The Porch — Restaurant in Pittsburgh

It's a waiting game.

I try to be as forgiving as possible to restaurants, having worked both as a server and a cook in my lifetime. Service depends, always to an extent, on the type of day the server is having. All that said, I wasn't too impressed by the service of our bartender today.

We sat one of his high tops, not at the bar, which I guess we needed to be in order to get his attention. It was a good near ten minutes before we were greeted and given water, and it was more due to the fact that another server not in our section realized we had been waiting for a bit. The drinks were great, I had a Bloody Mary, and she always gets the job done. The food was also amazing. My boyfriend was impressed with his burger, and I was pleasantly surprised by their salmon burger as well. I wasn't sure about the guacamole, but the end result was delicious and well presented.

We had the option between tater tots or mixed greens as a side. I wanted mixed greens, but my server didn't ask either of us what our choices were, and we both got the tots. I will say some of that is on me, but I did expect him to ask, and when he didn't, I made the choice of not saying anything. I'm split between my bad and a well... he should ask because it's a choice on the menu. It's one of those situations where I see both sides, and if my service was otherwise great, I would not nitpick. In addition to that, my boyfriend got an iced tea that we had to ask to be refilled, a good five minutes into us getting our meal. A food runner gave us our meals and walked right by the empty glass, it took flagging down our server and even then, his attention was not with us. It was being pulled elsewhere before I could get my request out. Overall, we were in the restaurant close to an hour and saw our server twice. Two other high tops were seated as we waited for the checks. They waited similar times for water and to put their orders in, while I observed his one bar guest get a drink very soon after sitting down. I get favoring bar over tables, but I don't think the people eating should notice the preference so clearly.

The food was wonderful, and I might go back just for that, but I wasn't impressed by the service at all and felt I spent more time waiting than enjoying myself. While we waited, I watched our server wipe the bar down multiple times while it was empty. It was fairly busy inside, but at one point, we were one of three tables in his section and still barely saw him. If you love burgers, you will...

The Porch has long been a favorite place of mine due to the atmosphere and delicious food. Today was a different experience. There must be a new service model. We ordered and paid for our food at the counter and found a table. My iced tea was never delivered. I had to flag somebody down to get one. No refills – the patron must walk to the counter to get another one. Same with water refills. We didn’t know we had to pick up our serving utensils from a self-serve table. A side salad was only greens. No toppings. Not even dressing. Again had to flag someone down. There are lots of servers, they were cheerful and helpful when flagged, but nobody was assigned to take care of us at our table. Even at an Eat N Park diner, the low end of this restaurant chain, wait staff are assigned to diners.

We observed one server ‘barking’ at patrons at numerous tables: they had taken their Porch food out to the tables that belong to the park area. They weren’t allowed. I think a better way to handle the issue is to approach the table & speak to the patrons more privately and directly, so that the others around aren’t hearing the correction. My friend and I were barked at because we sat down at a table that hadn’t yet been bussed. The restaurant was very crowded and we grabbed a table when we saw it. We used our own sanitizing wipes. The server let us know how seriously they take their wipe down procedures, so he told us to remove everything & cautioned us to wipe down the items we had placed on the table, yet he so quickly wiped it down that he left a huge section unwiped. We observed him going through the same routine with some other patrons. That was sadly laughable.

I was really taken aback by the lack of service throughout the afternoon at such a nice establishment. I don’t think this new service model is working to service the patrons.

We had sandwiches & our food was delicious.

PS I worked as a waitress for more than a decade in my life. I appreciate...

this place is not good, that's how ima start. we sat down and our waiter was nice, and we waited. and waited. andddd waited. the more time that went by the more that customers who came in after us were seated and the customers that were im not too long before us had left. we waited an hour for our food, a whole hour and im not estimating, we got there at 3:45 and got our food at 4:43, so my dad asked for the manager to tell them and just then it was getting plated and served when our waiter said it was being plated five or six minutes before that. then we got the food and it wasnt really that good, especially after waiting an hour. My brother had blood in the middle of the burger, and not the edible type, it looked basically raw. my father said his food was okay, so there's that, he had teriyaki chicken. my beef dip was not the best by itself, but the dip itself? oh that was actually good, didnt completely save the sandwich but it made it better. i got a ceasar salad on the side, and i LOVEEEEE ceasar salad, store bought or restaurant. that ceasar salad came out with no dressing so i asked for some (and the waiter said "some more ceasar?" i couldn't taste a hint of ceasar) and he brought it out to me. the ceasar was worse than store bought ceasar kits, not the ones from the deli but the ones from the produce aisle, and even those are good. it also was warm, which was weird. and my brother got sick from his food, his stomach hurts an hour after the food as i am writing this. farm to table when you can see the farm is a great idea, but this was not executed properly, and i hope the porch could take feedback from this. thank you for putting our food on the house though. i dont know if i will be back but i can fasho say that my father and brother will never be coming back. this took up an hour and a half hours of our 5 hour Pittsburgh pitstop, which was cut short because we had to go home because of the food making my...