Kaleidoscope Cafe

This past week was Restaurant Week in Pittsburgh.  A whole slew of restaurants had special pricing (mostly at $20.14 per entree), so DB~ and I thought it would be a good chance to try a new restaurant out.

After looking over the list of restaurants, we selected Kaleidoscope Cafe in Lawrenceville.  It's a couple blocks off of Butler Street (towards the river) on 43rd Street.  It's nestled among a series of rowhouses in this primarily residential area.  In case you're wondering if you're going to walk past this restaurant, even at night, don't worry about that.  If you clicked the link above, you'll see that the exterior of the restaurant is painted in a series of bright colors and patterns.

The interior is much more sedate, with a yellowish/brown primary color scheme and some cloth textures hung from the ceiling to create a wavelike pattern.  The walls have a series of stuffed sewing-cloth triangles mounted on the walls.  It's a small restaurant, probably no more than 15 tables.

For Restaurant Week, Kaleidoscope had five specials, each for $20.14 from the regular menu (all but the Filet Mignon).  Additionally, you got either a small salad or cup of soup with it.  It was a cold, bleak night, so we each got the Smoked Potato Soup.

It was quite good and hearty on a night like this.

For dinner, DB~ went back to basics and got the Oven Roasted Salmon.  It came with a wild mushroom risotto, but sadly it was not like Kandouri's in Greece.  She didn't really care for the bok choy that it also came with.

I got the half of a Cornish Hen.  It was moist on the inside and had crispy skin on the outside.  The sauce of shallots, figs, and grape tomatoes was excellent.  The garlic mashed potatoes were fairly average, but the roasted squash was kind of hard and rather tasteless.

Overall, we were glad to have found this restaurant that we otherwise may not have known about.  We won't be rushing back to it, but it was good nonetheless.