Meat and Potatoes

After driving into Pittsburgh and getting settled at our hotel, it was time for dinner. Before leaving on our road trip, we had made a reservation for Meat and Potatoes, since we liked the menu, it was close to the hotel, and we heard they were a pretty busy place. The restaurant was indeed crowded and bustling when we got there, so we were glad we had gone the advanced reservations route (since we often don't when on vacation).

Meat and Potatoes was a gastropub serving comfort food, with a menu heavily focused on (obviously) meat and potatoes. We started off with some beer, like this Bell's Brown Ale which was sweet and malty. Not a ton of hops, but a great beer to pair with burgers.

To start, we got the fried Brussels, figuring that we needed some vegetables to go along with all the meat and potatoes in the meal. The sprouts were crispy and full of flavor, topped with a little bit of parmesan cheese, and accompanied with some aioli. From what we remember (it's been four years...), these were a good start to the meal.

One of the things we were really looking forward to was the bone marrow, because we really like trying that in various places. This one came with three pieces, some grilled bread, and garnishes of salt, gremolata, pickled onions, and capers. It was really well-executed, nice and creamy with complementary toppings, and we were really glad we ordered it.

We had already gotten a substantial amount of food with the bone marrow (those were not small pieces) and sprouts, but still on the way were our main courses. We had decided to get a burger and a sandwich to split, and each of those came with a generous portion of fries, which we remember as being quite tasty and well-seasoned.

The sandwich we got was the Korean reuben sandwich (which is the only thing we got that isn't still on the restaurant's menu according to the version online). The sandwich had corned beef, Brussel kimchi, "Korean special sauce," and Swiss cheese. We both like reuben sandwiches, and this one had nice griddled bread, good flavors, and a ton of corned beef. It was pretty large with quite a lot of meat piled on there.

For the burger, we split the pub burger with pork belly pastrami, horseradish cheddar, fried egg, and "special sauce" on a housemade bun. The burger was really good (amazing in A's words), and it's the part of the meal A most remembers this many years later, especially that dominant flavor of horseradish cheddar (dominant in a good way). The combination of the bacon (well, pork belly pastrami) with the creamy horseradish cheese and the egg was just perfect. While both the burger and sandwich were good, we clearly liked this one better.

The food at Meat and Potatoes tasted good, but we were so full by the time we rolled out of there. What I actually remember the most about the meal was just how stuffed we were. After digesting for a little bit, we couldn't just sit around in our hotel room feeling as full and heavy as we did, so we ended up going to the gym later that night. It was the only remedy we could think of for how we felt, and I guess it helped a little bit. Good food, but very, very full.