Butcher and The Rye

DB~ and I have had six Valentine's Days together.  For each one of them, she has either figured out or cajoled out of me where we were going for dinner.  A couple of years ago, when I thought I had her fooled, she handed me a slip of paper on the drive to the restaurant.  It had the name of the dinner dish she was going to order that night from the restaurant she figured out.

This year, I was bound and determined to get her.  I set the reservation back in mid-January at Butcher and the Rye and promptly tried to get it out of my head.  I figured that if I wasn't thinking about, she couldn't guess it or figure it out by inadvertent clues.  Just two days before Valentine's Saturday, she had it down to three restaurants: Bar Marco, Grit & Grace, and Butcher and the Rye.  I was worried, but I thought she would pick Grit & Grace.

I was wrong.

Perhaps next year...

As for the actual restaurant, if there is a restaurant with a better interior in the City of Pittsburgh, please let me know.  When you walk in on the bottom floor, there's a lot of communal seating on large butcher block tables.  The lighting is very low (which means none of our pictures turned out, because we didn't want to use the flash).  The motif is rustic elegance.

We were seated on a mezzanine level that combined a library with a hunting lodge vibe.  There was a jar with a conjoined rabbit right above our head.

For an appetizer, we ordered the focaccia with three spreads: a ricotta spread with parmesan, an olive tapenade, and an eggplant/hummus type of spread.  We both preferred the ricotta one, but all were excellent.

DB~ ordered a pan roasted trout that had some root vegetables.  She really liked it, but felt the fish skin wasn't crispy enough and lost some taste on the plate.

I went with the skirt steak that was served with an Asian squash and a rice cake.  On top was a large fried egg that I slipped off and didn't eat it.  I'm not an egg guy under normal circumstances and certainly didn't want to chomp one with a well-prepared steak.

As a whole, we loved the restaurant.  It's owned by Richard DeShantz, owner of Meat of Potatoes.  He's got another hit on his hands with Butcher and the Rye.  Oh yeah...they also make killer cocktails, if you're into those, too.