River Moon Cafe sits purposely on a dedicated corner just off the "beaten" path of busy Butler Street. The neighborhood is mindful of the narrow streets and close together row houses that dot European villages one might travel to looking for that special out-of-the-way restaurant encounter. You will find that encounter here!
Entering the River Moon Cafe is a bit like visiting a relative's house hoping to find someone home who will pay attention to your desire for having a memorable meal, offer an inviting and warm atmosphere, charm you with just enough appointments to make you feel special and appreciate your visit. The chef, her husband and staff will manage to make you feel at home, will purposely provide a pleasing and pleasant engagement for you, and will invite you to return for additional experiences that will help you entertain frequent visits.
The pri fixe menu for Tuesdays through Thursdays afforded us the great opportunity to sample a soup, a hummus plate, the halibut with lemon/caper sauce, rost pork with sausage as described above, a duo of desserts of tiramasu and raspberrry cheesecake. Check out the menu attached for your review!
The choice of wine for the meal was selected prior to knowing the menu so the bottle of Banfi Chianti Classico 2005 of Montalcino, Italy was not the perfect match for our dinners, but still a decent wine that did allow for an acceptable addition to the meal with its rich, ruby color (provided by Chianti's Sangiovese grapes.) This particular wine would be best paired with a hearty sauce and pasta.
Josephine cooked for us tonight. Well...it felt like that.
Josephine and her husband think of their patrons as coming to their dining room. The idea is to create a personalized feel to the preparation of home cooked food served in a cozy spot tucked in a Pittsburgh neighborhood. Bringing your own wine brings a touch of your own home. It's a lovely combination. Personal is tasty. It's the bisque that is chock full of crab and the apple sausage stuffing pungent and sweet and the sauce on the pork that tastes full of the brown bits. Josephine cooks Sunday dinner any day of the week. (She's not open Sunday!) Only here you can ask Grandma for almost anything you want.
The secret sauce, though, is the conversation. We let it roll over the appetizer and puddle up under the entree and drip down the dessert. It's delicious. It's the excuse to eat. It's the performance enhancing drug that smooths over any flaws in Josephine's cooking. We intensify the flavor.
I feel really fortunate that Josephine cooked for us tonight...and fortunate to share this meal with my friend.
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