It's as simple as this: Love should be celebrated. But no one should tell you when -- or how -- to do it. According to the National Restaurant Association, 30 percent of all Americans dine out on Valentine's Day. Tomorrow is the day: the couples will be out there, smiling sweetly, holding hands, trying to impress and seduce, having disagreements about which shared activities constitute a "date."

An elegant main dining room, left, is the picture-perfect setting for Lautrec's spare-no-expense dining experience. Chef Brad Kelly of Lautrec, above, holds a classic romantic dish: roasted Maine lobster tail with baby vegetables.(Matt Freed, Post-Gazette photo) Lautrec Nemacolin Resort 1001 Lafayette Drive Farmington 1-800-422-2736 Chez Gerard Business Route 40 Hopwood 724-439-9001 Helen's at Seven Springs Resort Waterwheel Drive Champion 814-352-7777 ext. 7691 or 7827 Laforet 5701 Bryant St. Highland Park 412-665-9000

It's an occasion. Dining expectations will be lofty. The bar will be raised, not on the quality of the food, but on the experience of dining out -- simply because it's Valentine's Day.

Overpriced fixed price menus will be fat with trendy "aphrodisiac" foods and the inevitable heart-shaped chocolate cakes, flavorless strawberries and dippy cocktails tinged pink with Chambord, sporting names like "Passion Potion" or "Cupid's Cup." There will be heaps of red roses and long swags of pink crepe.

All this shallow posturing makes me uneasy, for love is deep. The hype makes me torn in my dining counsel. To stay in or to go out -- and where? On a high-pressure evening, my advice is to go somewhere that makes you feel good.

I stay home.

This is why, instead of running a list of saccharine suggestions and romantic recommendations for tomorrow's lovefest, I offer escape, but not for this weekend. The purpose of these reviews today is to provoke vicarious thrills and dreaming. They are meant to be most useful to you at a time down the road when daily life is at its most quotidian.

All recommendations are, in the spirit of French kisses and French letters -- and because the French do love and food with exuberance and grandiloquence -- French.

These are the restaurants to hit if you are in full wooing mode, and want to impress -- prudently, of course, since riding the winds of love at these places will put a burn on your Mastercard.

A broken heart could be mended at any of these tables, or a long talk had, in the company of a good friend. All are lovely places to take your mum, just because you love her. All offer the simple joy of good food.

The Laurel Highlands are beautiful year-round. Covered in snow, they are pristine. In spring, they are green and dappled with mountain laurel. Summer is fragrant with peaches and wildflowers. In autumn, the foliage is a paprika stain, glorious against the clear sky and golden ground.

All this scenery and history is only an hour's drive from Pittsburgh, the perfect distance for an overnight or weekend trip -- an escape that is exactly the right size for not having too much of a good thing.

LAUTREC

Lautrec restaurant is a balance of opposites. Seated at a linen-draped table in the dining room, you feel the vastness and opulence of the space, yet your focus is on the plates, on Chef de cuisine Brad Kelly's delicate savories. The windows are as tall as you are, yet the portions are trim and manageable as a petit four.

The restaurant is housed in a setting that epitomizes tradition and over-the-top Golden Age luxuriance: Chateau Lafayette, the gilty getaway hotel that was finished in 1997.

The Nemacolin resort is named for the Native American chief who cut a trail through the Laurel Highlands, which was later turned into the National Highway (now Route 40). Over several decades, the Nemacolin lands have been a game reserve, a corporate park and a housing development. When Joe Hardy of 84 Lumber bought the property in 1987, he transformed the grounds into a resort with royal trappings and Mystic Rock, an acclaimed golf course.

Lautrec is one of three fine dining restaurants at Nemacolin. The food is luxurious and the prices steep in the hush-hush dining room fit for a king, with sparkling crystal chandeliers, moire armchairs and gorgeously fat floral arrangements. Champagne is iced and rolled over on a special cart early on during your meal; it's stocked with premiere bubbly including Moet White Star and Perrier La Fleur, priced per glass from $25 to $150.

Chef de cuisine Kelly has the culinary chops for this first-rate scheme. He is a Johnson and Wales graduate and has worked at some of the best restaurants in America, specializing in innovative and classical French cookery and technique: La Bec Fin in Philadelphia, The Inn at Little Washington in Washington, Va., and La Cote Basque in New York City. His experience, finesse and diligence are evident on every plate; both preparation and presentation are gorgeous.

As an appetizer, wild mushroom ravioli are an earthy, decadent start. Mushrooms and black truffle slivers are bundled in soft pasta and topped with a gentle paysanne of shallots and herbs. Three delicious morsels make up the superb caviar sampling: smoked salmon terrine topped with salmon roe, sevruga caviar, lobster knuckle and finely diced beets on a silver spoon and vodka-lemon chantilly cream flecked with osetra caviar, a hollowed-out eggshell its fragile custard cup.

Kelly's beet salad is composed as a Kandinsky, golden and red in all the right places. A wedge of Humboldt Fog cheese leans against the vinegary stack. The Farmer Jones salad of petite lettuces is a quieter delight, tart with tarragon vinaigrette, tiny sections of blood orange and chilled fig.

Seared yellowfin tuna rests on a creamy bed of Le Puy lentils, with lardons and a balsamic reduction tartening and hamming it up. Beef entrecote, the prime, tender rib cut, is a rare pleasure, prepared richly a la perigourdine, a flavorsome sauce containing (in this case) Burgundy, truffles and foie gras. It's plated with lobster tail and lobster herb ravioli for the full Diamond Jim experience.

Lautrec's wine list tends toward big, expensive bottles. With few bottles in the $30 to $60 range, and ogle-worthy bottles over $1,000, this is not a list for amateurs.

Dessert hardly seems necessary after such extravagance, but the "sweet tasting" -- three tiny ramekins containing a basic, perfect creme brulee, a pudding-thick chocolate pot du creme and a spicy, marvelous pumpkin creme brulee -- is not to be missed. Molten chocolate cake, despite its dainty textural cap of crystallized sugar and baby coconuts, is indifferent.

Lautrec on the whole, polished yet surprising, engineered to impress from flatware to service, could never provoke an insipid response.

CHEZ GERARD

	Western Pennsylvania history and authentic French cuisine peacefully co-exist in Hopwood, at Chez Gerard. (Matt Freed, Post-Gazette photo)

I have never been to a restaurant more like true love than Chez Gerard: It is perfectly imperfect. The mood, established by the conversable staff and affable family ownership, is warm. The restaurant, in a farmhouse built in the 1790s, is antique, creaky and charming, full of nooks, crannies and low ceilings, tables clad in lace and a historic Fort Necessity plaque. The food is as authentically French as it comes in this part of the world, better than anything I tasted in Paris this summer.

Husband and wife, chef William and Muriel Severac are from Gascony, and have owned the historic space for four years. In that time, they've ideally matched a fare to a space: dining at Chez Gerard feels like stepping out of Western Pennsylvania and the hectic, electronic urbanity of the 21st century.

On a snowy Sunday, the only table, we were treated as graciously as big spenders in a full house, unhurried, seated next to the fireplace, the radiator at our backs. We were spoiled by large slices from the excellent cheese platter of over 20 varieties and toured through the property by our knowledgeable waitress.

Chez Gerard offers a $45 fixed price menu; it's a long meal of bold food, rich and good, but not elaborate and affected. This is stately country French fare.

The six-course menu begins with an amuse bouche: Ours was a salty little puff of salmon mousse. The second appetizer course includes soup and salad. Langoustine mousse, the chef's appetizer of the day, was dense and crumbly, sweet with the lobster-like meat, served with a gentle vinaigrette and mesclun. Soft, lush seared foie gras leaned on a sticky and delicious fig cake. A simple, basic thyme Cognac sauce fused the elements of this elemental appetizer.

For entree, choose from fresh seafood, vegetarian dishes and meat. Quail, drizzled with balsamic essence, paired with a roulade of smoked turkey and cabbage, had all the smokiness, sweetness and complexity of the best barbecue. The brunois of tiny root vegetables that accompanied it was just as rich.

Severac's brazen venison is the best I've tasted. The meat, two chops and a medallion, was crisped without, juicy within. Hazelnut mousse and a mahogany demiglace flavored every bite. Cracked pepper wafers added just enough heat to the mouth. Potato gratin was the perfect starch pairing.

Brioche, served with a warm fruit compote and a drizzle of citrus sabayon, made a light, elegant dessert. Sweet, sweet petit Mont Blanc -- an take on classic ile flottante with chestnut mousse, straight meringue and Grand Marnier-spiked creme anglaise -- is worth a sugar cramp.

Severac has put together a comprehensive French wine list -- when bottles are available in Pennsylvania -- that doesn't strain the budget overmuch. There are dozens of good French bottles in the $50 range and a full roster of reasonably priced wines by the glass.

Post dinner mignardises -- tiny cookies, candies and truffles -- may put you over the top. Our waitress wrapped ours in foil, fashioned the package to look like a swan, and sent them home with us, to consume in the car if we felt droopy on the drive back to Pittsburgh. We left, vanquished by the strong food and lulled into perfect relaxation by the faint crackling of the fire and the settling of the ancient house, and wistful accordion strains, wavering through an old stereo.

Helen's

We ski not only for speed and thrill, but to enjoy peaceful landscapes drenched in snow. The views inspire romanticism. Craggy hilltops and trees are appealing. The sky looks bigger, as though we were closer to heaven, thrusting our heads in the clouds.

Helen's, at Seven Springs Resort, nestles into its woodsy setting like a cave, tucked into old trees, its triangular roof jutting against the lit backdrop of the slopes. Icicles, 3 feet long and thick, drip from its eaves. Come in, where it's warm and dim, cozy with low tables, small windows and wooden beams.

The restaurant is located in the 65-year-old lodge that was once the home of Adolph and Helen Dupre, Bavarian immigrant farmers who once owned the property. Inside, the restaurant is alpine and refined, with a folksy decor of wooden furniture and fluttery curtains, and a serious menu that rests on solid French technique.

The hearty food fits the Alpine setting. Pink peppercorns speak love softly, finessing seared foie gras and its jammy blackberry reduction with their pleasing hue and flowery bite. Paired with a wholesome chicken liver mousse, the peppercorns were a startling touch to a simple appetizer. Escargot, good and garlicky in their shells, hid no such surprises.

Salads are straightforward, wet with homemade blue cheese and French dressings. Apple butter and warm bread, wrapped in a towel, are other homey details.

Strip steak had an unmistakable dry-aged savoriness, and was pleasingly tender yet springy. It was paired with fluffy smashed potatoes, pinkish shrimp and thin asparagus spears, all cooked to perfection. Half a duck was golden and crisp-skinned, the meat succulent, but the sauce dull. A scramble of figs, raisins, cranberries and shiitake mushrooms rescued the dish from blandness.

Dessert was ultimate comfort: a strudel of warm apples, raisins, walnuts and phyllo, served with two sizable scoops of exceptionally good house-made cinnamon ice cream.

Helen's, like Seven Spring resort, dubbed by Ski magazine as, "The Napoleon Bonaparte of ski areas," maximizes its potential. The restaurant's slopeside location is both its excitement and, because of the stark contrast of inside and out, its comfort.

At Helen's bar, throughout our meal, there was a lively sing-along. The piano man tinkled out the hits -- "Goodbye Yellow Brick Road," "American Pie" -- before launching into classic, croony World War II ballads that made us misty-eyed. Ah, camaraderie. We were a couple amongst other couples, a party, safe from the wind and snow in a low-ceiling lounge. Helen's captures the romance and excitement of a snow day.

Laforet

If you can't take to the road, closer to home, in tamer-but-no-less-scenic Highland Park, Laforet provides an escape into perfect service, as it has for four years, since re-opening in 1999. The servers are unlike any other on this side of the state: mature, unobtrusive, polite. They are professionals. When you leave your seat, they fold your napkin. You will not want for anything, or need to ask.

The brothers Uricchio, Michael in the kitchen, Robert in the front of the house, run the quiet, impeccable restaurant. The restaurant is done in muted shades, pale but velvety lush in the way of butter or cream.

My friend and I were there soon after they reopened after vacation in early January, on a snowy night, when all was quiet in the house, on the well-composed menu of French classics like filet and sole, and on the plate.

Sweetbreads paired with puff pastry and foie gras had an intense musky meatiness and complexity we didn't experience for the rest of the meal. Rare tuna was beautiful and spare -- but the smattering of pickly capers were too sparse for my taste. A saffron-hued winter squash soup was beautiful to the tongue and the eye, sweet and thick as honey.

But both our entree plates were crowded with slightly cold, not-quite-cooked-through baby vegetables, the Elysian Farms lamb unctuously tender but under-seasoned.

Desserts are pure rather than vivacious. The sampler included simple favorites on a white plate bright with berries: lemon tart, chocolate tart, mascarpone mousse, creme caramel.

Escape the pressure of Valentine's Day, and its commercialism. Escape the city, the potholes, the budget worries. Escape the smoky cafes where your exes still hover. Do not pay double at a tony restaurant for a fancy entree stuffed with crab and built for two. Rely, instead, on these, when a romantic fix is what you need.