First Look: Red Chimney, Opening Next Week in Parma

“It’s been a long road to get to this point,” says Manny Skantzos.

If the remaining inspections go as planned, Red Chimney will open the doors to its new restaurant next week, most likely Wednesday. It’s been one year since a fire forced the 43-year-old family restaurant in Slavic Village to close. Since then, the Skantzos family opted to relocate to a new property in Parma, the former Pappou’s building at 8320 Snow Road.

Last summer, the family was riding high from a flood of fresh publicity and media attention surrounding the release of James Gunn’s Superman, says Skantzos.

“A scene from the movie was filmed at the old restaurant,” he shares. “They even let me and my cousin be in the kitchen as extras. Right after that movie came out, there was big buzz around it. And then the fire. That very, very bad day. It was tough.”

Originally, the family planned on repairing the damage and reopening, but the numbers didn’t pan out.

“We weren’t set on leaving Slavic Village, it was just the restraints on what the insurance would cover on that building and the time restraints on how long we could afford to be closed,” he adds.

Now, 12 months later, Red Chimney is preparing to welcome its first guests back. Many of them, says Skantzos, are old and new neighbors.

“A lot of the old Slavic Village customers who grew up going to Red Chimney now live in this area. The response we’ve been getting from people is amazing.”

A fresh start is always an opportunity for change. And for the Red Chimney folks, that means taking a good, hard look at the menu and making some updates and improvements. All your favorites will be there, they promise, including breakfast all day, baby beef liver and onions, stuffed cabbage, chicken paprikash, city chicken, fried chicken, meatloaf, pierogi platters and made-from-scratch soups like chicken noodle and New England clam chowder.

Some of the staples will be vastly improved, such as the chicken cutlets sub, chicken parmesan sandwich and chicken parm platter, which will no longer be made with previously frozen product. Other items, such as the veal parmesan, will be moved from the daily menu to the specials roster so that can also be improved.

Those items are joined by a large selection of salads, sandwiches, wraps, burgers and even a few steaks and chops.

“Our goal here is to keep it reasonable, improve what we can, and stick to what people come here for,” says Skantzos.

Red Chimney’s new home, fittingly enough, started out life as a Red Barn restaurant. In the early 1980s, it became home to Laurel’s Family Restaurant and later, in 2001, Pappou Café.

The space has been completely remodeled into a spacious and comfortable family-style restaurant that seats 165, up from the 110 available in Slavic Village.

It’s an uplifting next chapter for immigrant owners Lou and Pete Skantzos, who started out with a pair of hot dog carts downtown. They went on to operate It’s a Deli in Lakewood and then, in 1999, taking over the Red Chimney, which originally opened in 1982.