Sienna Mercato - Il Tetto

Caprese

Il Tetto is the fancy new roof top deck downtown. I'm pretty amazed at the number of roof top decks that have opened just within the last year.... Skybar, Carson City, Blue Line Grille, Steel Cactus, etc. Pittsburgh's new obsession with outdoor seating is fantastic.

Il Tetto offers a very limited menu that is completely different from the selections available downstairs at Emporio. (Emporio is the Sienna Mercato meatball restaurant. My review of Emporio is available here.) So be sure to grab your meatballs and discounted beers downstairs at Emprio before you take the elevator ride to Il Tetto as the rooftop bar does not offer meatballs or happy hour specials.

Some of the selections available at Il Tetto include fried head cheese, home made sausage, marinated olives and my delicious caprese salad which is pictured above.

My caprese salad was very good. It was made with extremely high quality olive oil from Lodi Olive Oil co, basil, fresh tomatoes, some remarkable mozzarella and some micro greens including cilantro. Someone did a fine job of selecting a delicious tomato for my salad. Great work Il Tetto! Although I found the addition of cilantro to a caprese salad to be rather odd, it seemed to work as it was used sparingly. My chief complaint about the salad, and about Il Tetto in general, was the pricing. The salad cost $14 and each drink ran somewhere between $7 and $15. I think this is very high for Pittsburgh, even with the beautiful view of the city.

It is my personal belief that if I'm paying $14 for a salad it should come with some type of protein or at least a lap dance. However, based on the size of the crowd the last two times I've visited Il Tetto, it would appear that the general public disagrees. It is true what they say, you pay for the view.

Uptown - Blue Line Grill

Pittsburgh has gone deck crazy.

Uptown is the newest of the Pittsburgh roof top deck bars. They have a friendly and helpful staff, a great view of the city and a really neat space! There is both indoor and outdoor seating as well as a bunch of fancy roof couches. (I bet West Virginia can't brag about any establishments with roof couches.)

This is why they can't have nice things in West Virginia.

I found the menu at Uptown a little odd. Their roof-top menu is different than the downstairs menu and it features seafood, sushi, charcuterie and bruschetta. (Maybe that doesn't sound weird to you , but I think it is a strange selection!)

I highly recommend visiting Uptown to give everything a try and have a few drinks. It is also a fantastic location to host large events such as fundraisers, hootenannies, box socials and couch burnings. 

Anyhow, my favorites were the seafood cocktail with shrimp, lobster, crab, mango and pico de gallo as well as the lobster slider with lemon aioli. I'm typically not a huge lobster dude, but I'll always eat it when it is put in front of me. (Kind of like basically every other food ever.)

Now, if you've ever had doubts that popular foods are anything more than current trends based on hype and market demand, consider this. Lobster was so abundant in colonial America that it was considered a poor-man's food. According to History.com, "Dirt-cheap because they were so copious, lobsters were routinely fed to prisoners, apprentices, slaves and children during the colonial era and beyond. In Massachusetts, some servants allegedly sought to avoid lobster-heavy diets by including stipulations in their contracts that they would only be served the shellfish twice a week."

I also would like a stipulation in my employment contract that I will be served shellfish twice a week.