The Yard — Restaurant in Pittsburgh

So, The Yard… They advertised virtually bottomless mimosas, their website had beautiful pictures of their brunch selections, fantastic Yelp AND Google reviews, they were featured in local news articles filled with praise and support. However, after my visit today, I can only assume that about 70% of the cost of their food and drinks was used to pay for this gross misrepresentation of their offerings.

Let’s start with the good, because there isn’t much of it. In fact, it was really just one thing. Our bartender/waitress was extremely polite, attentive, and courteous.

Now let’s move on to the rest. We called ahead to see if they took reservations, to which we were told they do not, but said walk-ins are always welcome. I mean, if you don’t take reservations then wouldn’t walk-ins be the only option? We arrived and were told it was a 45 minute wait when probably 30% of the tables were empty. Apparently they do reservations for parties of 6 or more. Though it wasn’t offered to us, we asked if we could sit at the bar and were able to be seated right away. I guess it was a good thing we asked because they seemed to have no problem if we were to turn and walk out.

We didn’t have super high expectations for bottomless mimosas but certainly weren’t anticipating or expecting premixed buckets that were used to refill pitchers. They were piss warm and brown in color. Needless to say, they were undrinkable. The bartender let us swap them out for fresh ones, mine with cranberry juice and my boyfriend’s with pineapple, and though it was a vast improvement they certainly weren’t worth $7 each. We choked down about half each before resolving to drink water.

Ok, boozy brunching was clearly not in the cards for us but we still had our food to look forward too right? It never quite looks as good being served as it does in the photos but for a $13 breakfast bowl that boasted all those great tasting ingredients to merit it’s value, the bowl was 90% frozen tater tots that you could get at the super market for a few dollars. There was one scrambled egg stretched over the tots with maybe one piece of bacon crumble over it with some sauce. My boyfriend had their signature breakfast club at $14, and it was 90% pancake, and you couldn’t even confirm what was inside it since it was fused together with cheese.

Honestly, we expected high prices eating in the city but we would have been better off with a McDonald’s breakfast than the experience we had here. How this place survives in Market Square is beyond me but I’m willing to bet there’s a ton of other local options that will leave you more satisfied and a feeling of money well spent. I assure you it won’t...

A bit of a let down. I was hoping for some very delicious sandwiches. They are supposed to serve sort of thing you want when craving comfort food. But, I found these 'gourmet' sandwiches to not only be not worth the price, but also mediocre compared to average sandwiches. I ordered the Smack Yo Mama grilled cheese sandwich and the Cuz We Got High mini dessert.

I got to choose 2 sides with the sandwich. This was the grilled cheese and the chips. The chips were probably my favorite part of this meal. They were super crispy and delicious. Nice portion as well. And, super salty (but I still liked it).

The tomato soup was super underwhelming. It wasn't even like soup. It had the consistency of a watery dip more than a soup. And the portion they gave was so thin that it functioned less like a soup and more like just a dip. It wasn't that flavorful either.

The actual sandwich itself was decent. Definitely not worth the money if you're craving good comfort food and just that, nothing more, but it wasn't bad. The chicken was sweet and pretty tasty. A little dry but not bad. Cheese was okay and the bread was nothing special at all. Pretty underwhelming. The dipping sauce, although the container was small, was actually quite tasty and cheesy. So, since the cheese they used in the sandwich was pretty flavorless, this helped.

I've seen so many rave reviews for their dessert but I personally didn't like it that much. It was probably the second best thing I tried, and it is fairly priced, but just not that good. Not much Nutella and the banana just did not go very well with the nutella. It's somewhat tasty but rich and personally not my kind of dessert. The marshmallow fluff was nice, and they gave me a lot of it, but it's just marshmallow fluff.

All in all, I was pretty disappointed with this place. I really thought I could have gotten a great meal from here, but it turned out to be underwhelming. The sandwiches are overpriced and not the best, and so is everything else I tried (except the chips and maybe the dessert since it was pretty cheap). Just get a classic grilled cheese from a small shop if you want...

The atmosphere was ok. Food was nothing special. the service was AWFUL. but the deals were ok. I usually only review places if they're decant and worth visiting, or in this case, bad enough, I won't be back. You should only go here if the rest of market square is somehow shut down. And even then, you should consider walking elsewhere. A few friends and I came her during a trip down for the pens game. We decided to stop here for the afternoon since it was in between where we were and the arena. We got seated around 215 and planned to be there til around 6 when we were going to leave for the pens game after watching the first half of the Steelers game. It was perfect. When our waitress came and asked if we wanted to order food, I told her we would wait til the Steelers game started, and we were going to be there a while. We ordered plenty of drinks while we waited. Right when the Steelers game was about to start, our waitress came over and told us we would have to move because they had a big reservation coming in. My one friend replied and said that is fine, we actually came to watch the game is it possible to move us to a table by a TV with the game. She said she would see what she could do. After this, the manager came and told us to be nice to our waitress and explained the situation to us again and we had to move because there was a 2 hour limit on tables. I said we had no problem moving we just wanted to be close to the game since I'm pretty blind and i wasn't sure why we weren't told that when I said we would be there a while. She gave us a hard time but eventually let us stay at our table. When we asked for the checks, not one of them was right. They were completely mixed up beyond belief. This place was atrocious and was not a great experience. I will not be back, and you shouldn't go either. There's better...