Excerpts from netnews.pgh.food: 28-Jul-100 La Girasole? by Chris [email removed] > I understand that this is a relatively new place. Does anybody have any > opinions on it? > > Thanks. > > Chris McGlone Just went there last night. Decor is nicely clean stone walls and relatively sparse tables or a few tables outside with folding chairs - it's in the basement of a rowhouse type of building on Copeland right off Walnut across from the Pittsburgh Deli Company. Problem with the stone walls is they reflect sound, so it's a quite noisy place - our 2 year old could be quite loud and no one would have noticed or known. Food: Italian style, but relatively subtle preparations (a good thing in my book). We skipped appetizers and all ordered pasta (which comes with house salad), and I substituted soup for the salad. Salads were fine from my companions perspective, the soup (a stock and tomato base with some form of pearled wheat I can't recall) was quite good. Pastas were generally in the low teens for cost, plus they had fish and meat of the day specials. My wife and I had spinach spaghetti with white corn and cherry tomatoes - it comes with fresh mozzarella I believe which we declined (on dietary grounds) and they were quite willing to make to order. Well prepared, not too oily as such preparations often are. Similarly, our 2 year old can't eat a whole plate, so we got them to give her a half of gnocchi, which she devoured so I guess it must have been good. Other companions had the ravioli and the polenta, both of which they described as good. Our server was quite good as well. Aside from the noise level, really a pretty decent dining experience. Brian Zikmund-Fisher
Pittsburgh, PA