obligatory obscure reference

[Historical note: I posted this to USENET in 1988. I was 21, working my way through college, and more-than-happy that I had access to USENET, something like a world-wide BBS. If there was something like Facebook or Twitter in 1988, it would have been USENET. My USENET feed (we downloaded USENET posts over modem before reading them) came from a nearby consulting firm who was hooked up to the backbone of what was then the Internet. I could post something to USENET in Houston and within 24-48 hours people in California or New York would be able to read the post. I was still getting my journalism degree and posting stuff like this to USENET sans editor, so there might be > 1 typos. And yes, I’m posting this with full USENET headers just because I want to show off that I ran a USENET host from an AT&T 3b1 in my home in 1988. :-]

— cut here —
Xref: utzoo alt.cyberpunk:257 rec.arts.sf-lovers:10844
Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!nuchat!flatline!erict
From: erict@flatline.UUCP (eric townsend)
Newsgroups: alt.cyberpunk,rec.arts.sf-lovers
Subject: _Metrophage_ by Richard Kadrey, a review, no spoilers, ~long.
Message-ID: <359@flatline.UUCP>
Date: 3 Feb 88 05:29:49 GMT
Organization: flatline in Houston(Montrose, really), Tx.
Lines: 97
Keywords: metrophage, kadrey, review, cyberpunk

Okedoke, I knocked _Metrophage_ off in a day and a half between classes,
so this should be pretty compleat as it’s fresh on my mind.

First off, some comments about Richard Kadrey. I heard/saw him speak
and read at Armadillocon 87 in Austin, Tx. At the time, I was very
impressed. Kadrey’s a former resident of Houston, now living somewhere in
Ca. He looks and acts like people I hang out with: surfer/neo-punk haircut,
earrings, hardcore/thrash/punk/tough clothes, but reads William S. Burroughs
and radiates an intense intrest in tech/pol/philo/everything.

So anyway, I listen to him on a panel that headlined the likes of Bruce
Sterling and Lew (“The Whiner”) Shiner.
“So he gets on neat panels at cons,” I thought, “but who the hell is
this guy that looks like he should be skating with me in downtown Houston
about 3 am?”
Well, I gave in and went to his reading. Wow. The feeling I got was a
combination of those I had when I first read _Naked_Lunch_ and
_Neuromancer_. “This guy’s tough,” I remember thinking, “then again, these
are just some short descriptive stories that rag on pols…”
After he finished reading, he or Shiner The Whiner mentioned Kadrey’s
forthcoming book, _Metrophage_.

Fast forward to the other day when I found a copy of _Metrophage_ in
the bookstore. I sped-read to finish _Infernal_Devices_ so I could
start _Metro_.

Wow. Edited by Terry Carr. Intro by Rudy Rucker. He still
keeps good company. He also includes thanks to Brian Eno, Robert Fripp,
Throbbing Gristle and Tangerine Dream “who supplied the soundtrack.”
Then an opening quote from a song by Tom Waits. Ok, so he knows a lot
of esoteric buzz-word bandnames..
(There’s a good bio of Kadrey by Rucker that goes into Kadre’s artistic
background, including his interests in surrealism and dadism.)

Ok, Ok, I’ll get on with the book review…

_Metrophage_, even though it borrows from the soon-to-be-overused
theme of central-character-is-a-smuggler-‘1 percenter’-run-afoul-of
huge-organizations, is surprisingly fresh and interesting. Kadrey
writes with a style that reflects a knowledge of street life, drugs,
W.S. Burroughs-genre-literature and a keen sense of political/social
philosophy.

There are some great lines and allusions in this book — from little
things to show off his intellegence/esoteric-ness (a band named
‘Taking Tiger Mountain’) to some good anarchist theory.

Our ‘hero’ is “…Johnny Qabbala, drug dealer, ex-Committee for Public
Health bounty hunter, and self confessed loser…”. How can you not
like him? Johnny’s well thought out and quite believable even though he’s
from an almost overused stereotype. He has faults, skills, and that
real sense of no-direction that I think everybody must experience at
times. His only desire seems to be to live again with his two
girlfrieds Sumimasen and Ice and to not do very much other than exist.
Well, we all know what happens to down-on-their luck drug dealers in
the near-cyberpunk-future who just want to be left alone, right?

Now the hard part. How do I review the book w/o giving away anything?

_Metrophage_ is about power and politics seen from the view of someone
that has a great dislike for anything remotely resembling any sort
of political goings on. Johnny seems almost uncapable of understanding
politics on any other level than ‘it sucks’. Ice, on the other hand, is
getting involved in nation-(world?)-wide revolution, while Sumi just exists…
It’s a book about politics, love, people and being insignifigant.

It’s also a showcase for Kadrey’s ability to write. From hearing
him speak and reading _Metrophage_ I get the feeling that Kadrey understands
surrealism on a level far above that of mere mortals. He can write
what others can only hope to see put on canvas by their own shaky,
skillless hands. I have the feeling that Kadrey could write about
high school basketball and make it almost this interesting.

Buy and read this book. In my opinion, it’s easily in the top
%2 of experimental science fiction, enjoying the company
of Gibson and Jeter. This is fiction that someone *not* into
science fiction could still enjoy — a quality that very little
science fiction has, or ever will have.

I have this eery feeling that somewhere out there, Richard Kadrey will
soon read this and either laugh at me or send me some sort of instant-death
email-bomb.

(In case Kadrey’s out there… Remember Austin, Tx? The black-leather
jacketed skater sitting in the front row at your reading and your panel
upset because you picked on Houston? My friends and I heckled
Sterling and Shiner whenever they stopped talking long enough to make it
possible… I didn’t think you would remember… harf.)
—
“Occult symbols include … the ‘peace’ symbol and the Jewish ‘Star of David'”
— From the Back In Control Handbook
“$20,000 a year is a small price to not have to talk to our kids”
— Jello Biafra, commenting on the “Back in Control” program
Girls play with toys. Real women skate. — Powell Peralta ad
J. Eric Townsend ->uunet!nuchat!flatline!erict smail:511Parker#2,Hstn,Tx,77007

Well, not open source as much as legal clone.

I’m not naming names until I test it, but for less than half of the cost of replacing the cartridges for my Epson R2400, aka “the big ass printer”, I got:

• A new set of “never empty” cartridges that never go to %0 and can’t be re-used
• An insultingly huge amount of UV dye. I got less hair dye than this in a bottle of Manic Panic, and now I have nine bottles of dye.
• Refill syringes so I can not make a huge mess refilling things

The problem we R2400 owners have is tiny cartridges that cost $20 each and that dry out, die, or get eaten by grues when they’re not used. I’ve spent over $80 on ink in the past month and made only a couple dozen prints. My studio is too dry or my printer is broken or I dunno, but I’m ready to jump ship if this ebay purchase works out.

After a lot of work by Kevin Sousa and his gang, Salt of the Earth is finally open. They’re an unusual restaurant so I’m not going to do the usual sort of review.

First off, I’m not going to tell you much about what we had for dinner other than we really liked it, the service was great, and the price was right.

What I am going to tell you about is Salt’s process and the dining experience.

Several years ago I met local chef Bill Fuller at a party and he said something that really got me to thinking, that he considered cooking a process. I was in design school at the time so it sounded good to me because design is all about process, but our first dinner at Salt really made the case for cooking as a process.

At its foundation, Salt is not your typical Pittsburgh restaurant. Their menu is seasonal, regionally sourced, and is so subject to last minute change it’s not even printed on paper it’s just written on a huge chalkboard on one side of the restaurant. (Bring your glasses, I should have…) What’s on their website is a good example of the sort of thing that they are serving, but it’s probably not exactly the same as what’s written on the wall.

It’s also a different sort of menu in that it’s effectively a very large chef’s tasting menu. There’s a selection of cocktails, wine, beer, starters, large plates, and last plates that are designed to work together and support one another. There’s the typical tasting menu rule of “no substitutions” and while they have a bar, they only have the ingredients for the drinks that are on the menu.

Normally I find this sort of thing a bit, well, stuffy to be honest. I grew up with the dinner rule at home of “this isn’t a restaurant, you eat what’s in front of you” and to some degree tasting menus strike me that way. “I don’t care if you hate tomatoes, I’m going to serve them to you anyway!”. I go to a restaurant to be waited on and have a choice bigger than “what leftovers do we have in the fridge?” and “What strange thing did someone come up with based on the overstock in the restaurant freezer?”. I don’t want to be told what to eat, I want to pick and choose from a vast range of choices.

This is where Kevin and his crew have really nailed the menu. It’s a tasting menu but with enough variety and creativity that you don’t feel like you’re choosing from only a handful of dishes. The dishes are simply listed by primary ingredients and flavors so it’s easy for pretty much anyone to find something that they will like. It’s also in plain english, so you don’t need to speak a foreign language or have a huge foodie vocabulary to understand items like “Hanger Steak: potato, shiitake, cherry barley”. Should you have a question — “cherry barley?” — the servers know the menu cold and can explain exactly what it is you are ordering.

When our cocktails and first plates arrived I discovered that my spicy (chili!) cocktail matched the spiciness of my first plate, but a sip of my partner’s very sweet cocktail matched my first plate in a completely different way. For my large plate I ordered a more “earthy” that also complemented the dish just as well, but differently, than my partner’s drink. Obviously I can’t try every combination of cocktail and dish, but thinking back on the menu it’s hard to see where I could screw up without trying. Each drink and dish had nice complementary flavors both within the dish itself and when combined with other things on the table.

Ok, so where’s the process that I think Bill Fuller was talking about?

I say it’s in the continual evolution of dishes based on feedback from customers, availability of ingredients, and the Salt team’s creative energy.

Normally I order a cocktail without much thought of how well it will go with my first course, often before I even look at the menu. Salt’s menu is well designed so your choices are limited to things that work well together. Many places have a list of “signature drinks” without much regard to the food menu, but at Salt each of the base spirits is represented with a cocktail tailored to match the ingredients of the dishes.

The same is true for first plates and large plates. I didn’t realize until later that even with a number of first and large plates that it was hard for me to pick dishes that would conflict with one another. The spiciness of my first plate did not overwhelm the earthiness of my large plate, and my last plate wasn’t a sugar flavor carbo bomb that made me forget what I was eating 10 minutes earlier.

Without going into the specifics of my meal, I feel good saying that if you go in with an open mind, talk to the water, and trust that Kevin and his staff have put together an excellent menu, you will not be disappointed. Yes, we really enjoyed our dinners, but it’s ok that what we ordered might never be on the menu again. Whatever replaces it will be as well thought out and planned as what we had on our first visit.

As for the physical space at Salt, it also benefits from well-thought design and architectural work. The first floor is a communal eating area with an open kitchen, the second floor is a reservation only-mezzanine. In the communal area you can sit at the kitchen “bar” or at one of the huge tables shared by different parties. Instead of feeling like a dorm cafeteria it feels like a large family get together where you just don’t recognize all of your relatives.

Too many times I’ve been to a restaurant with great food but diner-unfriendly atmosphere: harsh lighting, not enough lighting, too much noise, tables too close together, not enough room for the waitstaff to move, you get the idea. The architects behind Salt’s new building have done a truly amazing job of putting together a friendly, homey, comfortable space.

Salt is the result of a lot of creativity, imagination, design work, and hard labor. In my opinion, the effort has paid off and Salt is going to become a major player in the Pittsburgh restaurant scene.

Twice now, I’ve written a lengthy entry of tips based on things I’ve learned in the past few weeks.

Twice now, Ecto has claimed to have published the entry to this journal when, in fact, it deleted the entire entry and posted just the title. After checking out their support forums, it appears that Ecto is abandonware and is no longer being updated.

[tags]abandonware,ecto[/tags]

[caution: this post contains kanji and hiragana, I’ll put in the romaji names as well when possible.]

Three nights in Midtown East and three excellent dinners:

1) Hane Sushi, 3rd Ave at 38th location. This is probably going to become our default restaurant for “we just got in, we’re tired, we want food near the hotel, and we want it to be good.” There’s a good selection of fresh sushi and the sake selection is also nice. Most of the waitstaff know enough about sake to help you pick the right sake and order the right food, including at least one self-described “sake fiend”. Note that we’ve only had sushi there, so no idea how their plates/dinners are. If this were my neighborhood sushi joint I would not complain one bit. (I’d compare the sushi quality to Fuki Sushi in Palo Alto, CA.)

2) Sakagura. I’ve never been to any restaurant like Sakagura, the closest I can think of is Nihon Whisky Lounge in SF. Imagine a huge sake list of the best sakes that Japan will export and a menu color coded to help neophytes pick the right food to match their sake choice. Given that they’re in a basement, they’ve done wonders with the decor. Take a look at their specials and dinner menus and tell me you’re not considering an “emergency junket” to Midtown. There was nothing whatsoever to complain about except for the loud jackasses at the bar chugging down Sapporo and trying to outdo Scarface in the profanity department. (I say this as a person who drops the f-bomb on a routine basis in regular conversation.) The food selection was amazing, including things like 黒枝豆　(kuru edamame, or black soybeans) as an appetizer and their own, homemade, sea-salt chocolate sorbet.

3) Aburiya Kinnosuke. I know it’s cliche’, but I almost don’t want people to know about this place. It clearly has enough business to keep it going, the last thing it needs is a bajillion tourists getting in the way when I want to eat there. Aburiya is not just an izakaya, it’s an old-school izakaya that uses a charcoal stack in a sand pit for 炉端 (robata, or “hearth-side”) cooking. I think we only ordered one or two things from the regular menu, everything else came from the daily special menu. The sauteed tuna was a bit overcooked, but everything else was so much better than expected that I barely remember the deficiency. One of the best dishes was the fried, homemade soft tofu — crispy outside, creamy inside. Such a simple dish yet so completely amazing. (No, we didn’t have the purportedly world-class tsukune, we filled up on specials first.)

Sakagura and Aburiya Kinnosuke were cheaper than Nobu, probably a better value overall, and we were able to make same-day reservations. I really liked dinner at Nobu, but their sake list is minimal and it’s so hard to get in that I’m not sure it’s worth the effort and advance planning. (Cue Morimoto’s ninja death squads hunting me down…. Hey, but I totally love Morimoto in Philly, so it’s a push!)

[tags]izakaya, manhattan, robata, sake, sushi[/tags]

[Note: After I started writing this, Mike Madison, author of Pittsblog, wrote a nice piece on Sushi and Pittsburgh 2.0. His point of view is thinking about how to get people to move to Pittsburgh and develop an economy, I’m looking at it from reporting how things are and what to expect if you move/visit here.]

I’ve been told that if I’d moved here 10 years ago, I would have been seriously unhappy about the restaurant selection. While I don’t consider myself a foodie, I am a person that enjoys a wide range of dining choices, fresh food prepared properly, good service, and I don’t mind paying a few extra bucks to get it. Pittsburgh isn’t San Francisco or New York City in terms of range and quality of restaurants, but there are some really great restaurants in Pittsburgh. The trick is learning how to find them, learning whose opinion to trust, and, sadly, having access to a car.

Pittsburgh has benefited from a number of new restaurants opening up in the past decade that cater to both people like me and the real foodies. From the high-end restaurants like Eleven and Soba (owned by the misleadingly named Big Burrito Restaurant Group), Mio, and Willow to less-fancy-but-still-excellent places like Red Room Cafe and Remedy Restaurant and Lounge, Pittsburgh is catching up with other cities in the number and quality of contemporary restaurants.

It’s not as if there weren’t good restaurants here before — Pittsburgh boasts a number of high-end restaurants, many of which have been in operation for decades. The problem is that many of these places have been here for decades and really haven’t changed that much. The fare is often traditional Italian or continental cuisine with good but expected dishes: veal scallopine, fish-of-the-day Oscar, various cuts of steak with sides of potatoes, salads heavy on the dressing, and I think you can probably guess the rest of the menu. I’ve had dinner at Monterey Bay and Grand Concourse and the food was great, the service was excellent and there’s really nothing to complain about. Except that it’s pretty much the same menu that I’ve been looking at for most of my adult life. I think it’s safe to say that if I never had fish-of-the-day Oscar again, it wouldn’t upset me very much.

So what’s different about the newer restaurants and why am I so happy they’re located in Pittsburgh? It’s primarily because they are striking out in areas being ignored by the traditional establishments fixed in the 1960s American Dining Mindset. As an example, Eleven makes an effort to support the Slow Food movement by buying fresh greens and meats from local farmers and as a result their specials will vary with the season. They also create new dishes with ingredients that you might not recognize or that you wouldn’t thought of combining unless you’re a veteran of the original Iron Chef; for example sharp cheddar ice cream served with hot apple pie, or in-house cured lamb bacon served with a green salad. (I know, I know, “lamb bacon”? It is amazingly good, trust me on this.) At the same time, Eleven has a $12 hamburger on the lunch menu that is all the evidence you need for using good beef to make a hamburger.

Unfortunately, if you really want to enjoy the wide range of restaurants in Pittsburgh, you’re going to need a car, or at least a friend with a car. Many of the better restaurants are out in the ‘burbs or in an area of town not well served by the bus. (The taxi infrastructure is effectively non-existent, don’t think you’ll leave a restaurant, go to the curb and hail a taxi.) If you need wheelchair access, call ahead, as Pittsburgh is one of the least-ADA friendly cities I’ve ever lived in. Newer buildings are great, but a lot of restaurants are in older buildings that have never been updated.

Two things that I’m still getting used to are planning ahead for weekends and dealing with smoking. If it’s 2pm on Saturday, you’re probably not going to get a reservation at Soba, Elven, Mio, or any other place that isn’t a 9-10pm seating. You can go hang out in the bar and take your chances on a table opening up, but be prepared to eat at the bar. Which brings up another issue — smoking is still allowed in the bars of restaurants, so if you care about such things, you might want to scope out how far your “non smoking” table is from the smoking area. At Kaya, there’s only a few feet between where people can smoke and the handful of non-smoking tables and at some Mad Mex restaurants the bar is directly beside the non-smoking area with only a counter to divide the two. Things are changing, however, as Eleven and Soba both have smoke-free bars, meaning you can actually go out for a drink in Pittsburgh and not come home smelling like an ash tray.

So if you’re thinking of moving here and you like contemporary continental and American food, you’re in pretty good shape. Some of the restaurants are as expensive as those in SF or NYC, but others are cheaper or have larger portions. If I order a steak, I plan on only being able to eat half of it and using the rest for a sandwich the next day. It’ll take a few trips to various places, but soon you’ll enjoy some of the Pittsburgh friendliness that people talk so much about, the waiters will start to remember your names and you theirs.

Now the bad news.

If you know your sashimi from your nigiri, like your Thai food “Thai hot”, or enjoy a good ceviche as an appetizer instead of nachos, things are a bit bleak.

So-Called “Ethnic” Food

“Ethnic”, and by that I mean anything not European, Eastern European or American, is where things start to go sour. Pittsburgh suffers from a mid-20th Century view of “ethnic” food — bland and Americanized. It’s not that Pittsburghers are stupid or malevolent, they just haven’t benefited from a large immigrant population opening up restaurants and therefore haven’t developed the taste and experience that goes along with a large, diverse, ethnic restaurant scene. The European immigrant cultures that have been here for a century have really done well with their own cuisines with places like Lidia’s and Grand Concourse and the like; but Pittsburghers haven’t been exposed enough to non-European immigrant cultures to understand that there should be a difference between a pirog and a gyoza or that not everything should be smothered in sauce.

I don’t think it’s all in my head, either. Part of what drove me to write this was an amazingly ignorant review of a new Japanese restaurant. The well-meaning reviewers complain about bland agedashi tofu and factually state that udon noodles are made of buckwheat. The thing is, agedashi tofu is a very light dish based on the delicate flavor of tofu and comes with a very light sauce so that you have a chance to taste the tofu. Contrary to the reviewers’ statements, udon noodles are made of wheat, not buckwheat. (It’s soba that are made of buckwheat.) It could be that they knew what they were talking about and the editor introduced these mistakes; in either case, I’d be embarrassed if this was the first restaurant review one of my visiting friends got their hands on. “No, really, not everyone here thinks like that!”

So it should come as no surprise that Nakama Steakhouse and Sushi Bar is regularly voted “best sushi” by Pittsburghers. Truth is, it’s easily some of the worst sushi I’ve ever had, and that includes sketchy, all-you-can-eat sushi places. Nakama is basically a big bar on one side with a lot of hibachi tables on the other and a tiny “sushi bar” in between. If I lived on the south side, it’d probably be a great place to have a beer with friends, but that’s not the same as “best sushi”.

Like Thai food? There’s decent Thai here, but set your expectations low in terms of prices and service. I finally convinced Noodle Hut that I like my food “Thai hot”, but it took a few attempts and explaining that I learned to eat Thai food in California before I got anything reasonably spicy. Bangkok Balcony is pretty good, but there’s often no correlation between the “scale of 1 to 10” and how spicy my food is and they usually up-charge us to call drinks even when we ordered well drinks.

How about Mexican? There’s Mad Mex, a tex-mex chain owned by Big Burrit, with several restaurants spread throughout the area. I like Mad Mex plenty and go there often, but I’ve yet to find a place in town that serves a good mole poblano or fresh ceviche. Mad Mex is great tex-mex, but I also like Mexican cooking based on seafood or good marinades and taco places that make their own tortillas or buy local, fresh tortillas.

But there is hope

There are a handful of good ethnic places if you’re willing to look. Chaya in Squirrel Hill serves some of the freshest sushi and tastiest Japanese food I’ve ever eaten, and I’m including the decade or so I lived in the San Francisco Bay Area when I make that comparison. It’s cramped and BYOB, but I’ll gladly wait in line and BMOB to enjoy their food. Noodle Hut in Regent Square is amazingly tiny with a long wait, their takeout service is amazingly well-organized. Silk Elephant is a Thai tapas place that opened recently, and while it’s pricey, the food is excellent. Across the street from the exceptionally underwhelming Lulu’s on Craig St is the amazingly good Little Asia. We haven’t scoped out all the Indian places yet, but I’ve heard there are some good places outside the city limits and that the same is true for middle eastern cuisine.

A note about service

After living here a couple of years, I am finally beginning to understand what “entitlement culture” means when it comes to customer service in stores and restaurants. We used to eat at Bangkok Balcony on a regular basis, then one evening we were seated for dinner, waited 10 minutes to have our order taken, then have the table next to us get seated, order, and served food and pay their bill before our food even showed up. Twice I had to ask a manager where our food was, and by the end of the evening, we just got a “sorry about that” from the manager. We’ve had similar bad service at a couple of other places and again, only a brief apology, so I don’t think it’s just Bangkok Balcony. I think it’s something in the local culture where customer service isn’t necessary for a business to keep its customers. I’ve never lived in a city before where a manager didn’t at least comp your drinks or something if your waiter severely screwed up your dinner.

The high-end places (Soba, Grand Concourse, etc) have amazing service, and the service in smaller places like Remedy and Point Brugge Cafe is just as good, but upscale is no guarantee of service. At Azul one evening we watched our waitress eat dinner at the bar and chat with her friends, back turned to us, while we waited to order, have our drinks refreshed, etc. The manager (owner?) sat nearby the entire time this was going on, so it’s not as if the waitress was unsupervised. Her boss simply didn’t care about making sure she paid attention to customers.

I don’t know if Pittsburghers simply don’t know what good service and therefore fail to demand it or if they have just grown used to it and are willing to tolerate bad service. Either way, be prepared to make a fuss from time to time and don’t take it too personally. Like I’ve said before, Pittsburghers can be amazingly friendly one-on-one, but in business situations that can easily change. If you’re treated poorly in a restaurant, don’t immediately assume it’s because you’re not from around here or that your skin’s the wrong color, it could just be that the place has extremely bad service.

A few final thoughts…

Pittsburgh has some amazingly good American, Italian and continental restaurants and a handful of equally good ethnic restaurants. Good restaurants are not always easy to find, and you can’t always trust the local reviews and restaurant polls, but as you start making friends, ask them where they go and why they like it. It won’t be long before you start making acquaintance with many of the staff at your favorite places, and they’ll often recommend other places or tell you where they eat and what they order. You can’t put much faith in the way the restaurant looks from the outside or through the window, as there are a lot of restaurants opening in everything from bars to old churches, but that’s part of the fun of exploring, right? Get used to calling ahead for weekend reservations or to find out the BYOB status, scope out the smoking situation in advance, and you’ll have an easy time of things.

We’ve had some wonderful experiences in restaurants since moving here, it just took a little bit of effort and a little risk taking.

[tags]pittsburgh,restaurants,reviews[/tags]

(Update, 2 Feb 2007. Karma on 8th appears to have gone out of business. Really a shame, it was an excellent restaurant.)

I’ve been to Karma on 8th three times now and thought I should write a few words about it as I liked their food and want to see them thrive.

Karma on 8th is not in the nicest looking neighborhood of Homestead, but the owners have put a lot of effort into fixing up both the inside and outside of the building. They’ve put even more effort into assembling a talented kitchen and wait staff and creating a good environment for having a great dinner.

My favorite dishes are the Boursin Crusted Chicken and the Chicken Marsala. Both have the right balances of seasonings and sides and are reason enough to visit on their own. The pasta specials are creative and equal to the regular dishes if you’re looking for something out of the ordinary. The Caesar Salad and Hummus Platter are both excellent and could easily be a meal on their own if you’re looking for something light. The only let-down has been the Cajun Salmon. It was a bit bland and underwhelming — when I see “Cajun” as an adjective for fish I expect spicy and hot. Given that it’s damned near impossible to get anything other than wings “spicy and hot” in this town, including at Thai restaurants, I can’t really hold this against them.

The service at Karma on 8th is excellent. The wait staff manages to be present when needed without fawning or constantly interrupting with pointless questions. Unlike the bartenders at some of the other restaurants in town, the folks here know that a Martini is made with gin and served up by default and not with vodka and served on the rocks.

If you’re looking for a late evening, there is music and drinks after 10 in the upstairs loft where one can kick back in an overstuffed chair and have a conversation without having to shout or jockey for a bar stool.

One other thing to like about Karma on 8th — the restaurant is completely non-smoking. None of this “we allow smoking at the bar which happens to be right next to the non-smoking tables”, either, there is no smoking allowed inside the building. There are now two places in Pittsburgh (the other being Eleven) where one can go for a drink and not come home smelling like an ashtray.

[tags]Karma on 8th, Pittsburgh, restaurant, review[/tags]