Not much for good eats in downtown Cleveland, unfortunately, but the real overriding theme was mediocre service. I’m not saying bad service, or rude service, just a lot of indifferent service.
First meal was at Fat Fish Blue, at the corner of Prospect and Ontario, serving a sort-of Cajun menu – sort of because they’ve supplemented a lot of Cajun classics with some other dishes more befitting a casual-dining chain. I stuck with the classics and was one for two. The chicken-and-sausage gumbo was a disappointment; the flavor was OK, with a lot of andouille, but the gumbo was thin (meaning that the roux was underdeveloped), and the bowl was about 1/3 gumbo and 2/3 overcooked and not-all-that-hot rice. The shrimp po’boy, on the other hand, was almost dead-on, with the only flaw being the cook’s failure to scoop out the doughy part of the French bread, which is de rigueur for an authentic po’boy. The fried shrimp were perfectly breaded (cornmeal with a little black pepper) and not even a little bit greasy, and the remoulade on the po’boy was delicious, although mayonnaise is more traditional.
Breakfast the next morning was at the Inn at Coventry, which won the Citysearch readers’ poll this year for Cleveland’s best breakfast. It’s a good value, but the food didn’t blow me away. The best thing I had was their popular “blues and chews” pancake, with blueberries and cashews; they get bonus points because you can order just one cake as a side. The pancake was a little flat but had a great butter flavor. The eggs etc. were all ordinary. This was, however, the best service I received at any restaurant on the trip.
For lunch on Wednesday I decided to hit Lola, the downtown restaurant by Michael Symon and I’d say one of the two best-known (to outsiders) restaurants in Cleveland at the moment. Lola offers kicked-up comfort food, and they have a lunch menu with a great you-pick-two option. I went with a chickpea salad and a chicken-salad sandwich on flatbread, and both were very good. The salad included chickpeas, rocket (okay, arugula, but “rocket” sounds so much better), yellow onions, and a few julienned pieces of japalenos; the chickpeas were a little undercooked, and the whole thing was overdressed, but the taste combination was excellent. The sandwich was served on a fresh pita; the chicken salad was slightly spicy (curry powder, perhaps) and it included pickled onions and julienned red peppers. I wouldn’t change a thing about it. So here’s my mediocre-service story: I sat at the bar and asked for sparkling water to drink, which is my usual. The bartender doesn’t tell me that they only sell it in liter bottles, and I end up paying $5 for just one glass of the stuff.
Wednesday’s dinner was at Zócalo, a pseudo-Mexican restaurant right across from Lola. I knew I was in trouble when the chips and salsa came and the chips were glittering with grease. The entree was no better. Avoid.
Thursday’s breakfast was a small adventure; I walked to the Second Street Diner only to find that it no longer exists, so I wandered back over to Euclid and went to Sammy’s, a little lunch-counter/greasy spoon tucked in the National City building. I went for an EMPT, and while the bacon (already mostly cooked, just reheated to order) and potatoes were nothing special, the short-order cook takes his egg-scrambling very seriously. He has a tiny metal bowl and a two-tine fork just for the purpose, and when he scrambles the eggs, he gets his whole body into it. The eggs were perfectly cooked, soft, fluffy, but totally cooked through. And it’s just nice to find the occasional place that still cooks eggs to order.
I picked up a sandwich to go from the Juniper Grille, and when I said I was there to order something to go, the waitress who greeted me immediately changed her whole demeanor to make it clear I was a second-class citizen. The turkey club wrap was good and came with potato chips that tasted like they were fried in-house, but I was left with something of a bitter taste from the way that waitress and another one inside treated me.
Last bite before I left was the Strickland’s frozen custard at the Jake. I’m a big frozen custard fan, since it usually has an ultra-smooth texture, but this stuff was a little icy and grainy.