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Menu keeps up with the season at the Cross Keys Inn Thursday, December 24, 1998 By Woodene Merriman, Post-Gazette Dining Critic
First we tried to get a reservation on a Sunday night. Filled, until late in the evening. Next we tried for a week night, and got in. But Cross Keys Inn was busy, even on a Tuesday.
We shouldn't have been surprised. The old (1850) inn is a favorite dinner stop for people driving to nearby Hartwood Acres to see the spectacular holiday light display, which continues through Jan. 17.
The inn itself is all dressed up for the holidays, from the greens and red bows in the hanging flower boxes on the front porch to the decorated Christmas trees throughout the house. "But we came to eat, not to gawk," His Honor reminds me. He's already complaining about the wine list. Too expensive. So we'll settle for a glass of the mild St Jean fume blanc ($5) for me, and another of Beaulieu Vineyards Coastal pinot noir ($6) for him. Each one is a big glass or, as the winos say, "a generous pour." Things are looking up.
Cross Keys Inn has improved since we last ate here. There's a new chef, the menu changes seasonally, and there's a new, also seasonal, dessert menu.
One thing hasn't changed: The Belgian endive salad (so popular it stays when the menu changes) arrives with bits of brown on the tips of the slightly bitter, crisp leaves of endive. This happened the last time we ate here. It's a nice salad, though - mixed greens, gorgonzola cheese, pine nuts, the four elderly leaves of endive, and raspberry vinaigrette. The server also provides us with cold forks for the salad, a custom that always seems a little pretentious to me.
Chef Regis McGill came to the Cross Keys Inn three years ago, after working in country clubs and hotels in Florida and, most recently, at the Fox Chapel Yacht Club. His menus are imaginative; I can't find a dish I would call "simple" on the menu. Even the New York strip steak is dressed up: it's blackened and set atop a bed of crisply fried potatoes and leeks with a tasso ham sauce chasseur, which sounds pretty fancy to us.
To start, we ordered the pate sampler. It's four small scoops of spreadable pate - plain, green peppercorn, pistachio and wild mushroom - sitting in a creamy horseradish and Dijon mustard sauce, crisp pieces of crostini made from seven-grain bread, and a sprig of rosemary sticking out the top of it all. We'll wait a couple of days before we get our cholesterol checked.
Maybe we'll wait longer. H.H.'s French-cut veal chop, one of the day's specials, comes stuffed with more pate, and topped with chopped, sauteed portobello mushrooms. The chop is just slightly pink inside, a good cut of veal perfectly cooked. The pate stuffing, though, seems unnecessary. In an attempt to be different, sometimes cooks go too far. On the side is braised endive. Aha! Maybe the chef has decided it's time to use up that aging endive.
My Atlantic sole is mushy, but the sweet lump crabmeat mixture served with it saves the dish. The sole filets have a light topping of whole wheat crumbs, and a garnish of sweet pepper wine sauce.
Entrees are accompanied by a vegetable and starch (carrots, Brussels sprouts and red skins, all fine - and I don't often say that about Brussels sprouts). The crusty Breadworks bread is warm, and the butter is ice cold. Why can't someone get the butter out of the refrigerator ahead of time so it's easier to spread?
The current menu has pastas like lobster ravioli and chicken portobello. It has osso bucco, a Kahlua glazed pork chop, medallions of quail, honey pecan crusted swordfish, and a lot more. Prices are $16.95 to $26.95.
Owner Pat Babyak says the red meats are the big sellers. In the seafood category, salmon Loraine is popular. The medallions of salmon are wrapped in an envelope of potatoes and leeks, sauteed and set atop a gorgonzola black pepper cream sauce.
The new dessert menu has a white chocolate bread pudding, mixed berry cobbler and one we can't resist - apple strudel. It's served warm and is plenty big enough for two people. The puff pastry crust is a little hard to cut and the apple filling is the consistency of apple sauce. H.H. likes it like that; I prefer a filling with pieces of apple that are tender but holding their shape.
Cross Keys Inn is a pleasant place to have lunch or dinner, particularly now in this holiday season. The inn is the old-style colonial house, with a central hall and staircase. Downstairs, dinners are served in the library, with its working fireplace, and in the main dining room in the back, which has bay windows and a small fireplace at one end. Try not to sit at a table near the door to the hall, where we're sitting tonight. Every time the front door opens, cold air comes down the hallway.
Upstairs there are four dining rooms, often used for private parties. Two - the Trillium and the Beechwood rooms - are furnished with one table, a sofa and end table. Dinners are served on Lenox china. For $25 above the cost of the dinner, two to six people can have the room for the evening.
Babyak took over Cross Keys Inn nine years ago, and later brought in Ron Lankes, formerly of the old Jake's Above the Square, Downtown, as manager. They're usually at work alongside the servers, who are very professional, by the way.
"We're a small business," Babyak says. "Everybody pitches in." '
Cross Keys Inn
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Hours: Lunch, Tuesday-Friday, 11:30 a.m.-2 p.m.; dinner, Tuesday-Friday, 5-10 p.m.; Saturday, 5- 10 p.m.; Sunday, 4-9 p.m.