John Muth spent the past seven years as the manager of the Cafe at the Frick, so it's no surprise that Mirabelle, his first restaurant, has some basic tenets in common with his previous charge: Local, seasonal foods and preparing everything from scratch on site, down to the pasta and the bread. While Mirabelle's menu is in no way a copy of the cafe's, they are cut from the same cloth.

There are a lot of lovely things about the restaurant. The Mirabelle vegetable soup ($4) was a delicious, light puree of butternut squash, marrow beans, fennel, onions, garlic and carrots with vegetable stock. This kind of soup can easily become dull, but here the vegetables were so well balanced that the flavor was fresh and lively.

The roasted beet salad ($7) put a lively new spin on a classic dish, serving the salt-roasted slices of yellow and purple beets and thin slices of lightly pickled grapefruit with a small pot of bruleed goat cheese still warm from the broiler.

The chicken nicoise ($23) was a wonderful version of a classic dish too rarely served in restaurants -- roast chicken, dark and white meat, with beautiful golden skin, a pile of perfectly cooked green beans and a cake made from thinly sliced, layered potatoes.

---

Mirabelle

1 1/2 stars = Good+
Ratings explained

215 Allegheny Ave.
Oakmont
412-517-8115
www.mirabelleoakmont.com

• Hours: Lunch, Tuesday-Friday, 11 a.m.-2 p.m.; dinner, Tuesday-Friday, starting at 4:30 p.m.
• Recommended dishes: Mirabelle vegetable soup, chilled beets, chicken nicoise, Jagerschnitzel, champagne cocktail.
• Prices: Appetizers, $4-12; entrees, $19-27; desserts, $7; sparkling wines by the glass start at $8; by the bottle, $31; sparkling cocktails, $9; wines by the glass start at $6; by the bottle, $23.
• Summary: Wheelchair accessible; park in lot; credit cards accepted; reservations recommended on weekends; corkage, $20.

---

I was immediately intrigued by the menu description of eggs benedict Florentine ($19), and for the most part the dish was a surprise hit. The curried noodle cakes were crispy and starchy at the same time, like the top layer of miniature noodle kugels. The eggs were poached beautifully, and the orange and fennel salad was bright and refreshing.

Sablefish Veronique ($27), a filet of Alaskan black cod with bay scallops and a verjus sauce along with the grapes that give the dish its name, showcased a rainbow of heirloom vegetables -- purple carrots, red brussels sprouts -- that popped up in other dishes as well.

This menu would have been full of hits but, unfortunately, almost all of these dishes, as well as many others, were marred by basic mistakes -- the beets were undercooked; the chicken breast was exceedingly dry; the spinach fondue that topped the eggs benedict was overwhelmingly salty. Heirloom vegetables were consistently undercooked and underseasoned, so I never really got to taste them in their full splendor.

For the most part, the food was still quite good, but it was disheartening to appreciate how much better it could be if just a little more attention was paid to the most important aspects of the meal, rather than trying to do too much and, consequently, doing nothing very well.

While I would never recommend a restaurant use purchased stocks, I don't think it's necessary to bake bread on site, especially when better bread is available for purchase. A slightly smaller menu would probably make a considerable difference.

The dessert menu could also use considerable editing. Lack of consistency was a problem, as were lengthy holding times. Ice cream, especially, becomes very icy if frozen too long.

All of these problems are fixable, and the bones of the menu are quite good. The bones of the dining room, unfortunately, are not so good.

Sponge-painted textured walls, mini-chandelier light fixtures and a few paintings do little to disguise that this restaurant is in a strip mall. At the very least, the hideous vertical blinds are crying out to be replaced with a more flattering window treatment.

If Mirabelle's aspirations were simply to be a neighborhood restaurant, the decor would probably be forgivable. But Muth has also placed a serious emphasis on Mirabelle as a champagne bar, offering a fair number of sparkling wines by the split (individual-bottle size), as well as a dozen or so sparkling wine cocktails.

While I happily agree with Muth that every meal out is a suitable occasion for sparkling wine, I think that a pleasant setting is also a minimal condition to inspire celebratory ordering. And I don't think that a restaurant that appeals only to nearby diners is likely to sell enough Korbel Brut ($10) or Perrier Jouet Grand Brut ($23), even at reasonable mark-ups, to justify emphasizing them to such an extent.

The coming year will be a hard one for restaurants, and Mirabelle is far from the only restaurant that would benefit from a revised menu, an updated dining room and a better business plan. While there is work to do, Mirabelle shows a great deal of promise that needs to be balanced by consistency and quality control.