My spouse and I dined at Hyde Park Prime Steakhouse for
dinner on a Thursday evening in late November 2019. We were staying across the
street at the Hyatt Place North Shore because we were in town to attend a college
football game at nearby Heinz Field, home of the Steelers. (The restaurant is
also very close to the Pirates PNC Park.) Hyde Park Prime is open for dinner
and drinks daily. We made a booking using the online Open Table reservation
system. Other locations of Hyde Park Prime Steakhouse include spots in Ohio,
Florida, and Michigan. The Hyde Park Restaurant group also operates four other
Ohio restaurants: Jekyll’s Kitchen, ML Tavern, Black Point, and Bull & Bird
Steakhouse.
Hyde Park Prime opened in 2007 on Pittsburgh’s North Shore,
on the ground level of the Peoples (Equitable) Gas office building on the banks
of the Allegheny River. Valet parking is offered. The street side of the space
offers a somewhat circular bar with a few high-top tables on one side and a
raised dining platform on the other, and a cozy lounge seating area with a sofa
and a double-sided fireplace. The back two thirds of the property offers a
semi-open kitchen, with booth, banquette, and table seating. A side dining room
offers event space and overflow dining (which was fully occupied the night we visited).
The rear of the room offers river and skyline views through its large windows;
seasonal al fresco dining is available on a rear patio. The overall look of the
space is traditional upscale steakhouse with red velvet drapery, wood paneling,
enormous chandeliers, padded chairs, and white tablecloths.
As its name implies, Hyde Park is a traditional steakhouse,
with cuts of beef named after local celebrity sports figures and family-style
shareable sides. (Seafood options are also available.) However, we chose to go
a slightly different route than the traditional steakhouse fare. As we perused
the menu, our server delivered a bread basket filled with some yummy choices,
along with a slab of butter (one end was dipped in herbs, but the other was
dipped in salt that was way too salty to use; in the past, we have seen butter
sprinkled with sea salt, but that end of the butter was nearly inedible). We
started with two salads: the modern chop salad (which was tasty, although not “chopped”
in the sense that we had hoped, where every ingredient is exactly the same size)
and the wedge salad. Next, we ordered a cheeseburger (which was served with
house-made potato chips but for which we requested fries instead) and the
chicken Milanese (which our server said came with some accompaniments: 2
Brussel sprouts, 2 carrots, 2 potatoes, but arrived without them). The chicken
was a large portion of lightly-battered chicken cutlets, with a delicious white
wine lemon caper sauce. (As it turns out, the early dining [happy hour] portion
features the veggies, whereas the normal dinner portion does not.) We also
shared a side dish of the gruyere gratin potatoes, which were delicious. We
would have loved to order dessert; however, our service team was also assigned
to attend to two large tables of 8+ people as well as another table of 5, so
our meager two-top was essentially forgotten. At one point, a manager stepped
in to deliver our plates from the kitchen because he had noticed that they were
sitting there too long. But those plates arrived without the promised veggies
and the upgraded fries.
We will give Hyde Park Prime another try: we thought the
food was tasty, and although we experienced some service issues, the restaurant
went above and beyond to correct them, contacting us by phone and email to
apologize, and even sending us a small gift card to use at a later date.
