Meat and Potatoes is located in Downtown Pittsburgh on Penn Avenue in the Cultural District, near the Benedum Center, Heinz Hall, Pittsburgh Symphony, O’Reilly Theatre, and the Cabaret at Theatre Square. Meat & Potatoes does not offer any on-site parking or valet parking services. However, many surface parking lots and multi-story parking garages are located nearby. The restaurant is located in the space formerly occupied by Cafe Zao, adjacent to the Cabaret at Theatre Square. In fact, the restaurant shares bathrooms with the theater, so avoid using the restrooms at the same time that intermission occurs in the cabaret.
Meat and Potatoes shares the same owners as nearby Butcher and the Rye on Sixth Street and Bar Marco on Penn Avenue in the Strip District.
Meat and Potatoes offers both indoor and outdoor seating. Outdoors, you can dine on the front patio, which is covered by a roof, although it is open at the sides. Indoors, the restaurant features high ceilings, which makes the overall space seem larger than it is. A small private dining room is located near the front of the restaurant, but it holds a limited number of people (perhaps only 12+ diners). The round, marble-topped tables that seat two patrons are diminutive. The two-tops share a common angled padded banquette seat that runs along one wall. Square tables for four patrons line the outer wall of the restaurant and offer a bit more room. It is difficult to fit two large plates, cutlery, glassware, and a candle on the little tables at the same time. In contrast, the bar is large and expansive; positioned in the center of the restaurant space to offer seating around its entire perimeter. On the evening that we dined, every bar stool was occupied, and most patrons seated there ordered full meals, not just drinks.
The food was fantastic! The menu offers something for everyone: basic food like fried pickles and burgers for patrons looking for standard pub fare, to pâté and bone marrow for patrons looking to experiment. In our opinion, the dinner menu is more interesting than the brunch and lunch menus.
We ordered two appetizers: the bone marrow and the duck tostada (the appetizer of the day). The bone marrow portion was plentiful: three thick 12” bone halves that were very “meaty”, served with slices of grilled bread, capers, sea salt, herbs, and pickled onion. For our entrees, we ordered the pastrami-cured duck breast (served medium rare alongside a dandelion salad and sauerkraut pierogies) and the hanger steak (served with warm fingerling potato salad and Brussel sprout leaves). For dessert, we shared a popcorn mousse creation that contained a white mousse topped with a thin layer of chocolate and caramel topped with ground popcorn dust. Portions are generous, yet the food prices are reasonable.
The restaurant lists their draught beer names and ABVs (but not prices) on a mirrored specials board on one side of the restaurant. Unfortunately, not every table (or every diner, for that matter) can see the board. (For instance, I could see the top half of the board, but my spouse could see none of it because his back was to the list.) In any case, the draught beer that we ordered was NOT listed on the mirror, neither its name, nor its ABV, nor its price (we even double-checked after our meal by walking up to the board). However, the beer that we ordered was a Dogfish ale, which we have enjoyed previously at other bars and restaurants, so we thought that we had an idea of the price. When our bill arrived, we expected the draught beer to be priced similarly to the bottled beers on the menu (an average of $5), but the Dogfish draughts were $11 each! When we questioned our server (and later the hostess) about the prices, both informed us that the price was accurate, and both rather insultingly told us that we should have known that we were drinking expensive beer because the restaurant served it in a slightly smaller-than-usual glass (perhaps a 10-oz. glass instead of a 12-oz. glass).
Unfortunately, the overriding memory that remains of our dinner experience is of the exorbitantly overpriced beers, not of the excellent food. The more-than-double prices for the draught beers (as compared to the bottled beers) make it seem as if the restaurant is deliberately trying to mislead its customers. The food was terrific, but we probably will not return because of the (hidden) price of the drinks. True, we could have inquired about the price from our server, but we assumed (incorrectly) that the draught prices would be equitable to the bottled beer prices. Our server was transparent when she revealed the prices of the daily food specials (which aligned with other similarly coursed items on the regular men), so why the subterfuge on the drinks?
