City Grill

2019 E. Carson St.

Mon.- Thurs. 11:30 a.m.-11 p.m.

Fri.- Sat. 11:30 a.m.- 12… City Grill

2019 E. Carson St.

Mon.- Thurs. 11:30 a.m.-11 p.m.

Fri.- Sat. 11:30 a.m.- 12 p.m.

Sun. 4 p.m.- 10 p.m.

“Good Food, Good Company,” promises the frosty writing on the large window of South Side’s City Grill. Modeling both good food and good company (so we hope), a couple is happily devouring their steaming pasta dishes at an outdoor table. The restaurant’s electric blue sign announcing its name is dazzling in the late-August dusk. After passing a garish-looking tiki lounge and a few college-style bars, this looks like the kind of place where my dad can take my roommate and me for a peaceful dinner on a tame Sunday evening.

As soon as we walk inside, the bartender motions us to a booth toward the back of the room. The restaurant is deep, with an irregular pattern of cushioned booths and tables set between red-brick walls around a dark wooden bar to the side. Small spotlights hang from two long parallel bars on the ceiling, casting bright golden light onto the bar as well as the center of the restaurant, which is floored with ’50s-style black-and-white checks.

The bottles behind the bar glisten around a large mirror that reflects the spotlights as they puncture the dim ambiance. A massive country-style wreath, stuck with bows and dried flowers, hangs over the bar, out of place amid the urban elegance.

Near our booth toward the rear, under a row of simple photographs, there’s a ledge holding old-fashioned cooking oil containers: metallic splashes of Italian authenticity and character. As limited as the decor is, the light wood of the furniture contrasts elegantly with the dark bar and the brick, creating a very comfortable atmosphere. Visually, City Grill boasts a timeless, subdued masculinity without being trendy.

Like many bar-and-restaurant combinations, City Grill’s tranquility is broken by two standard-sized televisions at each end of the restaurant – though these conventions are excused by the necessity to serve the classier Pittsburgh sports fan on a big game night.

But there are no games on now, and a few parties, including a group of boys and someone’s mother, who is obviously buying, as well as a lone gentleman reading a novel, dot the restaurant. On a Sunday night, it’s difficult to tell what kind of business the bar normally gets, though it appears from the extensive menu and the proper attitude of the staff that City Grill is visited more for its cuisine then its drinking scene.

The menu is full of meats, vegetables, seafood and pastas, coming together in a rich but familiar American cuisine with Italian influences. There are more than eight choices of pasta, a multitude of much talked-about burgers, steaks, lamb and fresh seafood. My dad orders a pint of Guinness from the bar, which offers this fine draught in addition to Sam Adams Summer Ale, Oktoberfest, Yuengling, Miller Lite and Bass on tap.

We order the Seafood Antipasto ($9.50) as an appetizer. Our waitress brings out French bread and butter to complement the salad, which consists of greens mixed with shrimp, calamari, octopus and scallops. The seafood is extremely fresh, a few notches below room temperature and saturated in oil and vinegar.

The white, tender scallops are the most delicious specimens of this deep-sea bunch, and the octopus is fun to eat, mainly because things always get a little more interesting when your food looks the same dead as it did when it was alive. My dad smirks when I mention this. I’m secretly glad no vegans are with us.

After the appetizer and a round of drinks, our food arrives from the hand of our knowledgeable waitress, who had rattled off the lists of beers, specials and dressings with robotic ease. My roommate has ordered the Eggplant Parmesan ($9.50), which consists of sauteed eggplant baked with a tangy marinara sauce with blended cheeses.

The waitress produces a silver cheese grater, which she cranks over the meal, sprinkling a snow of fresh Parmesan. The eggplant is slightly soggy, and even though eggplant Parmesan tends to be this way, this unique mushiness is attributed to the over-saturation of oil in this meal. Such is the problem with my dad’s meal, the Grilled Chicken over Fettuccine ($12.95), which combines an over-saturation of oil on the pasta with a too-dry helping of chicken.

My side of sauteed zucchini arrives before the Chicken Marsala ($12.95), and is oily but browned and cut in perfect chunks. This delicious zucchini is, by far, the best I’ve ever had.

The chicken is amazing as well – it’s swimming in Marsala wine, butter and topping with portobello mushrooms and peppers. It’s saturated in olive oil, much like the rest of the meal (those oil cans on the ledge weren’t joking), but the chicken is tender and the vegetables are fresh. This dish, by far, is the best at the table and a perfect hearty complement to the light Seafood Antipasto.

The South Side has a perfect balance of bars and restaurants lining its main drag, and City Grill fits beautifully into the faction of places to get a full meal before a big night out. Even though most of its dishes are a bit expensive for the typical group of cheapskate college students, it’s an appropriate setting to feed a lady or gent on a special night.

If your parents come out to visit and they aren’t adventurous enough for Oakland’s Mexican and Indian piquancy, this is a great place for the family to experience fine but casual American cuisine, so long as you can handle that olive oil.