Lake Fong, Post-Gazette Wine director and dining-room manager Thom Naylor, standing, and co-owner Jeff Stasko keep the Acanthus restaurant at The Inn on Mexican War Streets humming along.

By Elizabeth Downer, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

If there is anything that interests me as much as good food and wine, it is historic preservation. At Acanthus restaurant in The Inn on Mexican War Streets, I can satisfy both passions at the same time.

A little background information will help to appreciate how this unusual restaurant arrived in the historic neighborhood of Old Allegheny City.

		Acanthus 604 W. North Ave. North Side 412-231-6544 Hours: Dinner 5-9 p.m. Thursdays-Saturdays. Basics: An intimate dining room in a carriage house behind a historic mansion, this is an elegant and quiet environment with fine food and excellent service. The menu is limited but imaginative and all is prepared on site. Dishes are modern American. Although coats and ties are not required, most men would feel more comfortable in a jacket. A visit to the bar in the mansion before or after dinner is recommended. Prices: Six-course prix fixe menu, $65; appetizers, $10; entrees: $27-$36; desserts: $10; wine, $8-$12 for a 5-ounce pour (corkage is $15 per bottle). Summary: This is a smoke-free restaurant. Accessible, all major credit cards and free parking behind the mansion entered from Buena Vista Street. Noise: Low.

Karl Kargle and Jeff Stasko were school teachers when they bought a derelict three-story brownstone on Buena Vista Street in 1980. At the time, the Urban Renewal Agency was selling such houses for $100 to stimulate investment in the North Side neighborhood. After restoring that home and finding themselves addicted to improving dilapidated real estate, the pair bought other properties and became pioneers in the effort to gentrify the area.

By 1999, Kargle and Stasko were ready to tackle a giant project and purchased the R.H. Boggs mansion on the corner of West North Avenue and Buena Vista Street. This imposing stone structure, built in 1888, is a miniature version of our Richardson-designed courthouse. At the time it was rat-infested and inhabited by squatters. But the determined owners, after several years of hard work, returned the house to its original elegance. Today it is a bed and breakfast that offers visitors a taste of Pittsburgh life from another era.

Behind the mansion in a separate building is the carriage house, which has been remodeled and is the site of Acanthus. The restaurant serves tasteful dinners in unusual surroundings on Thursday, Friday and Saturday evenings. The main dining room, on the ground floor, features soaring cathedral ceiling with beams of rare American chestnut. Carriage lights over each table and tables covered in handsome fabrics and upholstered banquettes give the room an air of old European country estates. China and stemware sparkle in the low light, casting a baronial glow on the whole experience.

There is a prix-fixe menu for $65, but, thankfully, for those not able to finish six courses, there is also an a la carte menu with the same dishes priced individually. The choices are not extensive. There are three appetizers and three entrees, and the menu changes monthly.

All of the appetizers are superb. Jumbo Prawns ($10) are glazed with soy and honey, and three of them are artfully arranged on a bed of fresh mango spiked with a sprinkling of hot peppers and dressed in citrus beurre blanc. The combination of cool, tropical fruit and heat from the peppers forms a delightful foil for the sweet and salty crustaceans. The citrus sauce serves as an exclamation mark for all the flavors. Although there is nothing inherently Asian about the dish, it tasted like something you would expect to eat in Maui or Thailand.

Acanthus Pierogi ($8) is an original interpretation of the Eastern European dish so beloved by Pittsburghers. There are onions and potatoes and pastry but not in the usual fashion. Instead, the potato has become a pancake and the onion has become a caramelized onion jam, and both are sandwiched between layers of pierogi pastry. Beurre blanc infused with fresh sage elevates this peasant dish to haute cuisine status.

Blue Crab and Corn Pillow ($10) is a delightful pile of jumbo lump crab combined with corn and bound with sour cream and mascarpone and served with a rich beurre blanc sauce that adds a touch of lemon and tarragon. The appetizers are served with foccacia bread and butter that has been sculpted into a rose blossom, the likes of which I have not seen since the old days of Trans-Atlantic crossings on the grand dames of steamships. It is this sort of unexpected attention to details that makes Acanthus so special.

Entrees are equally satisfying. Veal Palatina a la Collette ($28) is an interesting twist on the veal-and-prosciutto cheese combination. Here the veal is stuffed with pepper ham and parmigiana and fontina cheeses and served with herbed spatzel, the German noodles made of flour and eggs. The plate is finished with creamed spinach souffle. The souffle was disappointing -- cooked long before it was served, it had collapsed and had none of the light and airy quality one expects of a souffle. A simple creamed spinach would have sufficed and perhaps even been an improvement.

Soprosetta Stuffed Chicken Breast ($27) also uses an unexpected cured meat as stuffing. I found that the spices, garlic and fat content of the Italian soprosetta (a type of salami) a wonderful marriage with the otherwise bland chicken breast. It has always seemed to me that chicken breasts are a sort of blank canvas awaiting an artist who will paint them with flavor and color. And that is just what the chef has done here. This dish is served with Gorgonzola risotto that has been perfectly prepared, leaving it both creamy and chewy.

The restaurant's two desserts are made in the kitchen. Howling at the Moon Chocolate Chili Cake with Mango Soup ($10) is an amusing construction of two pieces of dense and rich chocolate torte reaching for the "moon," which is in fact a crescent-shaped sugar cookie perched atop the cake. Hazelnut Mascarpone Cheesecake ($10) is served with a pear poached in champagne, all of it bathed in a pool of creme Anglaise. When I admired the originality and execution of other desserts, I learned that they were made by a friend of the owners who lives in the neighborhood.

The wine list at Acanthus is a bit puzzling. There are bottles at all price points, but the markups in some cases were excessive. A bottle of Trefethen Napa Cabernet that sells for less than $40 is on the list for $120. Fortunately, I found Goats du Roam ($30), a bottle of red wine from South Africa made with grape varieties found in France's Rhone valley (explaining the play on words on the label) and a Chilean Cabernet for $28. There are wines available by the glass for $8-$12, or you can have a medley of four wines selected to complement your meal for $25. If you want wines that do justice to this fine cuisine, you might consider bringing bottles from your cellar and paying the $15 corkage fee.

Doug Ferraro, the chef at Acanthus, learned to cook from owner Jeff Stasko, who for 22 years taught culinary arts at the A.W. Beattie Vocational School in McCandless. Now Stasko fills in as a sous chef for his former student. Thom Naylor, wearing a black apron with black tie and snappy red vest, is a dining-room manager, waiter and wine director. He brings enthusiasm and professionalism to the table.

A bar in the mansion's library, where guests can order beverages and a limited menu of small plates, is open the same hours and days as Acanthus.

I loved seeing what two retired school teachers with a passion for food and historic preservation have done with one of Pittsburgh's great 19th-century homes. Hats off to Kargle and Stasko!