Pittsburgh Restaurant Update

In the Comments to this post on Pittsburgh Restaurants, Steve finally asked the right question: Where did we end up going?

The answer is Casbah, because it's convenient to Oakland, it can handle large groups (we ended up with a group of 13 people), because it has a decent wine list, because the service (in my experience) has been attentive but not rushed, and because I like the food. We weren't disappointed. A dozen of my colleagues flew or drove back to other parts of the country impressed with a very nice restaurant. And puzzled by the fact that on a pleasant Saturday night, it was so easy to show up at a quality restaurant with 13 people for a 10-person reservation and find plenty of space to add an extra table to accommodate us.

The weeklong blog-based investigation of the Pittsburgh restaurant scene taught me a few things:

One, Zagat or no, there are a lot of very good restaurants here. Pittsburgh has come a long way on this score over the last decade.

Two, too many of the very good restaurants are BYOB. I don't mind taking my own wine if I'm going out with a small, local group. For a large group, including lots of people from out of town, forget it. I assume that PA's medieval liquor laws are a big reason behind this.