Adding to Cleveland's already vibrant dining scene, here are all the new restaurants in the area set to open their doors this year. Keep your eyes peeled and your ears open for news about these comeback and debut restaurants.
Aladdin's Eatery unveiled its health-focused, fast-casual spinoff Boaz Café two years ago in Ohio City (2549 Lorain Ave.,) with eyes on future expansion. The first phase of those expansion plans will occur this fall when the company unveils its new East Side location. Boaz is moving into the former Sweet Melissa space in University Heights, near the campus of John Carroll University.
After roughly 40 years in business, Lopez has ceased to exist in Cleveland Heights. The pioneering Mexican eatery began life in 1980, when owners Brad Friedlander and Craig Somers opened the spot at Lee and Washington. For the past 15 years, Lopez lived across from the Cedar Lee Theatre, the last three years of which were under the ownership of longtime chef Michael Herschman. Soon, Herschman will revive his former Tremont bistro Mojo in that space. Like the original, Mojo will present a lengthy menu loaded with globally diverse and appealing options. The current working catalogue approaches 40 different items, most of which take inspiration from Pacific Rim, Mediterranean and Latin American cuisines.
Just because a space doesn’t work for one or two groups doesn’t mean another can’t come in and turn it around. Next up for the prominent Detroit Shoreway building that recently was home to Battery Park Pub, Graffiti and Reddstone will be All Saints Public House, an “Old English style neighborhood pub with good food.”
Ledgewood Plaza in Strongsville is getting a branch of the Israel-based gourmet hamburger chain, Burgerim (“many burgers” in Hebrew). The restaurant offers burgers made from traditional Angus, dry-aged and Spanish beef, as well as Hawaiian salmon, falafel and lamb. Burgeim also offers a build-your-own-burger option, where customers can choose between two types of buns, 10 proteins, four cheeses, eight sauces and 11 toppings.
Formerly home to PM Security, a sturdy brick building on the eastern edge of Detroit Shoreway will undergo significant renovations by the landlord before being handed over to Vincent Morelli, who has been working for the past year to open his own pizza shop. When he’s done with it, hopefully soon, he’ll open Cent’s Pizzeria.
Mike George and Amber Pompeii opened Cleveland Tea Revival in the Hingetown area of Ohio City in 2014. Since then, the couple started a family and relocated to Cleveland Heights. As fate would have it, the opportunity to open a second, larger specialty tea shop soon followed. Cleveland Tea Revival currently is setting up shop inside the old firehouse near the intersection of Lee and Silsby roads at the former Lee-Silsby Compounding Pharmacy space and will be opening shortly.
The Chicago-based Hampton Social is among four new restaurants and nightclubs set to be installed along a chunk of land bordering the waterfront in the Flats East Bank. Specializing in seafood, the modern and sleek restaurant will also include a speakeasy-type bar and music lounge called the Bassment underneath the dining area. While there is currently no set-date for opening, Flats East Bank developer Scott Wolstein expects to request financing for the project from the city council sometime this year.
Also among the new restaurants and nightclubs set to be installed on the Flats East Bank waterfront is Jade, an Asian-fusion restaurant from the owner of XO Prime Steaks downtown. Again, no opening date is set in stone, so keep an eye on this one.
There is a silver lining to the recent closure of Jack Flaps, a popular breakfast diner in Ohio City. Chef Karen Small has announced that she will take the space over and open a diner of her own. Small envisions the as-yet-unnamed café to serve breakfast, breakfast-all-day and lunch items until the early afternoon. Small, who opened the venerated Flying Fig (2523 Market Ave.,) in the same neighborhood 20 years ago, was motivated to grab the space because of what she believes is a gap in the marketplace.
For the past seven years Ian Herrington has been working at On the Rise bakery in Cleveland Heights, where he has risen to the position of head baker and production manager. Come summer of 2020, he will roll all of that experience into a bake shop of his own. Leavened, as the bakery will be called, will take up residence on the ground floor of The Tappan, a four-story, 95-unit mixed-use property currently being built at Scranton Road and Auburn Avenue. The project is the latest from the team at Sustainable Communities Associates.
