If all goes as planned, the old Juniper Grille will reopen as
Verve (1332 Carnegie Ave.) in about two weeks, says chef and new
owner Brian Okin. For the past three and a half years, Okin ran
Benvenuti Ristorante in Broadview Hts. He sold that business to focus
on his new venture. His chef résumé stretches back 20
years and touches many of the area’s most popular spots. “I’m not going
to say I’m the best restaurateur in the city,” says Okin. “But I’ve
been doing this a long time and I know how to run a business.” Unlike
Juniper Grille, which focused on breakfast and lunch, Verve will be a
lunch and dinner spot. The chef says he hasn’t completely ruled out
breakfast, considering the business his predecessor did in the space,
but admitted it’s not his forte. What he does plan to do is offer
creative comfort food. “I want to reinvent the dishes we grew up with,”
he explains. “I want to take what we already know and love, and elevate
it to another level.” Okin promises the menu will go well past gourmet
mac and cheese to include modern twists on pigs in a blanket, fish and
chips, and veal stroganoff. Plans are to open for lunch the first week
of September followed by dinner service when the beer and wine license
transfers. The 80-seat (plus private dining room) space is receiving
some cosmetic updates. Okin admits that it might take some work to get
folks to the area for dinner, but offering free parking and being close
to big-city attractions should help.
For this year’s Great American Beer Festival in Denver
(September 24-26), Matt Cole and nine other brewers thought it
would be fun to do something different. So the brewer from Fat
Head’s Brewery & Saloon (24581 Lorain Rd., North Olmsted,
440.801.1001, fatheadscleveland.com) and his
colleagues across the country all brewed the same beer — kind of.
“There are a million ways to skin a cat,” says Cole. “We are all
working off the same recipe, using similar grain bills and hop
schedules, but with different yeast blends.” The result will be 10
similar but vastly different Belgian-style strong pale ales called
Collaborative Evil. Festival attendees and judges will be able to
sample the suds side by side. You don’t have to travel out to Denver to
sample the brew Cole came up with. Starting next week, it will be on
tap at Fat Head’s for Clevelanders to enjoy.
This article appears in Aug 12-18, 2009.
