Chef Albert

At the next table, a 28-year-old is being treated to an understated birthday dinner, the paterfamilias, presiding in a sport coat of tasteful plaid, lamenting over his chocolate-dipped strawberries that the 87 acre gentleman's farm he passed up for $150,000 is now worth millions. Easily. No question about it.
This is my first visit to the Old Guard House Inn in close to 20 years. And while the two century- old ceilings in the Gladwyne landmark are still low enough to require taller denizens to stoop, the walls faced in dark, bark on  slab pine, the conversations still somewhat as I recall them, time has inched pleasantly on.

Mainly, chef-owner Albert Breuers has mastered the overhaul of the tired menu he inherited with the keys in 1979.  

Gone are the Main Line's standard-issue foil-wrapped potatoes, prime rib, and veal patties. Hello, luscious lobster bisque;  genuinely jumbo jumbo-lump crabcake ($26) in a soft red curry sauce; classic Dover sole, done simply in lemon butter; credible filet with horseradish hollandaise; solid German dishes (Breuers hails from near Dusseldorf); and pheasant and venison-stew specials. 

The demographics have changed too, though not as visibly as they have in the "latte towns" of Radnor and Wayne, where merit and board scores have come to trump blood-lines and club membership and where Georges Perrier's sunny le Mas Perrier aims for a new standard of suburban sophistication.

The Old Guard House, make no mistake, still serves the old guard. But "the blue hairs," as Breuers calls them, have died off (or don't drive), so the five dark, cozy, rustic dining rooms are peopled with active retirees and those of older middle age, former Villanova and St. Joe's Students who came here in their youth to drink at a bar where IDs were not closely scrutinized.

Eighty percent of the clientele is repeat trade, customers whose every taste and milestone Breuers has memorized. The menu just hints at the offerings. The kitchen has about 25 items in reserve, made on request; veal kidneys, calf's brains, frog legs. (There is also a brisk take-out trade. And the garlic and rosemary sauces, tasty snapper soup, even the sweet red cabbage braised with juniper berries and currant jelly are available next door at the Delaware Market House.)

On my own repeat visit, the well-oiled, old-shoe comfort of the place is palpable. The captain's chairs fit. The mounted trophy heads blur quietly into the crossed muskets and shellacked sea-turtle shells.

There is a seamlessness, an aspect of frontier roadhouse, an easy animation at the tables born of healthy appetites and confidence that the Dover sole this time, or the marinated roast sauerbraten ($28), will be exactly as it was the time before.

Breuers, who trained in Europe, has succeeded grandly in restoring traditional cookery's good name, especially given the Main line's long struggle to destroy it.

Indeed, when he opened in 1979, one of the few bright spots was Helen Sigel Wilson's L'Auberge in Wayne, the site of Perrier's new outpost. "Not what my customers want," Breuers opines. "A little too ritzy, a little too glitzy."

His loyalists, he says, want homey, well-cooked classics, just like they never used to get in the good old days.

Inquirer story by Rick Nichols                                               Photography by Michael Bryant

For reservations, takeout orders, catering or banquet information, call (610) 649-9708.