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Something strange and something tasty is going on at the Lardin House Inn Friday, August 14, 1998 By Woodene Merriman, Post-Gazette Dining Critic
Lardin House Inn has an illustrious history. The deed goes back to 1769, and Ben Franklin signed the original land grant. It was the site of the first justice of the peace in the area, the first grist mill, and was a documented stop on the underground railroad. It has a recently discovered graveyard for freed slaves.
It also has ghosts. Friendly ghosts who don't like guests to smoke cigars, for one thing, says chef/owner Bernard Glad. One night a cigar-puffer's glass ashtray mysteriously cracked.
A group of women who eat every month or so at the restaurant always go upstairs to look around. They feel an unexpected cold chill in the air, and come down laughing. Those ghosts again.
I wish the ghosts would have warned us somehow about the shrimp stir-fry His Honor ordered for lunch today. We've been to Lardin House before, enjoyed it, and looked forward to returning. It's a pleasant drive from Pittsburgh, the old restored house is interesting to investigate, and our dinner was quite nice.
But the shrimp stir-fry is a disaster. The light-brown color of the dish (and that includes the broccoli and snow peas) is a turn off, the shrimp are those teeny-tiny ones, and it tastes like it has been sitting on a steam table, not quickly stir-fried before serving. "The rice is good," H.H. says.
He had a fine salad, too, large for a house salad that accompanies a $6.95 lunch entree. It was all mixed, small leaf greens - no iceberg lettuce- with the usual tomato wedges, cucumber slices and a raspberry vinaigrette.
My spinach and mushroom luncheon salad came with a hot bacon dressing. Read that, big pieces of real bacon in the dressing, and slices of portobello mushrooms on top. No complaints, except that I wish salad makers would tear spinach into smaller pieces before serving. It makes it so much easier to eat.
William M. Lardin bought this property in 1877 and did much of the work in the house, according to Glad. It was always a residence, never an inn, and by the time Glad's late father bought it in 1991, the house needed a lot of work.
Today it's a stately, 18-room Victorian house, sitting back from the road so that you easily miss it driving by on route 21. (Look for the Revco sign and turn in.) There are rockers on the front porch, red and white impatiens lining the walks and a big American flag in the front yard. Glad found all the antique furnishings for the house, kept the original woodwork, and decorated it in the Victorian style. Three dining rooms and the tavern room are on the first floor, and three more, used less often, are upstairs. The yard and the house are used for summer weddings.
In September, it will be three years since he opened the restaurant, and business has been steadily increasing, Glad says. It's a family project, with his wife, daughter, mother, son and son-in-law to be, all helping out. Glad, a graduate of Westmoreland Community College's culinary program, is the chef, but his son and son-in-law-to-be also cook.
The menu at dinner is more extensive than the luncheon menu. The signature dish is chicken Lardin, or chunks of sauteed chicken breast, portobello mushrooms and sun-dried tomatoes in a rich, creamy sauce. Wedges of potato and sauteed squash were on the plate, too. With soup or salad, it's $12.95. This dish is also on the luncheon menu for $7.95.
Other chicken dishes, pastas, seafood, lamb, steak and several veal preparations are on the dinner menu, too. H.H. had the chicken risotto, a slow-cooked arborio rice dish, a little soupy for a real risotto, with half a sauteed chicken breast on top.
The hot appetizer menu is difficult to resist. Italian rice balls, grilled Cajun filet mignon tails, stuffed mushroom caps with roasted garlic and onion cream cheese - not the usual Pittsburgh appetizer list at all. The frittata florentine we shared had fresh spinach, melted cheese inside, a sprig of basil on the side, and couldn't have been better. The grilled portobello mushroom cap was simple but easy to like - just a slice of cheese melted atop the wide, flat marinated mushroom.
The wine list is primarily Gallo, but with more choices than we expected. Desserts are not made at Lardin House. But if you feel the need for something a little sweet before you hit the road again, have the cable car mousse. It's a wedge of half chocolate, half vanilla mousse, with chocolate syrup poured over the top. The name comes from the design, I guess, with the chocolate and vanilla layers divided on the slant, like a cable car rail on a steep hillside. How it was made that way, I don't know. Ghosts again?
LARDIN HOUSE INN
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Hours: Tuesday-Thursday, 11 a.m.- 9 p.m.; Friday and Saturday, 11 a.m.-10 p.m.; Sunday, 11 a.m.-4 p.m.