of some of the staff, it sucked. I can’t believe people rave about this place. Maybe it was a bad night, but frankly I’m too tired to deal with bad nights anymore.
Avoid.
DiAnoia’s Eatery
2549 Penn Avenue
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
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