Threadbare Cider House — Restaurant in Pittsburgh

(This is a copy/paste of the review that I posted on Facebook)

This review is LONG overdue, but here we go.

Threadbare is fantastic, the cider house owned by wigle whiskey might just be the best cider house in Pittsburgh. Some ciders to note are: Hey Sweetie Yinz got guava (which was draft only at the time, you can get their sweet guava in bottles which is also incredible!) Sweet cherry Spiced Farmhouse And their rosè cider are all incredible.

Let’s talk food. I’ve never had a bad experience with food here - they’ve had some creative creations that have blown me away but my favorite dish was just their simple roasted cauliflower dish. When something so basic could be so incredible it really sets the stage to what their kitchen staff can accomplish.

But my absolute favorite product of theirs must be their mead. Threadbare’s sign says cider house and meadery, but when they first opened you never would have guessed because they didn’t sell any mead. Now they have just a single one they’ve created, it’s called sweet mead, and it’s incredible. Heavy, smooth and full of that wonderful honey flavor, I would implore anyone visiting to at least sample this fantastic drink.

And lastly, none of what I have just said would mean anything had it not been for threadbare’s incredible staff. Some of the nicest and most knowledgeable people work here, each and every one of the staff, (even the kitchen staff!!) Are just genuinely nice people who want you to have a great experience. Their bartender, Ben, is always so well informed (and willing to put up with me asking for samples) but just ridiculously intelligent in general, I mean just ask him what his field of study is you won’t regret it.

TLDR: This place is awesome,...

Here me out - I think this place has potential, but what we experienced during our visit was definitely a mismanaged, shoot from the hip, type of atmosphere. The place is nice and the food is pretty good, but from pulling into the parking lot, to being told how to order and then where and from whom to order, this felt very disjointed. When you pull in, there is a place to sit outside, but there was no one there. We went upstairs where we found someone who said all orders had to go through her, and we could order using a QR code. This was all fine, with the slight exception that mobile service is rough here and there is no WiFi. Moving on, we got some drinks, cider, which in general felt a bit unfinished to me, but was fine, and went downstairs to sit outside. Then the wait staff started showing up. They told us we had to order through them. Long story short, our order got lost and we waited about 1.5 hours before asking what was going on. They offered a discount for the late meal, which they ended up not giving us, and then said we'd get a free pizza next time... Which they didn't give us. Instead they gave us 2 drink vouchers all after telling the wait staff that we wanted to cancel the order and would share our friends' instead. So we went from getting a refund, to getting the food after we shared our friends' meal, and not getting it discounted at all. Again, I think this place is fine overall and has potential, but from the experience we had here, we don't...

Our first experience, my mom and I had tickets to take the pizza class so we decided to eat there a few days before to “test it out” my mom, wife and i showed up and were seated after ten minutes a waitress came over and took our drink order, she cam back about 20 minutes later and gave us the wrong drinks. She took our food order and left again, while we were sitting there we watched as she served the other tables and diners which there weren’t many of, after another 40 minutes she came back and told us they only had gluten free dough left and they hadn’t made our pizzas yet, my mom got the sweet heat, I got the perogie, and my wife had ordered the peach hand bread. The waitress had said how good the hand bread was repeatedly guess we will never know because they just ran out. Waitress brings me my 26$ 6 cut perogie pizza I’ve had better microwave pizzas w better toppings. The sweet heat was mediocre, my wife’s 2nd choice was a pepperoni pizza again mediocre all very expensive tho. The gluten free dough gave my wife and I diarrhea throughout the night, luckily it wasn’t at the restaurant because the bathrooms were disgusting and not clean. Our meal ended up being comped because of how terrible everything including the service had been, my mom and I canceled our pizza dough class there, and we will not be eating there again. Wish I took photos but I wasn’t planning on writing a bad review...