It was bound to happen. What is surprising is that it didn't happen sooner. With the opening of Six Penn Kitchen Downtown, Eat'n Park Hospitality Group, Pittsburgh's largest food purveyor, has added a casual fine dining restaurant to its core businesses of family dining and catering.

	Alyssa Cwanger, Post-Gazette Executive chef Chris Jackson, left, and general manager John Levi display their wares at Six Penn Kitchen. Click photo for larger image. Six Penn Kitchen 146 Sixth St. Cultural District, Downtown 412-566-7366 Hours: 11 a.m.-11 p.m. Mondays-Thursdays, until midnight Fridays; 3 p.m.-midnight Saturdays. Basics: A casual Downtown restaurant on two levels with a bar on each. A menu of American dishes made with local fresh ingredients by a talented kitchen staff. Prices: Appetizers, $4-$12; entrees, $9-$23; desserts, $6; wines, $7-$14 for a 6-ounce pour. Summary: This is a totally smoke-free environment. Accessible; major credit cards accepted. Parking in Downtown lots.

Six Penn Kitchen, at Sixth Street and Penn Avenue in the heart of the Cultural District, is the most recent of a string of openings of Downtown dining venues. The parent company leased the space almost two years ago. After gutting the interior and adding an outdoor roof terrace, the designers created dining rooms and bars on two floors connected by a handsome wide staircase, which also serves as a divider wall between the bar area by the entrance and the open kitchen and dining room in the rear. The Sixth Street facade is of glass, allowing diners to watch the ebb and flow of foot traffic outside. The opposite wall offers a view of the ballet taking place in the kitchen as a corps of seven white-frocked chefs goes about transforming raw ingredients into unusual and delicious appetizers, salads and entrees.

The menu at Six Penn is revised every Monday. Although there are core items that rarely change, the chef regularly revamps the menu according to market availability of ingredients, so you may not find the same dishes mentioned here when you visit.

The appetizers include some unusual offerings. I especially liked the empanadas ($7.50) in the traditional South American fashion, which means the pastry is made with masa harina, a corn flour, and filled with chorizo and potatoes. These little pastries are served with a creamy chipotle sauce and roasted corn salsa.

Mussels ($9) are doused in a beer-based, creamy broth and roasted in a wood oven (also used for pizzas). They are topped with a handful of straw-like fries. Although the mussels are a tad on the dry side, that is the price one pays for the added flavor from the wood-fired oven. The roasting also adds an interesting chewiness to the little bivalve.

Sea Scallops ($10) come with creamy smoked bacon succotash. I should warn you if you are a lima bean freak that this succotash is not your mother's recipe, and you should not expect any lima beans. The chef has pursued his poetic licence to use this as a vehicle for any green pea or bean. When I had it, the corn was combined with English green peas. Since I happen to be a secret lima-holic, this was disappointing, but the fresh corn and wonderful bacon compensated to some extent. The Jumbo Lump Crab Cake ($12) sits on a bed of smashed avocado and is topped with a tasty Pico de Gallo salsa.

Among the more interesting salads is Roasted Beets ($6.50) with goat cheese and toasted walnuts, dressed with an unusual but very well-suited maple black pepper vinaigrette. The Asian Noodle Salad ($8) is served with mixed julienned vegetables and a fried spring roll.

Entrees cover a wide spectrum from sirloin burger ($9) and pizza ($11) to a 12-ounce USDA prime rib-eye steak ($23) with baked potato and asparagus. Among the more unusual entrees is Cracklin' Pork Shank ($17). This rarely seen cut of pork spends three days in preparation under the keen eye of chef Chris Jackson. The first day is spent marinating in a dry cure. The second day it undergoes a confit process, which in this case means 16 hours of slow cooking in pork lard. After a bath to remove excess salt, the shank is fried to produce the crispy outside and served with a potato-sauerkraut cake and Jackson's apple puree spiked with serrano chilis. For vegetarians there is Risotto with Garden Vegetables ($14). The vegetables come from the Chef's Garden in Ohio, which supplies the finest restaurant kitchens throughout the area.

From the dessert menu I highly recommend Lemon Meringue Tart ($6). This is a true lemon tart, not one made with sweetened condensed milk and graham cracker crumbs. With a proper pastry crust and a tart lemon curd underneath the meringue, this is a tart like our grandmothers used to make.

The Six Penn Kitchen is open for lunch and will soon open a bakery in an adjoining space. The bakery will sell croissants and other pastries from 7 a.m. At lunch, there will be sandwiches and salads for take-out customers. Everything served in the restaurant and available at the bakery is made in house. The chef not only smokes his hams, turkeys and bacon, but also makes the mayonnaise, ketchup, mozzarella and chips. He has 30 people on his team working either in the preparation kitchen or on the line. Chef Jackson was first in his class at Johnson & Wales Culinary school and has worked in several top-rated restaurants (Jake's in Philadelphia and Bix in San Francisco) before coming to Pittsburgh to open Six Penn Kitchen. His devotion to classic cuisine is evident in his menu.

The wine list is extensive and includes both sparkling and still wines. Fifteen are available by the glass. Although I was told that the wine pricing policy was to simply double the cost of the wine, this seems not to be entirely true. I noticed several wines that I had recently purchased (and not from a Chairman's Selection) that were marked up considerably more. The price by the glass for a 6-ounce pour is approximately one-third of the bottle price. If you expect to drink four glasses, it is advisable to order a bottle.

There are still some kinks to be worked out in this new restaurant. On two occasions, we were kept waiting between 10 and 15 minutes in spite of reservations. The designers must have been from California or some Sun Belt state, since they overlooked the need for dealing with winter coats in Pittsburgh's sometimes icy climate. There are two floor-standing coat racks for an establishment that seats 140 diners. This will obviously have to be remedied before the current season ends.

Eat'n Park has long been appreciated for its contribution to family dining. It is nice to see them now join the upscale and Downtown dining arena.