Chef Dato's Table continues founder's culinary vision

The simple wood-frame exterior of Chef Dato's Table in Derry Township belies the culinary adventure waiting within.

Carrying on the legacy of its founder and namesake, the restaurant specializes in dishes from around the world not often found on Westmoreland County menus.

Serbian, Portuguese, Burmese, Ethiopian and Canadian all have a place in a weekly rotation of international nights that includes specialties from the late chef's homeland of Georgia.

David “Chef Dato” Kadagishvili loved food, people and travel, says his widow Kara Kurz, who now runs the restaurant with the help of executive chef Elizabeth Evans.

“Dato was all about fresh, flavor and keeping it as local as possible,” Kurz says. “What Dato hated most was a stagnant menu. (Frequent updates) keep the chefs learning and keep it fresh for the diners. They can armchair-travel the world without leaving the Derry-Latrobe area.”

Chef Dato became well-known in the area while running the kitchen and dining room of the Tin Lizzy in nearby Youngstown. The couple moved into the current restaurant space in June 2010. When Chef Dato was killed in a car accident the following January, Kurz carried on.

“Our theme now is how he would have cooked,” she says. “We continue on with the international nights, which we've been doing since the Tin Lizzy, because that's our strategic niche. On the Thursday closest to his birthday at the end of March, we always do his cuisine that day.

“Every year, Elizabeth and I also organize a dinner for all staff who ever worked for him with a Georgian theme. It's a time for us to reconnect for the man who brought us all together.”

Dato's European roots and love of travel are reflected in the Thursday-evening international nights, which the restaurant organizes via successive six-month “passports,” with each week's date listing the featured country and dishes to be served.

“To make it a little easier for people to remember what country was coming up, we came up with the concept of a culinary passport (booklet),” Kurz says. “The nice little bonus is that when you come in on Thursday and eat one of our international specialties, we'll stamp the passport. When you get enough stamps, you'll get free appetizers, free desserts, free dinners, that kind of thing.

“We have a lot of people who come in strictly on Thursdays, because they like the different cuisines.”

A recent visit coincided with Puerto Rico night.

We tried the Chicken Jibarito ($10.99), a gluten-free “sandwich” of grilled chicken breast, Swiss cheese, lettuce and tomato between breaded, flattened plantains, served with fries. The sweet plantain melded perfectly with the tender, moist chicken.

We went to the regular menu for the grilled Jack Daniels Tenderloin ($21.99) and one of Dato's signature recipes, the Chambersburg Chicken ($16.99), a sauteed chicken breast with sliced peaches in a delightfully delicate peach schnapps cream sauce, served with basmati rice and vegetables.

Kurz says the chicken, along with Dato's sauteed beef tips, lobster mac 'n cheese, German pork schnitzel and Evans' Design-Your-Own Linguine Alfredo also are diner favorites.

On a second visit, we started with Frog Wings ($8.99), six smallish frog legs prepared chicken-wing style, and the Creamy Adjika Crab Portabella ($10.99), a saucer-sized, seafood-stuffed mushroom. Both appetizers were prepared with adjika, which Kurz describes as “a typical Georgian condiment sauce made with green peppers, cilantro, lime, garlic and little bit of banana pepper.”

For entrees, we shared the Seafood Risotto and Citrus Honey Glazed Salmon ($17.99 each). Spooning up the creamy, cheesy risotto revealed plenty of plump and tender shrimp and scallops. The glaze on the succulent-yet-flaky salmon was generous enough to flavor the accompanying basmati rice and fresh green beans.

We topped off the meal with a massive wedge of surprisingly light Princess Cake ($6.99), sponge-layered with cream filling and blueberries, and Chef Dato's Signature Creme Brulee Bread Pudding ($5.99). For the latter, chunks of potato bread are soaked with creme anglaise, the light custard used in traditional creme brulee, served moist and warm — a vast improvement on a typically dry bread pudding.

Most desserts are made in-house, while the Princess Cakes are made by a local German baker.

The lunch menu contains sandwiches, salads and scratch-made soups, including French onion and a soup of the day. .

Dato's renditions of the ever-popular giant fish sandwich and Reuben are accompanied by new selections like Carolina pulled pork, pretzel-crusted crispy chicken breast, turkey and bacon club and an intriguing open-face turkey breast on house-made stuffing bread, topped with gravy and cranberry relish ($9.99).

With warm weather coming, diners can look for the outdoor beer garden to re-open and weekly seafood boils to return.

Summer weekends also will bring weekend barbecues on the restaurant grounds, where food can be ordered to go or eaten under the odas, or traditional Georgian eating huts that Dato and friends fashioned from saplings cut from the nearby Chestnut Ridge.

Kurz and Evans also are making plans for a future “Bizarre Foods”-themed dinner.

“The emphasis is on what we can offer our patrons to give them a different experience, something they won't get anywhere else around here,” Kurz says.

Shirley McMarlin is a Tribune-Review staff writer.