Super Mister Potato Head

Tater Tots! (I ordered mine well done...)

Tiny fried crispy friends! Reminiscent of grade 4! Tater tots, in the able hands of the staff at the Waterfront location of Bar Louie, are as surprisingly great eats as were some of the other offerings we enjoyed from this little chain restaurant's kitchen. Some, not so much... but definitely not BAD, well priced, and right across from the movie theatre.

seriously?

I know that I have custom of disdain for chain restaurants, but this was decent.

seriously!

I had a black cherry mojito - which is actually more of a blackberry mojito. It was tasty but seemingly ethanol-free. T enjoyed a traditional mojito and was surprisingly buzzed after about 1/8th of it. So, ymmv. Fresh blackberries made mine tasty, though. Don't tell my mother, but I kinda pounded it, and still, nuthin.

For my main course, I ordered a "small plate" of pot roast sliders. Now, I do have a small gripe here - two, actually. gripe #1: these aren't sliders - they're a smallish sandwich on some weirdly mushy shite bread that has been cut into four pieces. gripe #2: the meat is supposed to be accompanied by horseradish mashed potatoes. Fascinatingly, this is yet another of the burgh's missing ingredients - no horseradish. As I have said before, kids, the nose knows. And horseradish is an easy one. So, the sliders were ok - a lot of bread, little meat, bland-ish flavor from the mysteriously missing horseradish, but the meat itself was tender, fat fully rendered out, and good if not stingy in portion.

BUT

I got a side of tater tots.

Which is precisely what you should do if you find yourself down at the waterworks and want a drink and salty snack. Definitely the finest iteration of this Reagan-era school lunch vegetable that I have ever seen. I suspect they're high temp deep friend to crispy perfection, and then dusted with a spice-salt mix that smells like it contains dehydrated tomato, black pepper, and I am not sure what else. Nummy. Crispy. Infantile. $3.50 bought more than two diners could down - we managed less than half. And no hair nets and lunch ladies. No detention if you throw 'em. But I wouldn't waste this junk food nirvana.

Just for completeness, T had a BBQ chicken pizza. I dislike chicken on pizza, it just bugs me. Oddly, not one but ALL except the sole vegetarian pizza have chicken as a topping! Not really a pizza, more of a squishy flatbread. Sauce was a little sweet. But T liked it overall, although he noted dough was soft and too fluffy and would have fallen into a heap if he hadn't cut and eaten it with a knife and fork.

Summary judgments for the Waterworks location of Bar Louie: ok for the price and location. Service was pleasant and efficient, drinks were tasty but inconsistent in potency, food was ok except for mystery ingredients and lousy job done in every iteration of bread. BUT a bright shining beacon of goodness, hope and youth would bring me back - go there for tater tots and beer. Seriously.

Nine on Nine - Part Two

This is part two of my review of Nine on Nine. Part one appears below.

So, after we had drinks (well, we ordered drinks, I will confess that mine was too unpalatable to drink, and the server took it away without offering me anything else even though it was 80% full. Frankly, it was flavorless and just not worth the calories)...

For an appetizer, we went for the “Filet on Filet” - an obvious and lame play on the name of the restaurant. We were served a sad, bland pile of macerated meat (without onion, egg, capers, lemon... ) dressed with some greens atop some slightly dried-out-on-the-edges halfway-to-braseola pieces of meat. For a mostly-vegetarian, it is rare that I order beef, but as some of you may know, I prefer my meat raw if I am going to eat it. The quality of the ingredient was there, but the flavor was so bland, I actually asked the waiter to bring me some lemon. The addition of acid really improved the dish.

Freebie #2 (freebie #1 was the amuse, in part one) was then presented as an intermezzo of “watermelon soup” which was a shotglass of room-temp watermelon puree with water and a bit of mint.

I pondered the cosmic question: spit or swallow?

It was repulsive. I admit that I spat it out at the table, manners be damned. It was that nasty.

Now for the piece de resistance: for my entree, I ordered the barramundi. By eavesdropping on a nearby table (populated by loud marble-mouthed yinzers, but hey, they got service so they clearly know something I do not) I learned from their server that the barramundi was supposed to be served with a house-made saffron-tinged pasta and kalamata olives, and topped with fennel. Right up my alley. So I ordered it. What I was served was a major disappointment. The fish was just slightly overcooked, but it was flavorful and served with a crisp skin that I appreciated. The fennel was nicely seasoned and absolutely delicious. And that is where the praise ends. Where were the olives? (I will confess to you that when I altered and reheated the leftovers – which were at least 85% of my dish, I did find one (one olive!) the next day). But the biggest let-down was the pasta. It was painfully undercooked and cold.

House-made pasta! For you at home who have never made pasta, I will share that the reason I was so stunned by this is that homemade pasta is so naturally moist, you just flash it in salted boiling water until it is heated through, and typically worry about overcooking it – so, how in the realm of the laws of physics and the culinary universe they managed to undercook it, well, I will never know. And I am no pasta pussy. I understand the concept of al dente. It just was an unflavored (not a sprig of saffron, I would testify - mystery ingredient #2), dry, cold, stiff, inedible mass. To be sure I wasn't being overcritical, I fed a bite to Todd, who exclaimed, “ew. what was that?”

What was that, indeed?

Nine on Nine - Part One

In my search for a well-prepared, graciously-served meal in da burgh, I made a reservation at Nine on Nine. After all, this place has received top billing among Pittsburgh's top restaurants from all of the local guides and newspapers. As I have been writing this, I noticed it got superlong. I'll be presenting it to you in parts, so you can savor the flavor over a few days. (That, and I am too lazy to edit).

We arrived about a minute before the hour of our reservation and the hostess offered us what was arguably the worst table in the restaurant (behind the host's station and directly in front of the curtain-door into the kitchen) or an “at least 20 minutes' wait.”

Interesting, especially because the dining room was about half empty and it was 8:30 p.m. on a weeknight. But, um, ok... we accepted the crappy table, figuring that I would enjoy the clear view into the goings-on in the kitchen. I did get to see the guy who did the final plating wipe his nose and forehead with his bare hands and then continue to work. Excellent vantage point, indeed!

First a comment on service, since it is easy: the service was hurried, snide, and a little curt. Our waiter arrived at our table and hurriedly offered us menus with no introduction nor explanation, and no advertising of specials as we had seen offered to others nearby. Must've been the table. Either that, or I have developed a hideous pong. Who can say? I suggest this since we were treated in a curt and hurried manner throughout the remainder of the evening. The food runner even cleared a plate from which I was still eating!

As I have mentioned before, I am noone important. And clearly, at Nine on Nine, they wanted me to know it.

And now, the snackeroos:

We were served together, at one time, a stale and dull breadbasket and an amuse bouche that was stated to be panzanella. A rant: why on earth in EVERY DAMN PLACE we go out to eat in Pittsburgh do the servers imagine that we have never eaten food other than sausages before? Nine on Nine was no exception, and we were offered the terse explanation (though we did not ask...) that it was a “bread salad.” Ok. a breadbasket with a bread salad? To the chef: plan the menu. It helps.

I ordered a drink, a cherry blossom martini. It was described as Effen cherry vodka and a splash of almond liquor with house-made cherry sours. Sounds delectable, right? wrong. It was, in reality, watered-down and bland, and I solemnly swear that there was definitely no almond in there. Almond is hard to miss. Almond is a clear and easy-to-detect aromatic. It is distinctive. It was also absent. This brings up something I will have to expand upon later – but I have noticed, that in da burgh, mystery ingredients abound. By this, I can only guess that (see server's behavior above) many folks here must have no idea what they're tasting most of the time. Because we (Todd and I) have both noticed several instances of our being told that an ingredient was in a dish that absolutely and certainly was not. But more on the fact that my nose knows later...

Before I lapse into a hyperglycemic coma, I should describe how you can make Nine on Nine's version of panzanella at home: get flavored croutons. lightly rehydrate them in water and bland vinaigrette. plop on a plate and toss 1/8 cup of microgreens on top. claim it is panzanella. Perhaps they felt the need to explain the amuse (rather haughtily for peasant food, I might add) lest we wonder if it was an error of their having washed the food sent back by others and just served it again.

more to come...