The New Hartman: The birthday dinner that almost wasn't

As I mentioned yesterday, Dave's dad and step mom came out to Pittsburgh to visit this past weekend. They were originally supposed to come out back in February, but well... we all know what February was like. Snowy and horrible.

So they rescheduled for April, and it just so happened to coincide with CMU's Carnival.

But the real reason for coming out was to take us out to dinner for our belated birthdays, and Dave and I were super excited to use this as our chance to check out the new Hofbrauhaus that recently opened in the South Side. In our planning e-mails back and forth to his dad, we realized that Dave's dad had actually BEEN to the original Hofbrauhaus in Munich, Germany. How cool, right?

Can you see the excitement in our eyes??? Oh wait, that's just cold...

So we wander in around 7:30 p.m. and I walk up to the lederhosen laden hostess and say, "Hi, can we put our name in?" Only to get the response, "Sorry, we're not taking names anymore for tonight, but you can come back at 9:30 when we start doing open seating, or you can go down to our Bier Garden, which is outside."

Umm... Yeah. Thanks, but no thanks.

Actually, we did end up walking down to the Bier Garden, but it is indeed outside and although there was a fire going, the smoke was blowing and we left, stinky and smelling like a campfire without even having a beer. I was definitely heartbroken.

So then we headed to Claddagh's Irish pub and ordered a drink. The wait there was only about an hour, but after perusing their menu over a beer, we remembered that we had eaten there before and weren't really in love with their food. Obviously, not a good choice then, as a place to celebrate your birthday dinner.

And so our South Side bar tour continued. Dave's dad and step mom were definitely being good-natured about our inability to decide on a place, and I decided that we should try the Cheescake Factory.

The wait here was also over an hour, and I should note that by this time, it was already 8:30. So we put our name in and headed to the bar area. We couldn't decide - should we wait here and just be seated? Or go back to Hofbrauhaus at 9:30 and take our chances at trying to get a table there once their so-called "open seating" started?

As Dave and I were discussing, the buzzer went off that belonged to the group of people sitting at the bar table next to where we were standing. "Do you want to sit here?" the nice man asked. "Yes!" we exclaimed, showering him with kisses! (Ok, not true.)

But regardless, we were SO excited! Finally! A table!! Hallelujah! And to top it off, we found out that we were even able to order dinner from here. So why in the world would anyone wait for another table in the restaurant?? Oh well, doesn't matter to me.

So we ordered drinks....

Mmm... pineapple mojitos... Best. Birthday. Drink. EVER.

... And dinner. But we were too excited (and finally tipsy) to remember to take pictures. Instead of cheesecake for dessert, I decided to have one more mojito.

Let's review - we started in Germany, traveled to Ireland, and finally ended up in what I decided would be called Morocco, based on this ceiling above our table.