After a couple weekends away camping and traveling, we're back in Pittsburgh and hungry for some Saturday Breakfast! Today we headed for the North Side for what we *thought* was to be the old Shamrock Inn. But instead, we were delighted to find it under new ownership - Now it's the
Carmi Family Restaurant.
I love the restaurant's motto: "If your hungry for some true Southern Cooking, then you don't wanna skip Carmi Family Restaurant." And you know it is when grits come standard with nearly every meal!
Husband and I chose to order the "Kings Breakfast" and the "Queen's Breakfast" respectively. (How cute, right?) But rather than grits to go with his pancakes & eggs, husband substituted plain ol' toast. But I went ahead and requested cheese be added to my grits to accompany my fluffy waffle and eggs.
Now, as tasty as all that food was, it really didn't give us the true chef's experience we might have had. It was only after we ordered, that a fellow diner approached our table (demonstrating the typical friendliness often exhibited by Pittsburghers) and told us how absolutely amazing the "Shrimp & Grits" as well as the "Chicken & Waffles" apparently are. And later the hostess came by and encouraged us to come back again and try these two signature breakfast dishes.
Shrimp for breakfast??? Nothing I've done before, but maybe some day. They sure made it sound good! So even though I wasn't brave enough to order it on my own, I can truly say that it comes highly recommended.
So all in all, the food was really good, and the lunch/dinner menus look to be even better. And the staff couldn't be any friendlier and attentive. I'm not sure what happened to the old Shamrock Inn, but I'm so glad the new owners found a great location to serve some true Southern Cooking. Definitely can't wait to go back to experience more!
SMH...The owner, she chastised my colleagues and myself about not reading and recognizing that they have their discount and "BYOB" policies outlined on their menus. She told us we "should be glad" she wasn't charging the policy fees. We informed her that her menu's have no such policies printed on them, how were we supposed to know that??..After asking her to show us where the policies were printed, she never returned to our table, ignoring us. We aquired a menu at the front counter where she keeps them and asked our waitress to show us. She replied "well it is printed on our new menus, not these." I told her we were just treated pretty rude and aggressively by the other employee (I didn't know at the time, was the owner) about policies that are non-existent on the menu for us to have known about. What she said was, "well that's our policy so you know next time." But there will be no next time. When the OWNER has no clue that in a public place of business, a policy is not a policy if it is not printed or posted for the customer to see, she also has no clue that she cannot enforce what does not exist. I am amazed at how bold, ignorant and entitled her behavior was toward us. A respectable business woman would have just apologized and recognized her obvious error and being a restaurant owner, having a clear understanding that the most important tool in the restaurant business, is the restaurants menu. The second, is a humble and apologetic attitude when your customers are mistreated in your establishment. But I guess that becomes a little tricky when it's you the owner, who's responsible for mistreating your customers. I have never in my life posted a negative review about any company. But this experience was "JAW DROPPING"!!!! She knows she deserves it. I decided to share our experience because your way of thanking us for spending our money in your restaurant, was to drag your finger across the name "CARMI" on your tea shirt and say to me, "You see this name, I'm the owner - you have a nice night." Well, you see this post review? I'm the customer! And a customer can either contribute to you making money or cost you a great deal of money. And if you plan to stay in business for long you need to learn sound business ethics. You may have some satisfied patrons however, you would do well not to take any of them for granted. It's hard to stay in business these days. FYI. You've got a good thing going and we need more Soul Food restaurants in this city and I hope you are successful. But I am gonna give you a fair review on your performance and the choices you decided to make today. You can't treat even one the way you treated three this evening. You are servicing very important people, whether they are rich or poor. I needed to give you some well deserved feedback on our experience. So hopefully you approach this review with a little vision, learn from it and never mistreat another one of your valued customers again. If this upsets you, read it again; then ask yourself how you would have felt if you or your family, were treated the way we were treated by you. By the way, the meal was good.
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