(Front): A sea scallop is accompanied by Byrd's Mill grits with habañero cheddar and brown sugar butter. (Center): Black truffle beets with chevre. Photo by Laura Petrilla.

Toast! Kitchen & Wine Bar

5102 Baum Blvd., Shadyside
412/224-2579, toastpittsburgh.com

Raise a glass to a promising future for Toast! Kitchen & Wine Bar, the Baum Vivant location successor.

Tues.-Thurs., 5-10 p.m.; Fri.-Sat. until 11 p.m. or later as crowd permits.; Appetizers: $5-$11; Salads: $5-$9; Entrees: $12-$30; Desserts: $5-$7; No smoking, full bar, handicapped-accessible, reservations suggested.

 

Toasting Toast!

"Cheers," hoots Paul Tebbets. I immediately feel a kindred connection to the co-owner of the new restaurant/wine bar Toast, which has opened at Baum Vivant's former location, vacant for 32 months and definitely a hard act to follow. I remember when such jubilant salutes were reserved for fancy affairs with bubbly drinks that popped with the sound and speed of a forty-five.

The first time I walked into Toast, I noticed a couple of tables on the first floor pushed together, people clanking everything from coffee cups to fine stemware - and felt comfortable immediately. The house had honored former owner Toni Pais by framing a huge piece of the original wallpaper - pink with oversized flower heads outlined in black. With old ceiling tiles removed, exposing daunting wooden rafters treated with a ton of mineral oil, the long, narrow room suddenly gains height and eliminates claustrophobia.

It's still a cozy lounge - painted a gorgeous, rich California-poppy red with brown-suede mini-banquettes - and not too cushy, offering a great wine bar with 10 wood-backed barstools popular at dinner. Some of the artwork - actually research photos - should be immediately familiar to medical professionals, but for the rest of us, photographic enlargements of dye-stained DNA material resemble M.C. Escher prints (if Escher had used brilliant color). They've put the psychedelic in double helix. And that's just on the ground floor.

Twenty-one steep steps take you to the second level, which is done in Victorian style, where there's a more formal room with starched linens and embroidered drapes. Pais' old office, offset by French doors, is now a private dining room with the original brick fireplace. "There's a lot of personal histories attached to such a great restaurant," says Tebbets. "People got engaged here, celebrated birthdays and weddings. We hear 'Toni took care of us' over and over and hope to follow in his footsteps. And we're waiting for him to come in and sign the wallpaper."

Left: Upstairs, a room offset by French doors is a private dining room with the original brick fireplace. Photo by Laura Petrilla.

Pals for a few years, owners Tebbets and Chet Garland display the quintessential bonding of opposites where one often speaks for the other. When property owner Andrew Stewart (of Silk and Stewart Development) asked Tebbets if he really wanted to open a place of his own in Pittsburgh, Tebbets emphatically remembers replying, "Sure I do." But the conversation between the two - at least for a time - ended there.

A year later, Tebbets and Garland had a business proposal and a lease option on the building, but at first they had no idea it was one of Stewart's properties. In fact, Tebbets would have to be reminded of their brief conversation a year earlier. Their goal with the restaurant? "Good food and good wine at a workingman's price," they chant in tandem over speaker phones. "Downstairs is like a wine kitchen from Napa Valley. Upstairs feels like Grandma's house set for Sunday dinner," Tebbets adds. They have rhythm: Tebbets is the perfect host, mixing cocktails and greeting people, as Garland sweats in the kitchen. It's not uncommon to see Garland delivering plates to Tebbets, who meets him halfway and runs plates up the stairs while Garland covers the bar.

Toast serves the sort of comforting bistro food that abbreviates the distance from farm to table, with a modern perspective that's all about fresh, local, seasonal; simple is the mantra, allowing flavors to shine through without being boring. Ketchup, gelato and soy sauce are the only products not made in-house.

As we munch on our selections from a roving basket of bread and pore over the wine list, our cheese plate arrives. My husband, Brad, listens to the server's roll call of cheeses: "Wisconsin aged cheddar, Roquefort... " and tries a thick slice of blue on a wheat cracker spread with a delicious, earthy raw honey.

They say you can learn a lot from a bowl of soup, and in this case, Garland says he has learned a lot from Thomas Keller's sweet-onion bisque, tweaking the San Francisco chef's recipe to his liking. The soup is thick but smooth and creamy in a way that most certainly saw a sieve, and finished with a neat pile of spiced crab that takes the creamy broth from yummy to outstanding. I recommend the sea scallop and grits appetizer, a stunning East Coast diver perched amongst Byrd's Mill grits, all harbored in a spunky habañero cheddar set in warm, simple brown butter.

If you sit downstairs, chances are Tebbets will be behind the bar mixing cocktails and taking care of customers. The wine bar is well-conceived, and an 8-ounce pour is generous, arriving in a glass decanter that is great for sharing and experimenting with new tastes. We took the opportunity to solicit help with our entrée picks. Wild king salmon with brussels sprouts, shiitake and oyster mushrooms, sweet potatoes and black cardamom is beautiful, with bright flavors. Though it may be out of season by the time this review is in your hands, it's a good example of how the chef handles fish. Selections change regularly - in fact, many of the items featured may not be on the menu in a few months.

Left: Ruby trout features asparagus and wild-mushroom risotto. Photo by Laura Petrilla.

Gerber's Farm chicken from an Amish farm in Ohio where the animals are cared for and fed right "up until dinner time" is heartfully cooked and finished with a sweet glaze. Chicken tastes the way it's supposed to - "like chicken," we laugh - and is served with roasted-garlic mashed potatoes, baby veggies and rosemary reduction. The skin is left on, thank you, crisp and true, worthy of its own mention.

Going against fashion and ignoring any fear of fat in favor of flavor, a marbleized hanger steak, the old "butcher's cut" suddenly on menus everywhere because it is so tasty, is served with parmesan twice-baked potatoes and glazed baby carrots. Or try the rib-eye, which when I visited, was served with confit veggies and pleasant pan jus. Duck, served with Minnesota wild rice and a plum glaze using hand-picked fruit from Zelienople, has the richness and flavor a classicist would want. It's accompanied by apple and cabbage slaw.

If crab cakes are on the menu, which they were this particular day, I usually try them because everybody in Pittsburgh eats them. These are direct and primal, sans the mushy fillers, and complimented by a chunky Southern sweet-potato cornbread that is so good it almost upstages the crab.

Desserts are generally light but fulsome. Select from a scoop of blood-orange or lemon sorbet, vanilla bean crème brûlée served in a glass espresso cup and Tahitian vanilla gelato with fig molasses. Breaking the trend, spiced cheesecake with a nutty crust covered in fresh-baked Bosc pears is dense and cinnamon-y. "A fitting reward," we ribbed one another, "for eating our vegetables."

One evening, we dined upstairs, where the linens are fresh and the room twinkles with candlelight, with a train rattling in the background as if Johnny Cash calls lonesomely from beyond. We match a fruity, playful New Zealand pinot noir against a cheaper, earthy French pinot noir, and as things go, we preferred the more expensive New Zealand wine. But in the midst of the city, it is rare to feel this far away from the world, then walk down 21 stairs, where the drinking and eating are in earnest, and someone at the bar extends a welcoming arm. "Come on, sit at the bar," they called. I reluctantly took a rain check, thinking of my bed just a few blocks away, calling back, "Ciao! I mean... Cheers!"

Each month, Deborah McDonald jump-starts appetites with lively restaurant reviews that scrutinize who's cooking what and where. She works anonymously, visiting each restaurant at least twice before writing her column.

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