Brasserie 33, a storefront restaurant in the Pittsburgh neighborhood of Shadyside, is as French as French can get in Pennsylvania. The Maitre d' approached me, \"Bonsoir Mademoiselle, un table pour deux?\" How lucky that I could respond \"Oui, merci!\" right back. The Pittsburgher-Frenchman was unruffled, as if a twenty-one-year-old couple responding in coherent French was the common experience at his higher-priced, black-jeans-are-still-okay neighborhood restaurant.\n\n Brasserie 33 is a relatively new addition to the Pittsburgh cultural food scene, which consists mostly of Italian in the Strip District, sandwiches piled with french fries in Oakland, and lots of Thai, everywhere. Hiding out on the Shadyside/East Liberty border, it is a haven of rich cheeses, fresh seafood, and good wine. Among Steelers' black and gold and U. Pitt sweatpants, French cuisine may not seem to have a place in the 'burgh; however, this restaurant retained authenticity like the best of Parisian caf\u00e9s.\n\n After our petit conversation en fran\u00e7ais, the maitre d' brought us to two set places at the bar, as we hadn't made a reservation. A couple next to us was deep in conversation (in English), heads bent together. Laughter drifted down from two women at the end of the bar, wine glasses aloft and a bowl of cr\u00e8me brul\u00e9e scraped clean. On the walls hung prints of Matisse and Monet, and soft jazz filtered through the room. Around us, the French accents of the wait staff mix with unaccented English of husbands and wives out on date night, older couples smiling over cheese plates, and college students like ourselves taking a break from the real world to slip into something more sophisticated.\n\n After a long list of speciales en fran\u00e7ais, the meal began with bleu cheese and walnuts over hearts of romaine. The bleu cheese was as strong as if from the town of Roquefort in southern France. My boyfriend sipped a glass of merlot and the smiling waitress kept our bread basket and water glasses full, always stopping to chat each time she visited. The one divergence from absolute French tradition was serving the salad at the beginning of the meal. I guess some cultural norms just have to be given in to; Americans can only adapt so much.\n\n When our main course came - after the bread and appetizers we'd decided to split - it actually looked more like a typical American pasta dish than anything I've experienced in la France. The huge bowl of steaming mussels, shrimp, scallops, and pasta, all tossed in a cr\u00e8me sauce and smothered in cheese, could have been served at any quality Stateside restaurant. There was nothing distinctly French - no strange meats, no unexpected seafood. The heavy cream sauce and cheese were fairly authentic; the French love to clog their arteries just as well as any McDonald's-munching American. But the dish as a whole, though the seafood was fresh and the sauce sweet and satisfying, wasn't as distinctly French as I'd have expected, given the atmosphere.\n\n At this point the waitress's attentiveness started to grate. After the customary \"How is everything doing?\" a few minutes after serving us, she returned two more times to ask if we needed anything. The French take the opposite opinion on serving; they'd rather leave a customer sitting sans service for a half hour than interrupt the meal too often. Their laissez-faire approach to dining is startling at first, if you're used to a more interactive dining experience, but becomes quite relaxing when you realize it is simply so that diners can enjoy their food and the dining experience without feeling rushed. At Brasserie 33, we felt quite rushed. Despite their authentic accents and friendly conversation, the wait staff turned out to be a little too attentive.\n\n By the time dessert rolled around, my excitement at the cultured atmosphere and strong bleu cheese had turned to distaste at feeling rushed through my main course. The waitress claimed the cr\u00e8me brul\u00e9e was to die for, and I don't doubt that it was. But she asked if we'd like dessert a few too many times, and boasted a little too much about what we were missing when we said no thank you. We took the check instead, and waved \"Au revoir!\" to our short French getaway, closing the door to find ourselves back in a Pittsburgh parking lot.\n\n Brasserie 33 was a break from the routine, especially for such a land-locked, sports-crazed, working man's city. The food was fresh and made from quality ingredients, the wait staff was extremely polite, and the atmosphere attempted a feat of French aestheticism. Brasserie 33 is a great new addition to the cultural food scene in Pittsburgh, and is quite authentically French. But give them time; they have a few things to tweak before I'd send someone there with a \"Bon Appetit!\"
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