A taste of the South
Susan & Dave Yurkovich
Rotolo DiPasta consists of fresh pasta sheets filled with chicken, sweet bell peppers, spinach and mozzarella cheese, topped with vodka sauce and garlic bread.
The upstairs portion of Twelve Oaks Restaurant & Tavern hosts several small stores in the different rooms. Items vary from purses, antiques, bath products and even baby clothes.
Twelve Oaks server Heather Yurkovich holds a bottle of Sam Thompson whiskey. The distillery was opened in 1844 and was located close by the restaurant.
The South – and fine dining – have risen in Brownsville, thanks to a couple who originally didn’t know what they were doing but, frankly, didn’t give a damn.
“Neither of us knew about the restaurant business,” Dave Yurkovich says, chuckling. “But we’ve come a long way and now we tell people we’re experts because we learned the hard way.”
Yurkovich and his wife Susan have transformed what was originally the 21-room home of a Prohibition-era distiller into the ornate Twelve Oaks Restaurant & Tavern, a testament to Southern cuisine, style and tradition. The couple drew heavily from the literary and Hollywood classic “Gone With the Wind,” naming the place after the fictional plantation where the story is essentially set, and sections of it Carpetbaggers Tavern, Ashley Banquet Room, Bonnie Blue Tea Room and the Magnolia Private Dining Room.
This isn’t the typical modus operandi of two people who were born and raised in the Mon Valley and now live in Rostraver Township. But the Yurkoviches have a second home in Williamsburg, Va., spend a lot of time below the Mason-Dixon and are enamored of their experiences there.
“We’ve always had a love for the South and ‘Gone With the Wind,'” Dave says.
They’ve transferred that love to the old Thompson House, imbuing an 1860s feel into a structure built in 1906. The rooms, with 10-foot ceilings and finished in various woods, are decorated and adorned with clothing, furniture and antiques from the Civil War (1861-65) and post-war periods. You almost expect to peek into a room and see Mammy helping Scarlett O’Hara squeeze into a curtain dress.
There are 12 fireplaces throughout, and it’s easy to envision Scarlett again, this time descending the six-foot-wide staircase that connects the second and third floors. The staircase is a distinctive feature, but wasn’t in place when Dave bought the building in 2012. He said a previous owner had taken it apart and he had to reassemble it.
Susan, a fashionista with an art degree, was in charge of the gussying up. That included setting up five shops on the top floor, where fashions, jewelry and baby items are sold.
“My wife has been the nuts and bolts behind this,” says Dave, who grew up on a Fallowfield Township dairy farm. “I made the investment, she took care of everything else. She’s very talented.”
“I can envision what I want,” Susan says of her decorating instincts, to which she largely attributes to her father, a Donora stone mason. “This has been very enjoyable.”
There is a lot of eye candy in Twelve Oaks, which opened in the summer of 2014, but that doesn’t satisfy actual appetites. The dining options do.
Lunch and dinner menus are expansive, featuring Southern dishes that, Dave points out, are made fresh with locally produced items. Favorites include corn chowder (available every day), pork chops, linguini and clams, baked eggplant lasagna and Vermont duck. Handcrafted cocktails, wines and craft beers complement the meals.
Oh, and there is an appetizer called Frankly My Dear It’s Bacon – extra-thick hand-cut bacon with brown sugar and black pepper crust served with tomato maple jam.
Outdoor dining also became an option this year.
Dave had some early concerns: “The first two or three days, we had one customer.” But he says the restaurant has developed a clientele and is a popular venue for showers, rehearsal dinners, weddings and tea parties.
“People like to come here and celebrate,” says Susan, who recommends reservations on weekends.
Her initial experience with Twelve Oaks was a stunner. Dave is the owner/founder of Yurkovich Industries, a Charleroi company specializing in railroad track construction, removal and repairs. One day, while on a job in Brownsville, he decided to look at the vacant house at 815 Water St.
“The asking price was fair, so I bought it but didn’t tell Susan,” Dave says. “I told her I wanted to see a railroad project and took her there. I started opening the door and she said, ‘How did you get the key? … Did you buy this?’ I said ‘yeah.'”
Though they had never run a lunch/dinner destination, the Yurkoviches drew upon their dining experiences when they decided to build a restaurant.
“This is what we wanted,” Susan says. “We ate out a lot and restaurants had the same dishes, but gave them different names. We wanted truly unique dining.”
Converting this large home into a restaurant was a challenge, her husband says. “There are a lot of steps. If you design a restaurant, you want to make it more user-friendly.”
They also had to hire an executive chef and staff for an endeavor that differs greatly from a railroad company.
“I didn’t realize how hard that would be,” Dave says. “You need a staff that is consistent in a business with high turnover. I’ve had employees for over 40 years, but I’ve learned some new tricks here.”
The ultimate result, and reward, is a place that is vastly different from the home initially occupied by Thomas H. Thompson. His father, Samuel, owned and operated Samuel Thompson Distillery across the river in West Brownsville. The distillery, founded in 1844, was known for its rye whiskey, but Prohibition in the 1920s forced the operation to move to Canada.
Sam Thompson whiskey was produced as late as 1979. Dave Yurkovich has an unopened bottle of straight rye whiskey from the early 1970s.
The Thompson House remained in the family until 1949, then had four other owners before Yurkovich. It was a restaurant when it shut down in 2011. The structure, made of limestone, tile and brick, is on the National Register of Historic Places.
Over time, it has morphed into Twelve Oaks, an upscale option for diners in the Valley wondering where shall I go, what shall I do – and thinking afterward, “I’ll never be hungry again.”
Twelve Oaks operates six days a week, from 11 a.m. to 10 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday, and noon to 6 p.m. Sunday. For reservations or more information, call 724-785-3200 or visit www.twelveoaksbrownsville.com.