Restaurant, radio show good mix for chef

When Bernard "Bernie" Glad graduated from Uniontown High School in 1979, he did not intend to be a restaurateur.

His first job was with an engineering firm but food was an important aspect of Glad family life.

"My mother was a fabulous cook and I was always in the kitchen. Being Italian and Croatian, every holiday was about food," Glad said. "I enjoyed the engineering work, but every winter I was laid off. After about four years I was tired of that."

He moved into the pizza business and then sold food wholesale for seven years.

At the same time he was cooking part time for the Highland House restaurant in Uniontown and for a restaurant owned by friends in California, Pa. After seeing an ad for the Westmoreland County Community College, his mother suggested that he enroll in their cooking school. He took her advice and did a four-year apprenticeship at the Highland House followed by six months at the Uniontown Country Club, before accepting a position at the Gallery Restaurant in Waynesburg.

In 1991, his family purchased an elegant old country house on Route 21 near Masontown and proceeded to restore it with great care. The double front doors of The Lardin House Inn facing Route 21 open into a long hall upon whose wall hangs an old picture of William Lardin. The conversion from private home to elegant restaurant took the family about four years.

Inside, the eye follows a narrow Oriental carpet past a red plush settee with matching chairs toward doorways opening off the hall. To the right is the Burgundy Room, the former living room, which features an old Montgomery Ward pump organ, the last piece of antique furniture Glad purchased for the house. On the left is the Blue Room, the former parlor, with its antique piano, the first major piece of furniture he put in the empty house. Next, the Rose Room with its softly colored wallpaper of rose bouquets completes the three intimate dining rooms on the first floor.

Three more dining rooms on the second floor enable the restaurant to seat up to 120 patrons. The inn has often been the setting for weddings, bridal showers and funeral dinners.

Downstairs, a hall opens into the oven room featuring the original cast iron double-door oven built into the brick wall. Here is the entrance into the modern stainless-steel kitchen on one side and a door opening onto a covered portico on the other. Here the chef sits speaking to visitors during a break from kitchen duties.

The cuisine is continental "but we lean toward the Mediterranean," Glad said.

He keeps up to date on recipes by purchasing many cookbooks, especially ethnic ones. "Today there's a big push towards infusion, where, for example, Italian and Oriental dishes might be intertwined," he said.

In addition to running the restaurant, Glad has been doing radio shows for four years.

"I started by myself in Connellsville on WCVI with Jack McMullen. After a couple of years, WMBS in Uniontown asked me to do one with Mary Ellen Swaney. Then one day they called and said Mary Ellen resigned. 'You'll have to fly solo.'

"I looked at my wife, Cathy, and said 'Why don't you join me• We'll do something different.' Cathy ran a bakery with me for years. She does a lot of wedding cakes and she keeps a garden with fresh herbs. The first day I introduced her as 'my beautiful wife Cathy.' The next week I didn't call her that and the listeners got mad. They thought we had a fight. Now, even if we've had a fight, when we enter the station and I call her my beautiful wife Cathy, she slaps me and it's all over," he said, laughing.

The No. 1 question asked on the radio is "How do you keep a meringue pie from sweating?"

"I tell them eat the pie real quick," Gald said. "There's a lot of different tips. The main mistake people make is they don't use their imagination. They're afraid.

"Baking is a science but in cooking you can put in a pinch of this or that. People try to get too complicated. My philosophy is simplicity."

A clear trend is the desire for healthy food.

"We had a woman here last night who was lactose intolerant, yet she wanted our Chicken Lardin. We just prepared it without the heavy cream," Glad said. "We have another young man with allergies galore. So he can come here and I sit down with him and ask what do you want to eat tonight• Then he can sit down with his family and eat a regular meal. He loves to come here."

Vegetarian meals are on the increase too. "We are actually doing a vegetarian wedding for 150 people this fall, even the carrot cake my wife is making. It's being done with soy milk and egg substitutes. It's a pure vegan wedding. When you think about a five-course vegan meal, it's tough."

The Lardin House Inn's collection of antiques and cookbooks add an extra dimension to an evening out. However, its essential uniqueness resides in the vision and industry of its owners Bernie and Cathy Glad.