Steel City Pizza — Restaurant in Mount Pleasant

Steel City used to be one of favorite local places to go, but after two bad visits, I cant justify spending my money there again when there are so many great restaurants in the area.

In this latest visit, my husband and I went out without the kids for a change, which is lovely. The server let us know the draft beer selections and we made our choices. A few minutes later, our beers arrived and mine was clearly wrong. The Sam Adams seasonal selection had changed, and instead of checking with me to see if I might want the new one (Sam Cold Snap instead of the Sam Winter Lager I had ordered). she just brought over the Cold Snap. I sent it back and ordered a Yuengling instead. My husband ordered 6 wings and a slice of pizza for his meal, and I asked if I could get the Farmhouse Chicken Salad, but with fried chicken instead of grilled. The server let me know there would be an upcharge for it, and we asked if it was a reasonable amount and she said yes. Not thinking too much about it, I ordered the salad with the mystery upcharge. My salad and a slice of pizza arrived, but no wings. Thinking that they might be coming out shortly, we didn't say anything to the bus boy that delivered the food. Meanwhile, the atmosphere in the restaurant was becoming increasingly loud and annoying, as a pack of no less than 7 boys of all ages, from multiple families were gathered around The Claw machine in the back. A fight broke out and the boys were pushing and yelling at each other for whose turn it was etc. No one said anything to the boys and no parents intervened. One boy then was successful in getting a prize from the machine and took an extremely loud (think yelling) victory lap through the restaurant in his excitement. My salad was quite large and I could only eat about 1/4 of it. The wings never appeared, but my husband was satisfied with just the appetizer and slice of pizza. We wondered if our server would notice that the wings never came, but she never mentioned it or noticed. The bill came and I was quite unhappily surprised to see that in order for me to get fried instead of grilled chicken on my salad, they charged me for a whole separate kids chicken tender meal. what the heck?? I didn't receive a whole meal, nor was the price of the salad with grilled chicken discounted, so I paid full price for two meals just to get fried over grilled chicken?? In thinking it over, it just didn't seem right or fair, so I asked the server about it. She said she would get the manager, but the manager never came. Who knows what happened there. Here is the fair breakdown that I discussed with the server. Kids Chicken Tender Meal =$5.95 and comes with a side of fries Farmhouse Chicken salad is $11.95 and comes with grilled chicken The server let me know after our discussion, (or maybe after her discussion with the manager?) that she would be taking off the price of the side order that I did not receive with the kids meal- to a total of $1.50. Another price point that is important in this equation is according to their menu, you can add grilled chicken to any salad for $3.00. What would have been reasonable would have been: Farmhouse Chicken salad-$11.95 minus the grilled chicken it came with (-$3.00), which brings our base price to $8.95 with no protein. Adding just the chicken from the kids meal ($5.95 - $1.50 for the side= $4.45) $8.95 + $4.45=$13.40 and a reasonable upcharge for fried chicken over grilled chicken. What I was actually charged was $11.95 + $5.95= $17.90. Pretty steep price to pay for your average salad, especially taking the "family" [loud and annoying] atmosphere into account. After discussion, the server took off a total of $1.50, making the final amount for my salad $16.40.

When asked about the wings, she said she may have put them on another tables tab. That does not inspire great confidence, for sure. If you made it this far in the review, the bottom line is: Mediocre overcharged food Apathetic service Noisy and...

My family and I, party of 7 came in Saturday, June 12th at 5:20 pm and although our server (Male, Green shirt) had a good attitude, the young girl in Burgundy I believed to be the hostess along with another male co-worker did not seem pleased that we were coming there to eat when we walked in. They didn’t have the best attitudes and struggled to figure out where they would seat us even though there was barely anybody in the establishment whenever we arrived and they had many open booths. I have a 2 month old baby and not only did it take about 15-20 minutes to get a server to our table it also took us having to ask for a high chair to place his car seat on to receive one. Once we placed our orders, 2 pizzas and 2 alfredos, it took close to an hour and a half before we received our food and it was no longer hot as if it had been sitting out for a long time. The food tasted good and would’ve been better if it had been. At the end of our dining experience, we intended for our checks to be split and they were put together without us being asked. Due to the error and miscommunication, my aunt told the same hostess with a nasty attitude about our experience, she went back and told our server and he covered our drinks himself and got the bill correct. He was very kind and tried his best, our bad experience wasn’t due to him. After he gave us the receipts, I used cash and my aunt used her debit card, no pen was given for her to write her signature and to put a tip on the receipt. We went up to the front counter whenever leaving to grab a pen so she could do so and accidentally spilled the pens in the cup over. It was a genuine accident and the same hostess with the bad attitude whenever we came in was on the phone and rolled her eyes at us and then went back to looking at her screen but continued to give us side looks and look at us like we had two heads because she was signing her receipt. Even with our bad experience, not only with how long it took but the attitudes of 2/3 of the employees we interacted with, we still tipped the waiter $7 because it was not entirely his fault and it was not personal to him. he did the best job he could but the establishment as a whole needs to run more efficiently and we were told that they were understaffed and only had 3 out of 5 servers and that’s why there was a delay and that’s a error in the establishments management and scheduling or having back ups to come in or even come and cover the shift yourself instead of leaving your employees to figure it out themselves because I find it hard to believe there were many managers tonight with how things were looking. I honestly hope it was just a bad day for you and it’s not normally ran like it was today, I can understand that and I can understand somebody being stressed out on the job but to treat customers a certain way because of it when we did nothing wrong or intentional is not okay. The time it takes to do tasks and the attitudes and demeanor of the people you hire are the face of your establishment and reflects back onto you and your business. Had the hostess not have had the attitude she did when we were walking out the door I probably wouldn’t have left a review after the server paying for our drinks but I just walked away with a overall bad experience after that. Gordon Ramsey needs to look at you guys to be put on Kitchen Nightmare’s and show you guys how it should be done. I wouldn’t recommend it for anything other than the food, just not if you want a quick bite to eat or your food to...

To be fair, the food was mostly decent. Cauliflower app, Meatballs and Weggie were all good. The pizza - which should be the star of the show, hence Steel City Pizza - was cold, dry and tough. We ate around 5 and the place was empty, so there was a good chance it was left over from lunch. Cold pizza is great for the next morning, but not when it's for dinner - and your staple menu item.

The staff, on the other hand... Our server was happy to seat us and take our order. Drinks and app arrived quickly, then server disappeared. The entrees took a bit long (esp. considering the cold pizza and we were the only ones there) but they eventually showed up. That was the last time we saw our server until the check.

One employee was lost in his personal phone behind the host station...

Another server openly mocked a patron after he left because the patron was upset because his order was wrong...

Then there was watching the bartenders proceed to enjoy a couple pre-shift Irish Car Bombs with another patron (employee?) sitting at the bar.

I may be old school F&B, but some rules don't change... SCP could be a great spot with some staff training, i.e., check on your people, keep drinks full, stay off your phone (isn't there sidework to do?), no comments about customers on the floor... and, minor detail - NO DRINKING BEHIND THE BAR!

3 stars for the food - a pizza place shouldn't be serving cold pizza to anyone, ever.

1 star for the staff, as they need to learn a little care factor and the basics of F&B... a little management...