12 The NaTioNal CuliNary review • oCTober 2013

regional cuisine Cleveland comes of age

his is a transformation story. It’s about how a Rust Belt city known as a typical Midwestern meat-and-potatoes, shot-and-a-beer town has become a well-regarded and talked-about player in the national culinary conversation. The eating

and drinking scene in this Great Lakes city is hot right now, according to just about everybody who makes such pronouncements. In the past five years, Cleveland’s national rep has soared, courtesy of multiple James Beard award nominations and wins, plus many favorable media mentions in publications such as The New York Times, Travel + Leisure, USA Today, Zagat, Wine Enthusiast and GQ for its chefs (who’ve also shown up on various Food Network competitions), restaurants, bars, breweries, dining districts and the vibrant local food movement. Journalists from Pittsburgh, Chicago and even Montreal have sung the town’s praises as a foodie destination. In May, Eater, which spotlights America’s most important food cities, announced plans to launch a Cleveland version of its blog. Drawing on my 25 years of writing about Cleveland’s food community, plus insights from others who are part of it and report on it, here’s a look at what’s got all these arbiters of taste so excited.

Personality cult Fame helps. Michael Symon has become a widely acclaimed and well-known personality, thanks in large part to his Iron Chef win, his role on ABC’s popular “The Chew” and the publication of two cookbooks. But all that’s built on his solid credentials as a chef (2009 James Beard Foundation Award for Best Chef Great Lakes) and his successful Cleveland restaurants: the upscale Lola serving modern takes on classic American dishes, the more approachable and Mediterranean inspired Lolita, and the multiunit burger joint known as B Spot. Hard on his heels in terms of notoriety is Jonathon Sawyer. His Greenhouse Tavern, with its sustainable ethos and French inspired food that reflects an Ohio terroir, was named one of the top-10 best new restaurants in the U.S. by Bon Appétit in 2009. Sawyer earned a place on Food & Wine’s Best New Chefs list the following year, and in June, was named the 2013 MenuMasters Innovator Award honoree by Nation’s Restaurant News. Zack Bruell, with five thriving and distinctive restaurants around the city—Parallax, Table 45, L’Albatros, Chinato and Cowell & Hubbard—has a fan in Esquire’s John Mariani. Heather Haviland’s Lucky’s Cafe, a popular brunch spot known for showcasing Ohio farm products, was featured in a segment of Guy Fieri’s “Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives.” Fieri also filmed at Momocho, where the menu is what chef/owner Eric Williams calls “Mod Mex.”

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clockwise froM top left 1) Jonathan sawyer made his mark with the greenhouse tavern’s french inspired food. 2) Michael symon’s successful restaurants include the upscale lola, serving modern takes on classic american dishes. 3) Doug katz at his newest venture, the katz club Diner. 4) dante boccuzzi’s grilled atlantic salmon with summer beans, bacon vinaigrette and crisp red-onion rings. 5) this pork chop over spice acres polenta and baby carrots, topped with candied garlic and bacon jam, is on the menu at ben bebenroth’s spice Kitchen & bar.

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14 The NaTioNal CuliNary review • oCTober 2013

Attention like this attracts tourists and makes residents proud and eager to patronize the places others are raving about. There are many more established and up-and-coming chefs turning out great food, succeeding in a tough economy, and earning local, regional and national praise. There’s a cumula-tive effect, says Sawyer. “The better we are as a city and as a group, the better it is for every Cleveland chef and restaurant.”

small city, big ideas For a mid-tier city, Cleveland has what Joe Crea, The Plain Dealer food and restaurants editor, describes as “a very impres-sive, if not extraordinary, mix that includes ethnic restaurants—those with familiar as well as less-common European origins, diverse Asian and Latin cuisines; a gamut of fusion inspirations; and both traditional and modern American styles. And there’s no lack of offerings driven by individual chefs’ imaginations.” Positively Cleveland, the promotional arm of the convention and visitors bureau, advertises the city as a dining destination with something for everyone, “pierogies to haute cuisine, gourmet grilled cheese to vegetarian pumpkin risotto.” This isn’t where crazes usually start, and some take their sweet time showing up, but the best ones become part of how business is done. Bistro 185 hosts regular vegan and vegetarian dinners. The recently opened Toast wine bar is all about small plates that change weekly, and does cocktails with housemade bitters and tonics. MidTown Cleveland, a community development group, organizes two food truck roundups: The Chomp, a weekly lunch-time gathering, and The Pour, a monthly happy hour. Noodlecat, a second venture for The Greenhouse Tavern’s Sawyer, takes it out of the box with inventive ramen and broth combos, and hosts pop-up events there with out-of-town chefs. At Accent, chef Scott Kim installed state-of-the-art high-heat cooking equipment: the Robata grill and a Josper oven. The move to local sourcing of meat, poultry, dairy products, fruits, vegetables and a huge assortment of ingredients, from artisanal goat cheese to honey, has become a driving force and a defining practice for a number of Cleveland restaurants. Chefs feel lucky to be located in Ohio, where agriculture is still the state’s main industry, and they’ve helped fuel a revival of small family farms and market gardens. Doug Katz, chef/owner of Fire, builds menus rooted in the season and his personal relationships with farmers. He brings that ethos to the menus he develops for Provenance, a fine-dining restaurant in the Cleveland Museum of Art that Travel + Leisure included on its 2012 list of America’s Best Museum Restaurants, and to his newest venture, The Katz Club Diner. Adam Lambert, chef at Bar Cento, uses Ohio pastured heirloom breed pigs, sheep and beef, and the state’s first farm-raised venison for the charcuterie he makes in-house.

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Top to bottom: Jonathan bennett is executive chef/partner of moxie, shown here, as well as red the steakhouse. walleye chowder with ramp oil and celery salad at spice Kitchen. Zack bruell has five thriving restaurants—Chinato, shown here, parallax, Table 45, l’albatros and Cowell & hubbard.

regional cuisine Cleveland comes of age

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Ben Bebenroth, chef/owner of Spice Kitchen & Bar, takes local sourcing a step further. In addition to purchasing almost all his ingredients locally, he’s raising chickens, and growing vegetables behind the restaurant and in a 10,000-square-foot plot at his home. The hoop house he put up provides fresh greens throughout the winter. “The partnerships and synergies between the farmers, the markets and the restaurants have transformed Northeast Ohio into a food mecca and put this area on the map as a food destination,” says Myra Orenstein, acting executive director for Cleveland Independents, an association formed to support and promote the region’s independently owned and operated restaurants. “Considering its size, our restaurants are now on a par with much larger metropolitan areas.” Another force that’s raising the bar are those who come home or discover Cleveland after working elsewhere for industry superstars, among them, Rocco Whalen, chef/owner of Fahrenheit, an urban bistro, who honed his skills with Wolfgang Puck. Dante Boccuzzi is another. The former executive chef for Charlie Palmer at Aureole in New York now operates Dante, an upscale modern American restaurant, plus a second outpost in Akron called DBA, Ginko, a sushi bar, and the casual D.C. Pasta Co.

The right ingredients Forbes named Cleveland one of America’s most affordable cities in 2012. That reality has helped attract and retain talent, and there’s a kind of snowball effect, with one good chef drawing another. The general cost of living, most notably the reasonable prices for restaurant and living space, are assets, especially for young entrepreneurs and shoestring startups. The savings are passed on to an ever-expanding audience of sophisticated consumers with an appetite for interesting food and new experiences.

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LAURA TAxEL iS A CLEVELAND-BASED JOURNALiST AND AUTHOR WHO WRiTES ABOUT FOOD, CHEFS AND THE RESTAURANT BUSiNESS FOR CONSUMER AND TRADE PUBLiCATiONS. SHE iS THE AUTHOR OF CLEVELAND’S WEST SiDE MARkET: 100 YEARS & STiLL COOkiNG (UNiVERSiTY OF AkRON PRESS, 2012).

“These small chef-owned and chef-driven restaurants that are popping up reflect great concepts priced so that people can afford to eat there more often without having to worry about the credit card statement at the end of the month,” says Jonathan Bennett, executive chef/partner of Moxie and Red The Steakhouse, two established and successful high-end restaurants. Bennett represents a small cadre of top-shelf talent serving a suburban clientele. Paul Minnillo, a highly respected chef who was cooking extraordinary food long before guys in the kitchen had the cachet of rock stars, is another. His most recent restau-rant, Flour, is in a strip mall, but the rustic Italian fare, including wood-fired pizza, is prepared with contemporary flair and metro style. Nonetheless, the urban core, with walkable neighborhoods and interesting architecture just waiting to be repurposed, is where most of the action is these days. Investor Mark Priemer notes that the city and its older first-ring suburbs offer rising young chefs and food entrepreneurs “wonderful

historical and older properties that can be owned outright or leased at much lower rental rates.” He characterizes Cleveland as a “smallish market where you can still leverage limited amounts of capital and a lot of hard work into business opportunities.” There are a number of thriving neighborhoods and revitalized pockets downtown and on the east and west sides of the city. Ohio City is one of them, and it has some unique resources, most notably the West Side Market, an iconic 100-year-old public market that’s home to 100 independent food vendors. The landmark building has been named one of the nation’s 10 Great Public Spaces and lauded as Bon Appétit’s favorite “food hall” in the U.S. At the other end of street is the six-acre Ohio City Farm. Under the auspices of the nonprofit Refugee Response, immigrants raise crops that supply the brewpub at Great Lakes Brewing Co., Flying Fig, Bar Cento and The Black Pig—all just a few blocks away. Priemer, Sam McNulty and two other partners have made this community the focus of their efforts. They operate five establishments along W. 25th, the main thoroughfare: Bier Markt, Bar Cento, Speakeasy, The Market Garden Brewery & Distillery and Nano Brew. “People thought we were crazy,” says McNulty, “but we were building a district with help from other great businesses such as Crop, Bonbon Pastry & Cafe, and SOHO Kitchen & Bar.” Instead of cannibalizing from each other, he adds, the “energy of the street exploded and volume increased” for everyone. The result, notes Priemer, is that people can eat at a different restaurant every night for two weeks, with a full range of choices from casual to upscale. “The culinary talent here rivals that of any city,” says McNulty. “We have this amazingly robust and advanced restaurant scene, and it’s showing no signs of slowing down. Cleveland is crushing it right now.”

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left, top to bottom: The patio at l’albatros; east 4th streetTop right: spice Kitchen cocktails, left to right, winter Thyme Collins—gin, fresh-squeezed grapefruit, thyme syrup and prosecco, garnished with thyme from the restau-rant’s gardens; and westbound + down—oyo honey vanilla vodka with apple cider, lemon juice and cinnamon/sassafras syrup, garnished with apple sticks and fresh mint.