Cornerstone Restaurant & Bar - Aspinwall

Thanks to the magical marketing powers of Groupon, we were introduced to the Saturday brunch at the Cornerstone Restaurant & Bar in Aspinwall (just north of Pittsburgh). Brunch is always a great change of pace from the typical Saturday morning in Pittsburgh since you are sure to have a wide variety to choose from. We arrived just after opening (11am) after sleeping in -- specifically with the intention of breakfasting! So we tried really hard to ignore the tempting "lunch" offerings and stuck to the breakfast part of the brunch.

The inside of the place is quite charming, with lots of exposed brick and high ceilings. The website says they were established in 2009, and everything feels relatively new, without being too "modern". For some reason I found it kind of amusing that both TV's in the bar were playing the Tennis Channel. I didn't even know there was a Tennis Channel...

Since we were there pretty "early" (not that our stomachs agreed that 11 was early) the place wasn't too crowded, though it started to fill up pretty quickly, including lots of ladies headed to their back party room with baby shower gifts. But we were still served quickly with friendly service.

Husband ordered their special fritatta of the day which included cumin, roasted red pepper and black beans, served with potatoes and an extra pancake on the side, and I picked the potato pancakes and scrambled eggs. While the eggs were quite overdone, the potato pancakes were absolutely amazing, with goat cheese and delicious caramelized cinnamon apples on top. The (regular) pancake was also notably tasty with an extra hint of vanilla.

Lots of stars for this place, and I have no doubt we will be returning to sample some of their other brunch items. It's not typical to find restaurants that serve brunch on Saturday (usually a Sunday experience) so we were really glad to find this place. Afterwards, we did some browsing in the cute little shops across the street, including a super cute miniatures shop.

I felt like I was in a furniture store, with display after display. Something cute they did was take bird houses and setup little scenes. This one was a patio complete with a fountain and lawn furniture. Looks like an expensive hobby, but it was fun to browse.