American Heritage Restaurant

After checking out the Seville Farmers Market and discussing the possibility of doing a demo during next summer (it's already getting kind of late in the season and my weekends are nearly booked up for the remainder of the season), I stopped by my aunt and uncle's house just a few blocks away to pick them up for a late breakfast. The last time we got together for an early morning breakfast it had been at the Enchanted Cafe in Barberton and while the food was fine, it seemed like everyone in Barberton had descended upon the small cafe at exactly the same time and the wait time was pretty bad. I hoped to avoid a similar situation today.

On both my way to and from the market this morning, I had noticed a small downtown Seville restaurant that appeared to be open, American Heritage Restaurant. When I mentioned it to my aunt and uncle, they informed me that they had eaten there once before, but it was owned by someone else and from what they told me, it wasn't a positive experience. Now under new ownership (and new name), they had yet to try this incarnation and agreed to give it a try. The restaurant was located at 31 West Main Street, Seville, OH 44273 and can be reached at 330-769-9900. There was no website at the time that this article was written.

After parking on the street in front of the restaurant, it wasn't long before we were front and center outside the main entrance:


Once inside, we discovered that while they were full, there was still a table available in the back of the large room. The room was decorated in vintage Americana as well as a wall near our table that had been painted with two locally known figures. A few minutes after being seated, our server took our drink order and left us with the menu to peruse:



While the first item on the menu looked eerily similar to a breakfast I had eaten at Wild Goats Cafe in Kent (the Shepherd's Breakfast), I decided to continue reading the menu. When I got to the Sunshine Sandwich, I thought it looked interesting enough to consider. Based on what I read off the menu, it didn't appear that the sandwich came with a side, so I also took a look at the a la carte items on the back of the menu, too. Unfortunately, they were out of the grits (which was the side I chose) and knowing that my sandwich was going to be laden with fattiness from bacon, eggs, and cheese, I thought about something lighter. When I asked if they had a fruit cup, sadly she shook her head and said no. When I saw that they had homemade sausage gravy, I somehow managed to convince myself that while not as light as fruit, it wouldn't be as bad as say, a side of breakfast meats.

Our meal came out of the kitchen after about ten minutes or so. First up, the Sunshine Sandwich:


And another shot with the top of the biscuit removed:


The first thing that struck me was the portion size of the sandwich. The menu had actually used the word "jumbo" to describe the size of the biscuit; apparently, our definitions differed. The freshly baked, but not homemade, biscuit had been split and layered with a single egg, a slice of American cheese, and several strips of bacon. The good news was that the bacon had been cooked to order. The bad news was that while this sandwich tasted alright, at $3.69, this was only a marginal step up from a similar offering on McDonald's breakfast menu and at least $1 more.

The sausage gravy, which came in two sizes, fared a little better:


I had ordered the cup of gravy knowing that I probably wouldn't even finish it. Strangely, the gravy came by itself without anything on which to spoon it over (such as biscuits). Fortunately, my aunt had ordered an extra biscuit with her meal that she ended up not wanting. I split the biscuit and slathered some of the gravy on top:


The gravy itself was decent, although I personally wanted a bit more spice from the black pepper. The gravy was definitely creamy and the bits of sausage in it tasted like what one would think a breakfast sausage should taste like. As with my sandwich, the biscuits were generally okay, but there was a spot on one of the halves that was so hard that I needed a knife to get through it.

Overall, I think the breakfast was decent. It didn't blow me away, but it also wasn't terrible either. The portion sizes for my aunt and uncle's breakfasts were much bigger (although admittedly, they were more expensive, too) than mine was, and my Sunshine Sandwich was little more than a glorified bacon, egg, and cheese biscuit from McDonald's. That being said, were I in town for the market on a Saturday morning, I might just stop in and check them out again. Then again, my uncle emphatically stated at the conclusion of our meal that the breakfasts at the Lighthouse Cafe (which I have covered before for lunch) far surpassed what we ate this morning.