We Have A Massive Brunch At The Grand Concourse

One of Pittsburgh’s premiere restaurants is the famous Grand Concourse, which resides in a former train station. That’s another thing we are known for here in the ‘Burgh: turning really amazing train stations into restaurants and banquet facilities. (What’s worst about that is the state of our actual train station. Have you ever seen the Amtrak station here in Pittsburgh? It’s a single room with plastic chairs. Yet another reason we need to support train travel, bringing a beautiful station back to our city!)

The Grand Concourse is everyone’s favorite anniversary spot, and they rent it out for company parties and weddings. But, what they are perhaps most well-known for is their Sunday brunch. Although we had gone to the Grand Concourse for dinner before (Valentine’s Day 2007, the day of the famous ice storm, and the first occurrence of the classic ‘Michael’s ears are cold’ joke), we had never gone for brunch, but decided my birthday was the right time.

We had to get reservations because it fills up, and since it was a Steeler Sunday, they open the buffet at 9am instead of their normal start of 10, and the only reservations we could get… were at 9:15. Way too early to be up on a Sunday I don’t have to work!

But we went down anyway, in the miserable, rainy Pittsburgh weather (we’d had amazing weather Friday and Saturday, so the law of Pittsburgh Averages said we had to deal with precipitation), and had an amazing, super-filling breakfast!

As it is a brunch, you get some interesting combinations. That is lemon chicken on Michael’s first round plate, with the eggs and sausage. So yummy.

I had penne pasta and an English muffin with garlic chive butter! So many great options!

Here is the setup of the tables for the brunch.

The gorgeous windows! See that clock? That’s the old train station clock, like they have in all the Union Stations. What a beautiful station this must have been!

This is our ‘why did we wait to take our picture after we’d started stuffing ourselves’ picture. 🙂

Here is the lovely staircase. Through those doors is another staircase. Back in the days when I was a dancer, our dance company got hired to perform at a company Christmas party, and we had to wear these ridiculous outfits and dance to “One” (“singular sensation lalala”) on those steps. In heels. While performing out to the audience. I posted this picture to share with my fellow dancers, and we all had some good (horrifying) memories 🙂 (To be honest, we were all teenagers, and got paid something like $50, so we were willing to put up with whatever!)

This is the most amazing part of the Grand Concourse – the donut machine!! Donut dough pops out of that little thing on the left, then it flows along the grease on a conveyor belt…

…until it dries and falls off the edge into the big bowl of donuts! There are ‘dipping plates’ to the right, with powdered sugar and cinnamon sugar in which you can dip your fresh donut. We want one of these for the house quite badly, but we are certain Lucy will just sit at the end of the conveyor belt with her mouth open 🙂