Dish Du Jour

Whether Chriszt will ever "move on" and launch another restaurant is a question she greets coolly. While she's firmly tied to Cleveland, she thinks the region's shrinking population and ongoing economic woes, as well as the influx of chain restaurants, make it tough for any new restaurant to succeed. Plus, she says, what little national glory we garner tends to focus on one or two spots. "I love Michael Symon, but it's almost like we're a one-horse town here. There are phenomenal chefs all over this city -- in fact, Michael will tell you that some of them are in his own kitchens! -- but they rarely get recognized. We need to get people to realize that there is good food in this town in places other than Professor Avenue!"

Then there's the ugly issue of financing: Unstable partnerships, unreasonable costs, unimpressive profits, and a lack of capital played major roles in the demise of Chriszt's former restaurants, and she's not eager to head down those paths again. She financed Dish on her own dime, she says, with a second mortgage. With no better financing options, she has no grander plans.

Although . . . She's backpedaling now. A little wine bar would be nice, someday -- or maybe a tiny bistro. "And I always thought it would be fun to have a place that sells hardware on one side and a bakery on the other. I'd call it 'Bread & Bolts,'" she laughs.

But assuming that Dish does well, the more likely scenario sees Chriszt opening a string of delis across the West Side. "I think that's very feasible. And I can't say I really miss being out of the restaurant business; this way, I can sit at night in somebody else's kitchen and have a good time!"

Not that the 40-year-old chef is headed for a rocking chair. Besides racking up 60-hour weeks at the deli, plus catering, she occasionally works as a freelance stylist for professional food photographers and teaches professional culinary classes at Loretta Paganini's ICASI. And for the past seven years, she's volunteered as chef-coordinator for the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation's annual "Chef's Fantasy" fund-raiser.

She also watches for signs, she says -- little nudges from the universe she hopes will keep her on the right path, like that phone call from Take-a-Bite's former owner, Joy Harlor, when she was getting ready to sell.

"Frankly, I wasn't even thinking about opening a deli until I heard from Joy. Then it just seemed like maybe this was what I was supposed to be doing. As a matter of fact, that's why I don't regret any of the things that happened in the past. I believe that we're led to the places where we're meant to be, and given a chance to repeat the same mistakes until we finally learn from them.

"I don't always know why, but at this point, I believe the mistakes I made were for a purpose. After all, they brought me here. And now? I couldn't be happier."