new favorite restaurant
One nice thing about having friends distributed across Greater Cleveland is that I discover unique and delicious restaurants now and then. Among these are The Winking Lizard (various locations) with their award-winning barbecue sauce and Fat Fish Blue (downtown) with their pecan chicken in Jack Daniels sauce.
Great Lakes Brewing Company over by the West Side Market has outdoor tables in a quaint city-street setting -- as I said to Allen, "like Crocker Park, only not fake." Speaking of Crocker Park, Claddagh Irish Pub is a regional chain that is quickly expanding, and their Balsamic Chicken makes me a very happy guy. Their "shamrock wings" are pretty good too. Cornerstone Brewing Company (formerly Quarryman's Tavern, in downtown Berea) is also good times, particularly the Mediterranean Tilapia -- and this coming from a guy who doesn't usually like fish.
Today, I discovered The Station Restaurant in Berea, which has a trackside dining room and features an old dining car that can be rented for parties. Everything I had there was incredibly delicious. I got the Wings and Ribs (10 wings and 4 St. Louis long bones). Both the Depot BBQ and Dry Cajun Mesquite wings were awesome. They bring four sauces to the table for the ribs, which includes a sort-of-pineapply Texas Sweet Sauce. For dessert, I got the creme brule, which was almost too sugary, but still a happy ending.
I would be remiss in not mentioning The Rush Inn of Lakewood, across from The Beck Center for the Arts. They're a bit pricey for what you get, in my opinion (hey, kinda like the Beck Center's shows -- ooh, zing!), but they do offer specials on different nights of the week. On Mondays, they have tacos in handmade crunchy flour shells for just $2. My friends who I met during Cabaret back in 2003 would meet at The Rush every Monday for drinks and tacos, and we'd occasionally bring in new folks as we continued to do shows (hi, Becki). Even the weekly Monday morning e-mails from Dee (and later, me) became a sort of newsletter about what each of us had going on theatre-wise. After a while, most of us got tired of tacos, so we started going on Tuesdays for half-price wings. The Rush's teriyaki wings are awesome, and they have some good appetizers too, like the orange ginger shrimp and the teriyaki steak with flour tortillas.
We're all really busy now, and the group had dwindled down to just a few regulars, so combine that with the higher gas prices and we don't make it to the Rush that often anymore. Besides, going to the same place week after week did get old after a while, so once there were so few people, it wasn't quite as special. We could've just as easily met anywhere else, and did, on a few later occasions. I remember back in the day, when we first started Taco Monday, Dee and I would be there from 7-11 and there would be three shifts of people coming and going at various times: the teacher/go-to-bed-early crowd, then the we-ate-at-home crowd, then the we-had-to-work-late crowd. It made Monday a day to look forward to.
So that's my list:
The Winking Lizard
Fat Fish Blue
Great Lakes Brewing Company
Claddagh Irish Pub
Cornerstone Brewing Company
The Rush Inn
The Station Restaurant
Anyone know of any other good Cleveland area dining establishments?
2 Comments:
Gee, I didn't realize how much I miss Taco Night until I read this.
I know, I miss taco night, too. But, 6:30 is kinda early for me to be there, being a member of the "I ate at home" crowd. And, now also being a part of the "I'm doing my damndest to eat healthy" crowd, it becomes more important for me to eat at home. 7:30 would work better. I need to work-out tonight, too, so probably not this week. Next week?
Ooh, add Corleone's in Parma to your list. Holy crap, the food there is amazing. They do italian like nobody's business. It's on Broadview Rd near Snow, in the Giant Eagle plaza.
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