The Abbey on Butler Street — Restaurant in Pittsburgh

I would give the Abby on Butler Street only one star due to our absolutely terrible server, Christine M and poor management, Zach. Their menu, although extremely limited, was very good and their bar tender was AMAZING. I wish I actually had her name so that I could personally thank her for her great service. Things that went wrong: My husband had forgotten his phone, so he asked for a paper menu. Christine rolled her eyes and told us the restaurant was saving trees and ink My husband mentioned he was still waiting for the menu, reluctantly she brought the menu and stood and stared at him to make a decision. We attempted to order drinks when we ordered our food she left and did not come back with our drinks -When she took another table drink order we flagged her requesting the drinks we had been waiting for. She explained she had forgot what we wanted and that she couldn't remember the other table's drinks and our drinks and she didn't want to waste the paper to write them down. Reluctantly she wrote them down, but it still didn't help. My husband ordered the Hazy IPA on draft, she brought him out a can. He mention it was the wrong beer and she told him that was the only Hazy IPA they had.... Which we knew was a lie, since he had just had one at the bar. When it came to ordering. A guest at my table has a severe Gluten Allergy, which we let her know, because the menu is absolutely not gluten-free. He asked if he could order the hummus, but instead of the pita could he have veggies, he would be fine with the up charge. She explained she would have to ask the manager. My guest said that would be fine and in fact he didn't care what veggies they gave him, just anything but a spoon. I added a Cesare salad to my meal. She warned me that it was a $4 upcharge, which again totally fine. She completely avoided us at all cost. So much so in an effort not to walk passed our table she would walk around the entire building to get in and out when visiting her other tables. When our food finally came out, instead of walking around to our table to set our plates, they leaned over the edge of the railing over our heads to hand us the plates. I AM 6 MONTHS PREGNANT and I was handed a scolding hot skillet of mac and cheese over my head to hand to my husband. My Cesare salad did not come out before my meal (as one would want of a salad), she brought it out with my meal, and my guest with the severe gluten allergy got extra pita NO Veggies served with hummus. When she dropped the food we asked about the veggies. She said, this restaurant is so weird. If you would have just stayed at the bar you could have ordered veggies with the hummus, but since you sat at this table we have different rules and there is no substitutions. She then handed my guest a spoon to eat the hummus. He explained he could not eat the hummus because the pita was actually in the hummus causing cross contamination. She suggested a box then. Upset, he agreed to a box. She then proceeded to bring him the tiniest box on earth. We did not see her again until she cleared our plates and brought our checks. -Very upset about the whole experience, I saw that she charged me $6 dollars for my salad instead of $4, normally I would let it go, but she was absolutely so rude, I couldn't let it go. She told me well she must have been wrong and it's $6 and she can't change it because that's what the menu charges. Noticing we were not happy, in a very snarky tone said "Sorry you did not enjoy your experience. I called the next day to inform the manager of our experience, the host told me to call back later they were too busy to deal with me. When I called back later, the manager Zack told me, he was not the manager on staff the night before and that he would call the manager from last night and they would have a stern talk with Christine.... Like great, clearly you care about your...

I came here with my in-laws as a party of 6 on Sat 7/12 with a reservation at 6pm.

The overall experience was pretty crappy all because of the service. I will start by saying that the food was very good. Everyone really enjoyed their entrees (once they arrived), it was all hot, well prepared, and very tasty.

First, we were sat at a large corner booth next to a large jukebox that (according to our server was just brought inside from the patio) was SWARMING with flies - dozens. We immediately brought it up to the server, Sean, when he greeted us. We asked if we could move to a neighboring booth (the restaurant was quite empty) and he said “Well, that’s the host’s problem.” A few seconds of awkward staring between Sean and I happened after that so, to double check, I asked he if he was our server, and he replied yes. Another moment of awkwardness passed and - at a loss of how to proceed to move away from the flies - I asked if I should accompany him to the host stand to figure it out? He replied exasperatedly he’d take care of it. Odd, because who else would??? Unfortunately, he left for 5 minutes to sit with the disgusting flies. The very kind hostess arrived, Sean did not tell her what the issue was. So we had to repeat it yet again and point out “There’s a swarm of flies all over this table you sat us at”. She promptly moved us and apologized. It really felt like Sean just didn’t care that we were totally disgusted by large black flies all over our indoor table. We saw him killing them with one of those electric bug swatter racquets after we got up.

I’m sorry to point this out because he was nice to us, but Sean does not smell good. Or at least he didn’t the other night... He/his clothing smells unwashed. The entire table could notice when he came up to us.

The service was slowww. Every touch point was slow. Getting drink orders took forever. Servers passed our table often when we had empty drinks/plates. Long wait for the check. We were there for over 2 hours.

The saving grace was the food. My trout entree was great and I’d certainly order it again. Honestly, I was worried after experiencing the flies and a stinky waiter that my food was not going to be fresh, but it was the only redeeming part of this drawn out experience at the Abbey.

I’m not sure how management hasn’t spoken to Sean about how he smells. If it was obvious to an entire table of six in a corner booth, I know that people who are working next to him can smell him too.

Expected a lot better service for the price point and a bill of nearly $500. Even though I enjoyed my food this time, you can definitely tell this place is not run well. No substitutions on ANYTHING, serving a full uncut head of romaine as a Caesar, servers killing flies with an electric swatter in front of guests… All...

My Mom asked the waiter "What's in the tuna melt?" He shrugged his shoulders and said, "I don't know...peas?". I said, "Can you please do us a favor and go to the back and ask the chef exactly what are the ingredients in the tuna melt?" He said okay, came back 10 minutes later and advised tuna, pickles pickles, ..." So no, "peas" were not one of the ingredients. We ordered our food at 2:00, the waiter brought out our appetizer around 2:15 and said our entree would be out shortly. At 2:30 we had to leave our table and go to where we saw the waiter standing at the front and asked him how much longer would our food be, because we had been waiting a ridiculous amount of time, he said, " Oh it will be out soon" I said please can you give us an approximate timeframe, he said "about 3 minutes ". At 3:33 our food arrived, we ordered 2 tuna melts with fries, and a salad with salmon , all items which do NOT take an HOUR AND 1/2 to prepare. My Mom's tuna melt came out with the wrong bread, the fries were cold (not even room temperature) , my salmon was cold, and rough, which means it was more than likely overcooked and old. We asked to speak to the manager, we asked why did it take so long for us to get our food, she said, " Oh we had a few large parties come in so the kitchen was backed up", with a bit of an attitude in her tone. First of all, you have to make a reservation to eat there, so they already knew those parties were coming, and it was the day before Mother's Day, which both of these factors meant that you were or should've been well prepared for the "rush", and she said it in an "as a matter of factly" demeanor, as if that was an acceptable response. Our food was sitting back there, and they only brought it out when they did because we approached the waiter. We told them to cancel the entree orders, they still charged us for the appetizers, ketchup, mayo, and fries (my Mom's were hot so we kept those). We watched "others" being served their orders, pretty consistently. This by far was the most unacceptable level of customer service I have ever experienced in my...