The Grotto Bar & Grille

I stopped by here last night with my fiance, sister and her husband for some drinks later in the night.  I had been wanting to check out the place since it changed owners/names and my sister being in town provided the perfect opportunity.  While it does not look like much from the outside, the inside is pretty dimly lit and cavernous.  You see what I did there, grotto, cavernous, yeah!  Anyways, there is a large dining area near the front of the restaurant with the bar being on one side of that and then a huge back area that has 3 pool tables and room for quite a few more if they wanted to utilize it.  There was a decent crowd for a Monday evening and I was impressed with how efficient the bartender/server was as she literally covered the bar and dining room by herself and provided us some of the best service that I have in a while.  

All four of us at the table decided to start off with a drink, all of which seemed to be more than reasonably priced.  Since I was still a little hungry from a smallish pizza that I had earlier in the night I decided to check out their menu.  Wow were the prices also cheap!  As such I decided to get the table an order of fried zucchini and went with the grotto hoagie while my fiance went with the steak sandwich as a wrap.  It was good to see that they had the option of choosing the sandwiches as a hoagie or a wrap as some people like my fiance are not big fans of bread.  Our zucchini ended up coming out first and was hot when delivered to us and came topped with some crumbled Parmesan and had lemons and marinara on the side.  The flavors of it were good although it could have stood to stay in the fryer for an extra minute or so since the batter closest to the zucchini was not fried all the way through.  Even so, I still enjoyed eating it.  Next up was The Grotto Sandwich which was sliced ribeye, jalapenos, (onions?) and bar-b-q sauce on a hoagie bun that came with a side of fries.  I may also be missing some more parts of what was on it but without an online menu to look at I cannot be sure.  The sandwich itself was quite large and stuffed past full with the meat and fillings and a ton of sauce.  Now I am not complaining as I love a lot of sauce but it was almost like eating a sloppy joe as the sauced meat was falling from my sandwich.  It tasted good with the play of sweet and spicy as it got a lot of sweetness from the BBQ sauce and then some spiciness from the jalapenos.  All of that did overshadow the meat though and I couldn't really taste it, not that I minded.  My fiance also enjoyed her wrap and told me that I would have enjoyed it as well.

The bottom line for me is that I can definitely see myself heading back here again in the future.  I thought that the prices here were awesome, the service terrific and food good for the price.  Yelp says that 3 stars is A-OK and the Grotto definitely is.  The only thing that I would caution some people about is that this is a bar first and place to eat second and so smoking is allowed in here.  Since it is a very large space, the smoke is noticeable but not as overpowering as other places that I have been.

Best bar in Pittsburgh!!! The food is amazing and prices are great. $2 burgers friday night is amazing. The staff is top notch.