Americano

If I asked most people in Cleveland if there is a restaurant called Americano somewhere in Cleveland most people would say no, hell if you would have asked me yesterday I would have said no.  Today though is a different day, as I was looking for somewhere to eat on opentable tonight I saw a restaurant listed that I had never heard of before called Americano.  The restaurant located in Bratenahl, an exclusive Cleveland community, and located in One Bratenahl Place a high rise tower located right on the lake.

Located on the first floor the restaurant itself is a little dated, feeling more like a country club then the very good restaurant that it is.  The food here is what you come for if you come to Americano, and it doesn’t disappoint.  For a first course as a table we shared the house-cured meat selection which was excellent.  Served with a very nice mustard and homemade pickles the platter was more than enough to share with three people.  Served alongside the platter of meats was a house made sourdough bread which was very good, and did not have a overpowering sour taste that some sourdough can have.

For the most part we skipped on a second course, however there was a very nice selection including 3 salads, a caesar, a fall fig salad, and my selection a “trillion” island wedge which was very good, the dressing a standard thousand island was good with a little spice, and the wedge itself was fresh and crisp.  The accompaniments including dried cranberries, bacon, and boiled eggs helped to make for a good salad.

The selection of main courses is also very good, including 4 specials which 2 of the 3 in the party decided to partake in. I had a shortrib goulash, with homemade spatzel, which was so very good, one of the best shortrib dishes I have ever had.  The other special we tried was a pan seared walleye with potato pancake and braised brussels sprouts.  The walleye and pancake played very well together but the sprouts left a little to be desired.  For the last entre my friend had the steak frites with a 5oz filet cooked perfectly along with homemade fries anda very nice homemade aoli and steak sauce.   All in all the entries were very good  and we will definitely be making a return trip to Americano.

Wheel Of Gate!!!

Ok, so this really has nothing to do with food, sports or Cleveland but I was really bored last night and a friend of mine said hey why not make a wheel of gate.  What is a wheel of gate you might ask, well you are about to find out.  The basic things you need to know is that the wheel deals with the TV shows Stargate  SG1, Stargate Atlantis and Stargate Universe.

To start I needed to make a circle.

Cardboard Circle!!!

With that out of the way it kind of needed some color, searching through my house I found some paper of color and decided to cut out some wedges.

Wedges!

With the wedges out of the way all i needed to do was put it all together.

Its so colorful

With it completely put together all that was needed was to actually mount it and see how it looked.

Mounted!

All that was left to do was add labels and try it out.

It's Alive!!!!

It has an inner and outer wheel the outer consists of seasons of all 3 shows while the inner has numbers listed 1-22 for episodes of each season.  You have to spin the wheel twice, once for the season and once for the ep.  While seasons of atlantis, universe and later sg1 seasons didn’t have 22 episodes, this isn’t perfect so deal with it.

Check out a video of it in motion here.

I’ve been playing around with the wheel of gate all day, i started off with 3×09, rules of engagement, then got atlantis 2×14, grace under pressure, then 8×05 icon which was better than i remember, then 1×17 solitudes which is always good now i’m on atlantis 3×17, sunday watching it now.

Halloween……and more important things like Sports and melted cheese sandwiches

Is it me or has Halloween become more popular then a lot of other holidays.  I know people who  take 2 or 3 days off from work just to get ready for Halloween and I just don’t get it.  When did this kids holiday become an excuse for adults to dress up like idiots.  And the real problem is everyone seems to be embracing this culture, I mean if you watched any TV yesterday or today, since i turned my clock back already its still the 31st, you would have seen respectable reporters, journalists and other people all dressed up in Halloween costumes.  Oh well it could be worse……Halloween could last a week instead of a day.

Now that i’m done with my Halloween rant i feel i can move on to more important things, like beer and food.  As today was the last day of October i felt the need to finish off all the pumpkin ales and October fest beers I had left and thankfully there was a lot of good sports on to help me do just that.

How about Ohio State covering a 44 point spread for what might be the first time ever in the history of Jim Tressel coaching the team, but i guess when you are playing the worst team in all college football anything is possible.  At least it was a good tune-up for the game at Penn State next week…..I hope.

The cavs seem to be bouncing back which is nice, and having West back in the lineup is a good thing.  as long as he remembers to leave his guns at home he is an important part of the team.  But i still can’t get to excited at we have 2 wins now against the bobcats and timberwolves, the Celtics they are not.

On another interesting note, I was driving around Cleveland heights today and by chance stopped at what will soon be the east side location for the west side hot spot Melt.  If you don’t know what Melt is, well as its 12 am and i’m tired i’ll just link you to their website and you can find out there.

http://www.meltbarandgrilled.com/

From what i could see through the window all looks good I just hope the manage to meet their target opening of first quarter 2010.  Until then I guess i’ll just have to continue my monthly drives over to Lakewood and the excellent sandwiches.

The Greenhouse Tavern

So another normal Friday night and a trip with the family to Chef Jonathon Sawyer’s restaurant The Greenhouse Tavern on what is now probably one of the hottest spots in all of Cleveland.  This was my first trip to the Greenhouse and i’ve hear a lot of good things about it  so i was very excited to try it out.

For those of you who don’t know Greenhouse Tavern is one of the first certified green restaurants in the country and the first in Ohio to have that honor.  The restaurant itself is beautiful, composed of three levels, the basement is where the so-called “magic” happens as the kitchen is located here as well as a chefs table which is from what i have heard the best seat in the house.  The second or main level includes the bar and some seating while the 3rd floor is more like a mezzanine  with seats overlooking the whole main floor of the restaurant.  All the wood you see in the restaurant has been reclaimed including that used in the tables and on the walls, additionally the carpets are made of recycled materials.

Now that the decor is out of the way let’s get to the all important part, the food.  The menu is divided into 4 sections, First’s, Second’s, Third’s and Half’s.  First’s include items like warm olives, bread and butter, radishes with butter and what turned out to be my favorite dish a Formage Blanc with toasted bread.  The formage blanc was so tasty with a hint of thyme, and what really made the dish was the bread which was toasted perfectly and made an all together very tasty first course.  My parents who I went to dinner with tonight had the olives and bread and butter.  The olives were good, but the bread and butter was great.  Normally I am averse to paying for bread and butter, but once again the toasted bread along with a goat’s milk butter that was a nice tang that made the dish outstanding and well worth the $3.

The seconds are your more standard appetizer fare, with items like french onion soup and a beef tartare, but the standout of that section has to be the chicken wings, which are tender, crisp, and the fall off the bone all of which add up to some of  the best wings i’ve ever eaten.

I don’t know about most people but one way to judge how good a restaurant is in my opinion is how good of a burger they can make, and here The Greenhouse Tavern excels, the burger and fries are one of the best in the city, juicy, flavorful and just plain good is the best way to describe it.  Additionally the steak frites which my mom and dad both had were very good, the only low point being the grilled romaine salad that accompanies the steak.  What could be a refreshing side to the steak frites turns out to be a limp piece of flavorless salad that the steak could really have done without.

For desert a very nice smore, encompassing a homemade marshmallow and gramcracker with very god melted chocolate topped of what was a very good meal.  Made even more fun by watching Sawyer run around the restaurant doing among other things serving drinks and checking in with every table to make sure that everyone was enjoying their meals.   Speaking of drinks, Greenhouse Tavern has a very nice beer and wine list including some very good boutique wine and beers.  Which make for a really fun time at another of Cleveland’s very good restaurants.

In other news, look what showed up on shelves today.

Christmas Came Early

Fresh from the Great Lakes Brewery the first batch of Christmas Ale this season, christmas never comes early enough when it comes to this christmas ale, which is one of the better ones out there.

Welcome to the world of tomorrow!!!!!! Or not.

So what is this place and how did you find yourself here reading the first of which i hope to be many posts.  To be perfectly honest with everyone reading this…yes I’m talking to the one guy who randomly stumbles upon my blog because someone mistook the Cleveland in the title to be about Cleveland from Family Guy and now his own TV show….when in fact this blog is strangely enough about the city of Cleveland and what I do here.

First and foremost this blog is going to be about food, I am a foodie.  A term which seems to be thrown around these days more than pretty much anything else.   What I could do now is go on and on about how i know all about different types of food and how i’m a food elitist never setting foot in a McDonald’s or *gasp* a Cheesecake Factory.  The truth though is being a foodie doesn’t mean that, you don’t have to be a food snob to be a foodie.  What a foodie needs is a love of food, and that I have.  So what you will see on this blog is just that someone enjoying food, it may be trying out the new highly rated restaurant or cooking dinner at home for friends and family.

My life here in Cleveland isn’t only about food though, because any true Clevelander knows that the one thing that goes hand in hand with food in this city are its sports teams.  So as we Clevelanders deal with another hopeless browns season, a baseball team that just hired a manager who came from a losing team……wait that sounds familiar, i’m looking at your browns.  But at least we have the Cavs right, i mean sure they are 0-2 right now meaning there are only 80 regular season games and what we hope is at least 16? playoff wins before we have to say goodbye to LeBron and any hope of winning more titles.  But thats Cleveland sports for you.

So as I rant on and on about food, sports and what most likely will be a large number of other random and useless things I do hope that someone enjoys what I am writing even if it is just a few Family Guy fans who got lost.