Tough night to find a plate in Pittsburgh

So on Saturday, my girlfriend and I had dinner with her aunt and her aunt's friend. We knew we were going out and we knew it would be around 7 pm, but we didn't have concrete plans about a place to go.

But it's Pittsburgh! You can always get a table at a nice restaurant, even on a Saturday. Right?

At least this past Saturday....wrong. We tried Red Room, Pangea, and Casbah and none of them could seat us until 9 pm! We ended up at Enrico's on Ellsworth, but we didn't consider that "settling".

When we walked in at 7, the place was empty except for 3 other tables. Oh, no! Did we overcorrect and go to a failing restaurant? I've been to Enrico's twice before and been pleased both times -- what happened? Well, by 8 pm the whole place was packed and people were eating at the bar as well.

All of a sudden, Pittsburgh has become chic and trendy with eating "fashionably late" as my mother says.

As for the meal itself, my girlfriend has a serious pumpkin lust in the fall, so she went with the pumpkin/sage-filled ravioli and I had the gnocchi with butternut squash. The gnocchi were light, not heavy and doughy like most places, and the filling had enough zip to catch your attention. The ravioli were fantastic as well...sage is a very underrated herb, especially for autumn cooking.

Seated next to us were two couples, both around my age (early 30's) or maybe slightly younger. They actually brought a small portable wine cooler (not a Seagram's, but a container) and it held 3 bottles of wine. And they weren't 10 dollar bottle of wine, either. This table proceeded to put down 2-1/2 bottles of wine while we were there, with the remaining part of the bottle not far behind I'm sure.

It's interesting seeing the uptick in wine interest among people my age. I'm just fearful there's a huge amount of pretentiousness to go along with it.