Making Time For Thyme

When I first heard John Kolar's name mentioned on the old Cleveland Plain Dealer's Food and Wine forum several years ago, it was being associated with a new venture out in Medina, Ohio, called Thyme - the Restaurant (warning: gratuitous use of Flash). I knew the eatery was an upscale kind of place, but unfortunately, I don't get out to Medina all that often (which is a shame, really, since there are so many great places to eat there). Happily, as I collected my camera bag and walked out to my car after work last Friday, for some reason, it seemed time to finally check out Thyme.

Reservations are a mixed bag with me. When it is just me going out for a meal that I intend to review here on the blog, I tend to eschew reservations if I think I can get away with just showing up unannounced. This ensures complete anonymity and impartiality. However, if I think I might have difficulty getting a table (Friday night at 7 PM qualifies), I will go ahead and make a reservation, sometimes under a different name. Knowing that the chef or general manager often checks the reservation books before dinner service starts, my last minute decision at 6:30 PM on a Friday night to eat at this time made this last point moot since unless the person answering the phone knew me by name, it wouldn't have changed my experience.

Thyme was located about a thirty minute drive from Montrose at 716 North Court Street, Medina, OH 44256 and can be reached at 330-764-4114. When I saw the street sign for the restaurant,


I pulled into the moderately crowded parking lot. Having been around in the mid 70s to early 80s, I immediately recognized that the building was a converted and modified Red Barn restaurant. The entrance to the restaurant was actually facing the parking lot:


Once inside, I marveled at the re-purposed space. Through the main doors to the left was a small bar area. The rest of the inside space was devoted to tables, which while cozy, didn't give you the feeling that you were sitting on top of your neighbor. During better weather, a covered patio was also available. Lighting was pretty dim, but fortunately the hostess sat me at a table with a small, but bright incandescent lamp pointed straight down onto my table. She left me to look through the menu:




After taking my order, my server promptly returned with several items for me. First up was a basket of herbed focaccia and a ramekin of softened butter:


The focaccia was fresh and delicious. I didn't bother to ask if the focaccia was house made, but it didn't particularly matter since it was so tasty. The softened butter had a slight sweetness to it and while it matched the slight saltiness of the bread, wasn't required to elevate the flavor of the bread.

The kitchen also sent out a small starter, an amuse bouche, to get my meal off on the right foot:


This was a warm potato and leek soup that had been drizzled with just a touch of chive oil. I raised the glass to my mouth, tipped it back, and drank the entire contents in one gulp. While nothing fancy, it was seasoned properly and the flavor had a pronounced potato and leek essence to it. The chive oil added a small amount of spiciness, but nothing overwhelming. This was definitely a nice way to start the meal.

Always a sucker for gnocchi, especially homemade gnocchi, after seeing that an appetizer-sized portion was available on the menu, I decided to start my dinner adventure with a pasta course:


This was Porcini Gnocchi with Sauteed Spinach, Mushrooms, Porcini Cream Sauce, and a Balsamic Vinegar drizzle. The texture of the gnocchi were ethereally light, occupying that wonderful spot between having a satisfying chew versus dissolving in the mouth. On some of the less coated pieces, I could taste the potato, another great indicator of being freshly made. The mushroom flavor was quite pronounced and while the fattiness from the cream sauce coated my tongue, the acid from the vinegar helped to cut through it. My only complaint was that when I finished the pasta, I was about to reach for a slice of the focaccia to mop up the remaining sauce when one of the food runners swooped in and removed the plate before I had a chance to do so.

Interestingly, my gnocchi had shown up mere minutes after placing my order. In between my appetizer and my entree, however, the wait was a bit longer. It probably only seemed excessive because the gnocchi had come out so quickly. Soon enough, my server returned with my main course, the Double Cut Grilled Pork Chop with Poblano and Bacon Macaroni and Cheese, Asparagus, and Smoked Onion BBQ Sauce:


I had asked for the pork to be cooked to a "medium" temperature and it was. The pork was flavorful, juicy, and seasoned properly. While some of the asparagus spears were a bit thin and wispy, overall they were grilled and seasoned nicely. The smoke flavor in the BBQ sauce was nicely present, but not overwhelming. The pork was nicely complemented by the sauce. However, the big winner on this plate was the poblano and bacon macaroni and cheese. Nice and crusty on top and creamy everywhere else, this was an incredibly delicious version of this American staple. The pasta -- straight up macaroni noodles -- was perfectly cooked and wasn't mushy in the least. While I know that most anything is better with bacon, the addition of the roasted poblano added a subtle sweet and spicy element that really worked.

Having nearly cleaned my plate before indicating that I was finished, my server asked if I was interested in seeing the dessert menu. I figured that since I had already experienced such great success with the regular menu, the desserts must be on par. Right? Here was a shot of the dessert menu:


When I looked at the menu and realized that Thyme only had four desserts, two of which were pretty routine -- namely the creme brulee and molten chocolate cake -- I was actually a bit disappointed. Coming to grips that my choice would be between a cheesecake and a pumpkin mousse, I figured that the Toffee Cheesecake with Candied Almonds, Bruleed Banana, and Toffee Sauce would be the more interesting of the two.

As I've mentioned before, when I anticipate eating something sweet, I will often pair it with something bitter, like espresso or coffee, which was exactly what I did tonight:


The espresso was properly brewed, with full crema floating on top of the murky, bitter liquid sitting below the surface. While I appreciated the raw sugar cube, I skipped it and went straight for the twist of lemon.

Fortunately, only a few moments after my espresso arrived, my dessert made its way to the table:


While the plate definitely gets props for verticality and use of multi-textured components, sadly, this plate could've done with a color outside of the "brown" family -- a sprig of mint would've done wonders to break up the monotone theme. The toffee sauce was pleasant and tasted like, well, toffee. The bruleed banana was nicely caramelized. The candied almonds added a nice textural element.

The toffee cheesecake had its good and bad points. While not overly sweet, it was also a bit "vanilla." I didn't get a whole lot of toffee flavor in the cheesecake and honestly, it needed something to counterbalance the sweetness of the dessert -- perhaps sour cream would have helped. Maybe if the caramel on the banana had been cooked a bit darker, the inherent bitterness would have contrasted better with the sweetness. It just needed ... something. Don't get me wrong, gentle reader, it wasn't a bad tasting dessert. It was just kind of unremarkable considering the level of food I had enjoyed until that point.

The check with tip and gratuity came to just under $50 tonight. Was it worth it? Yes, I think it was. Given that the only non-stellar part of my meal was the dessert (and by non-stellar, I don't mean bad), I would definitely return for another meal at Thyme - the Restaurant. I don't know that Medina has any other restaurants within city limits that are executing food at this high of a level. If you live in Medina and want a wonderful dining experience, definitely check out Thyme. If you live outside of Medina, I still think it is worth the trip.

Hopefully the desserts will attain the same level as the rest of the food in the future.

Kitchen Challenge: Gnocchi with Garlic, Bacon, and Kale

Necessity is often the mother of invention. When I first moved back from Columbus to Akron in late 2004, I quickly discovered a lack of good gnocchi in local restaurants and supermarkets. Now, that's not to say it didn't exist, but I didn't have the connections or knowledge to successfully seek it out. Having gotten hooked on the gnocchi served at Monte Carlo Italian Restaurant in Columbus during my five year stay, I knew that I couldn't subsist on the heavy, dense, sit-at-the-bottom-of-my-stomach variety that were available in the area. Thus, I decided to teach myself how to make it from scratch.

Homemade pasta scares a LOT of people. And to be honest, I think I was fairly intimidated by it as well. I had seen it made many times on television, and in theory, it looked simple enough. Depending on the type of pasta one was making, the basics were flour, eggs, sometimes oil, sometime water, and salt. One day, fed up with what was available and craving good gnocchi, I searched around the Internet for several recipes. Over the years, I have honed in on a single recipe that has served me well.

Gnocchi, at its most basic, is an Italian potato-based pasta. It isn't like pierogi, which are a pasta-like dough dough filled with potatoes (much like ravioli). Rather, the potato is actually in the dough itself, no filling necessary. Good gnocchi are ethereally light, almost pillow like. Bad gnocchi ... well, I've already described those to you, so I won't belabor the point. I suppose somehow along the way I've learned to channel a little old Italian grandmother inside of me when I am rolling out the dough, cutting the individual gnocchi and rolling them off the back of a fork to create the ribbed texture.

The recipe for gnocchi is almost stupid simple. In fact, let's get that out of the way right now.

Potato Gnocchi
2 pounds Idaho potatoes, peeled, boiled, and mashed
2 cups of All-Purpose flour, plus additional for kneading
1 egg
Salt and pepper to taste

You can really use any starchy potato for gnocchi, but I would avoid waxy potatoes, such as New or Fingerling, as they tend not to give you the creamy texture you are after. Also, I would stick with All-Purpose flour instead of stronger bread flour. You want the gnocchi to be ultra-tender and using bread flour could create a tougher pasta because of the higher protein content. For a single recipe, I generally don't measure the salt too closely, but if I were pressed to give a measurement, it would probably be a tablespoon of kosher (or coarse) salt. That may seem like a lot, but remember, you are making several pounds of pasta. To be fair, if I salt the dough, I tend not to salt the water in which I cook them.

The first step is to prepare the potatoes. For those really green in the kitchen, I will give a quick primer. First, peel the potatoes. Then cut the potatoes into thirds or quarters so that they cook more quickly. Just make sure to cut all of the potatoes into the same size pieces so that they cook evenly. Fill the pot with COLD water to cover the potatoes by at least an inch or two. Then place on stove and turn the burner on high until the water just starts to boil. Turn the stove down so that the potatoes cook in gently boiling water until a sharp knife easily goes in and comes out of the potato wedges. Drain the water in a colander, return the potatoes to the still hot pan and pull out your potato masher. Without adding anything additional (like milk and butter for regular mashed potatoes), mash away until they are smooth.

The great news is that you can do this step ahead of time (up to one day ahead). If you want to store them for later, place them in a container and place a piece of plastic wrap so that it touches the mashed potatoes before placing a lid on the container. This prevents the outer surface from drying out. Refrigerate until about thirty minutes before you need the potatoes. At that point, remove the container from the refrigerator and set it on the counter to take the chill off. Note that while you will start with two pounds of raw, unpeeled potatoes, after peeling, cooking, and mashing, you will end up with closer to a pound-and-a-half of finished potatoes.

To make the pasta, place the flour in a mound on your work surface. Using a fork, lightly scramble the egg in a small bowl. Using your finger, make a circular motion in the very center of the flour to create a well. Dump the egg into this well, along with the salt and the freshly ground pepper. Using the fork, slowly start to mix the flour from the edges of the well into the liquid egg, being careful not to break through the walls of the well. When enough flour gets mixed into the egg, it will thicken considerably and lose its "runniness." At this point, you can set the fork down and pick up the second most handy tool in the kitchen, the bench scraper. This tool is invaluable for making breads and pastas and at only a couple of dollars, is a multi-tasker that is an excellent investment.

The next step is to add the potatoes to the top of the flour/egg mound. I will tell you that at this point, you will be thinking to yourself, "What in the hell kind of a mess is this?" Trust me, it will all come together with a little love and time. Take the potato out of the container in chunks and run it through your fingers to break it up. If the mashed potatoes are freshly made (you did let them come down to room temperature, right?), you won't need to break them up. It will look like a LOT of potatoes compares to the amount of flour, but that is what makes the resulting gnocchi so tender.

Once the potatoes are on top of the flour, start using the bench scraper to lift and fold the mound onto itself over and over again, pressing down as you fold it over, compacting the dough. Every now and again, you can use the bench scraper to separate the dough from the work surface and simply rotate it or flip it over entirely. Continue doing this for a good five minutes or so, resisting the urge during this time to add more water or flour. The flour is being hydrated during this period and needs a few minutes of adjustment time before you can accurately tell how much adjustment it will need.

Once the dough is holding together (even if there are still visible areas of potato), switch to the best tool in the kitchen: your hands. Begin kneading the dough, using the bench scraper to separate the dough from the work surface as necessary. It is at this stage of the process that you will need to make the judgement call of adding either more flour or a little bit of water. The finished dough should be tacky, but not sticky. In the end, from start to end, it probably takes about ten minutes to make the pasta dough.

Once the dough looks and feels right, you will need to give it time for the gluten that has been activated in the flour to rest and relax. If you are going to roll out the gnocchi right away, mound the dough into a round and cover it with a damp towel or a piece of plastic and let it sit for at least twenty minutes. You could also put the dough into a covered container and refrigerate it overnight. Just make sure that if you refrigerate it, take it out about thirty minutes before you want to roll it to take the chill off the dough.

So, gentle reader, now we've made the dough. Let's take it one step further and make gnocchi.

Using your bench scraper, cut off a hunk of the dough, maybe about 1/2-3/4" thick. Have bench flour available for your work surface in case the dough is still a little sticky, but remember, the less flour used, the more tender the pasta will be, so it's always a balancing act. With the hunk of dough, use your fingertips to roll the dough into a long snake. The length of the snake will depend on how big your hunk of dough started at, but you generally want the cylinder (the snake) to be a thicker than a Tootsie Roll.

With your snake rolled out, use a small knife or the bench scraper (man that thing's gettin' a lot of use, no?) to begin moving from one end to the other cutting out the individual gnocchi, maybe 1/2-3/4" wide. You generally want the width to be less than the width of a fork. Once you've cut the entire snake, the final step is to give each pasta piece their characteristic ridges. Using the backside of a fork, take a single gnocchi and using the thumb of your non-fork-wielding hand, press and roll the dough against the fork. Do this for every dough piece that you cut.

Place the finished gnocchi on a parchment-lined 1/2 sheet pan (or cookie tray), making sure that the gnocchi don't touch each other. Now, simply cut another hunk of pasta dough from the mound and repeat the process until you've run out of dough. Typically, one batch of gnocchi dough will fill about 1 1/2 sheet pans (of the 1/2 sheet variety). If you are going to use the finished gnocchi immediately, now would be a good time to put a large pot of water on the stove to boil. Your other option is to freeze the gnocchi on the sheet pan. Once they are rock hard, scrape the gnocchi off the parchment and put them into a freezer bag. They'll keep in the freezer for quite some time, although they've never been in my freezer for more than a month.

Once the water has come to a boil, if you salted the dough, do not salt the water, too. If you didn't salt the dough, add a couple of tablespoons of kosher salt (or half as much table salt). Working quickly, add about half of the gnocchi to the pot of water and stir gently to make sure they aren't sticking to the bottom or each other. If you have previously frozen the gnocchi, add them straight from the freezer; do not defrost first. When the gnocchi start floating to the top of the pot, you know they are very close to being done. Fresh gnocchi will take just a few minutes to float and add another minute or two if you are boiling them from frozen.

One note about boiling the pasta. While it's okay to bring the water to a hard boil before adding the pasta, once the pasta is added and comes back to the boil, adjust the heat level so that it cooks the gnocchi on a gentle boil. Continued hard boiling of the pasta can cause it to break up. Also, make sure to gently stir the gnocchi while they are cooking.

Once the gnocchi is cooked, use a slotted spoon or a strainer to remove them from the boiling water. Depending on how you will be serving them, you can add them straight to a pan of sauce or you can place them into a bowl with just a touch (and I do mean just a touch) of oil to coat them so that they won't stick together. If you have additional gnocchi to cook, continue to do so in batches until they are all finished.

While I love gnocchi that have been finished in a bit of brown butter and sage, you could also do a simple tomato sauce, a spicier puttanesca sauce, or do what I did today at the market demonstration today, and finish the gnocchi in a saute pan with some freshly chopped garlic, pre-rendered bacon, and a tender green of some kind, like spinach, Swiss chard, or kale.

To a heated saute pan, add a bit of oil (I use grapeseed oil, but you could also use a neutral oil like Canola or light olive) and, if you remembered to keep it while cooking the bacon, some of the rendered bacon fat. When the oil is hot, add about a tablespoon of chopped garlic and cook for a minute or so until you smell the garlic and it gets just a hint of color to it. Add your gnocchi to the saute pan and stir (or flip the contents if you know how) to coat the gnocchi in the garlic and oil. In addition to adding flavor to the gnocchi, sauteeing it for a few minutes allows you to add some crispy outer texture to it as well.

If you prefer a little bit of spice to your dish, add just a smidgeon of crushed red pepper to the pan. Not so much that it makes the dish spicy, but just enough so that it gives character to the finished dish. Next, add some of the crumbled bacon. Stir/toss to combine. Finally, add a large handful of fresh greens, and about 1/4 cup of the pasta cooking water to the pan. Quickly cover the pan with the lid and allow the greens to steam for about forty-five seconds. Remove the lid and toss the pasta one final time before tasting it to make sure it has enough salt and pepper. Adjust accordingly.

To serve, either plate on a family-style platter or in individual servings in a bowl. Sprinkle freshly grated Parmesan or Romano cheese on top and serve. This recipe would probably make 8-10 servings as an appetizer, or 4-5 servings as the pasta course.

While I will be the first to admit that making homemade gnocchi can be a time-consuming task, because you can break it down into bite-sized pieces (please pardon the expression), you can make it when you have time and freeze it and when you are ready to serve it for dinner, you need to do no more work than walk to your freezer and retrieve it. At the Howe Meadow Farmers Market where I made this exact dish yesterday for market goers, I made two batches of dough (though to be fair, I made the mashed potatoes the night before) and cooked it in three batches for tasters in roughly two hours. That included mixing the dough, rolling it, cutting it, cooking it and serving it.

And, in one of the best compliments I received all day during my demo, when I told a woman who had approached my tent what I was making, she looked apprehensive and said that while she has tried gnocchi many times, none had ever come close to her Italian Nonna. She watched as I finished the boiled gnocchi in the saute pan and spooned a portion into the small paper cup that the market had provided for me. I handed it to her and watched her expression as she tasted one and then a second of the small hot potato dumplings.

"In all the years I've been eating gnocchi, none has ever lived up to my Nonna's until now. Yours is as good as hers."

High praise, indeed! I hope you give this recipe a try for yourself. Once you learn the basics, it is quite easy to do and the results are really worth it. Even cooked from frozen, this gnocchi blows away anything you could purchase in a local supermarket.

Casa Mimi ... err, wait, I mean Casa Perfetto

I had added the longtime stalwart Casa Mimi's Italian Restaurant to my "To Eat" list quite some time ago due to a reader suggestion, only to recently hear rumors of its demise. Fearing that this Akron institution had finally succumbed to the downturn in the economy, I somewhat tentatively drove up Manchester Road half expecting to find a building dark and shuttered. What I discovered was that as a business entity, Casa Mimi was indeed gone. In its place, however, was a sign indicating that the restaurant was now called Casa Perfetto. Intrigued, I pulled into the lot behind the restaurant, parked my car, grabbed my camera bag and began the process of unearthing the truth.

Casa Perfetto was located at 2214 Manchester Road, Akron, OH 44314 and can be reached at 330-745-4447. Parking was behind the restaurant and to the side. While Casa Perfetto doesn't have their own website, there are a number of sites on the Internet talking about them and you can add yourself as a fan on their Facebook page.

While the restaurant used to have a storefront facing Manchester Road many years ago, for as long as I've known about Casa Mimi's, it has always looked like the front of a somewhat seedy bar:


Once inside the rear entrance, if you walk straight ahead, you will actually enter the bar area. If, instead you take the first door to your left (just past all of the pictures of the famous people who have dined at Mimi's/Perfetto's over the years), this was the location of the main dining area. Because it had been close to twelve years since I had stepped foot into this room, it was much smaller than I remembered. The room was very dimly lit and there were maybe three other tables of people at various points in their meals. When someone walked in behind me, she told me I could sit wherever I liked and since the lighting was the same throughout the room, I picked the rear corner table, just to be out of the way.

It turned out that the woman who sat me was one of the owners of Casa Perfetto, and while they had kept the name Casa Mimi for nearly twelve years after Mimi retired, only within the last year did they change the name to reflect their own last name. Fortunately, one of the brothers who had originally opened the restaurant was still the chef in the kitchen.

She left me with the large menu to look through as I waited for my server to make her way to my table:







Just inside the main entrance to the dining room was the Daily Specials Menu:


In addition to the items listed, apparently fresh frog legs were also available for the more adventurous diner.

When my server finally had a chance to stop at my table, I told her that it had been quite some time (more than a decade) since I last had a meal at the restaurant and if she could recommend something off of the menu. She gave me a somewhat perplexed look.

"It's hard to recommend one thing specifically. The chef makes everything from scratch, from pounding the chicken and veal cutlets to the sauces and desserts."

Seeing that there was gnocchi available in the pasta section of the menu, I responded, "Even the gnocchi?"

"Even the gnocchi," she replied. "And," she continued, "you can get a side of the gnocchi with any of the entrees for only a small upcharge."

I thanked her for her advice and she went back into the kitchen to retrieve the glass of water for which I had asked as well as a basket of warmed dinner rolls with pats of butter:


The dinner rolls weren't anything particularly special, although they were just a touch on the stale side. Perhaps they dried out slightly during the reheating process. Either way, they didn't make or break the meal.

After reading the menu description for the garlic bread, I decided that if the menu claimed it was the "world's best," then I would have to test that assertion:


The only real misstep in service tonight was that while I ordered my garlic bread with the rest of my meal, unfortunately my server forget to put the order in and as such, it came out with my entree instead of at the beginning. This didn't present too much of a problem considering I knew I would be taking home vast quantities of food, and having a little garlic bread for a later meal would be a fine thing indeed.

The garlic bread was essentially a split roll that had been brushed with butter and liberally sprinkled with fresh garlic and toasted under a broiler. Were they good? As a garlic lover, I was happy. Was it the best garlic bread in the world? I've actually had better and it wasn't in a restaurant (shout out to you, Debbie S.). The garlic bread reminded me slightly of the version that they used to serve at Parasson's before switching to their current Texas Toast knock-off. Don't get me wrong, it was good, but "world's best"? Um, no.

Each entree came with your choice of soup or salad to start off the meal and seeing that I had my choice between Egg Noodles in Brodo, Italian Wedding Soup, or Tortellini Soup, I made the choice to go with a classic Italian staple, Wedding Soup:


The last time I had eaten this soup was at Vaccaro's Trattoria during a family meal I had shared with friends. Casa Perfetto's version was tasty, well-seasoned, and had a nice blend of traditional ingredients such as meatballs, acini de pepe, escarole, and broth. In addition, as I dug into the bottom of the bowl, I lifted the spoon only to discover lots of melted, stringy cheese (which I assumed was shredded Mozzarella) and even more surprised to find several cheese tortellini. While Casa Perfetto's was good, Vaccaro's was better. Raphael Vaccaro finishes his soup with beaten egg and Romano cheese and the sharpness from the cheese gives his soup just a tad more depth. When I asked my server about the presence of the tortellini, she kind of smiled and shrugged her shoulders and indicated that the chef sometimes likes to get creative with the soup.

For my main course, I decided on Casa Perfetto's signature entree, Chicken Perfetto:


As the photo suggests, this was an enormous plate of food. As I cut the first piece of perfectly breaded and fried chicken meat, I discovered ultra tender and juicy chicken that had been combined with Provolone cheese and finished in a Marsala and mushroom sauce. Seasoned perfectly, the chicken just melted in my mouth. I kept wondering why there weren't more diners in the restaurant tonight with food this tasty. I suppose part of it could be the price tag: my entree alone was $18. That would make each breast worth $9. Would I pay $9 for a half portion? Yes, I would. While I always love having leftovers (especially if the meal was good), knowing that you will be leaving with half of your meal before even entering the restaurant gave it a slightly Cheesecake Factory vibe to it.

For my side dish, I upgraded the capellini in red sauce to the Gnocchi in Meat Sauce:


When I first moved to Akron back in 2004, I couldn't find any restaurants offering a good version of this potato-laden pasta. All of the pre-made ones at the grocery store came out heavy and leaden and just sat in the pit of my stomach. So, I did what any resourceful foodie would do, I taught myself how to make gnocchi from scratch. I very much like the version that I make (and will be blogging my recipe over the summer), but I also realize there are other textures out in the gnocchi-eating world, too. Casa Perfetto's version wasn't quite as light as my own, but it also wasn't heavy, either. The dumplings had a nice chew and tasted quite good on their own sans sauce. With the rich, hearty meat sauce covering the gnocchi, this became a side dish to remember. At the rear of the photograph above, the sauce looks a little more orange-ish than the sauce on top. That was because the chef had mixed the red sauce with cheese, tossed the gnocchi in that, and then ladled even more red sauce on top. Delicious.

Because I ate only half of my chicken and gnocchi, I decided to entertain the idea of dessert. Anticipating that I would need something bitter to cut through the sweetness of dessert, I ordered a cup of decaffeinated coffee, black:


Of the four desserts my server described to me tonight (all of which are made in-house), the one that grabbed my attention was the simple Cannoli:


What I often forget about true Italian desserts was that they often were sweetened, but not overly so. This was exactly the case tonight with the cannoli. Filled with sweetened Ricotta, the freshly fried cannoli shell had been dipped in colored sugar and plated on a dessert plate that had been artfully drizzled with chocolate syrup. There were also bits of bittersweet chocolate inside the Ricotta filling. The cannoli shell was so crisp that it shattered easily as I pierced it with my fork. This single cannoli (or should I just call it a cannolo?) was roughly $6, and while delicious, seemed a bit high for this type of dessert.

After packing up all of my leftovers, my server dropped off my check. With tip and tax, my meal tonight was slightly over $43. While the food had been delicious, I basically had to grapple with the fact that I just paid $21.50 for two meals. The experience reminded me of a meal at Buca de Beppo, where going by oneself for dinner is a guarantee of a large doggy bag of food. When I asked my server about the lack of clientele tonight, she seemed nonplussed by it and said that after they had been swamped over the Christmas and New Year's holidays, she was actually glad to get a bit of a break. She indicated that Tuesday nights (the night I went) were a bit of a toss up: sometimes they were busy and sometimes not. She did recommend that if I decided to return for a weekend visit or if I had a large number of guests in my party that it would be smart to call ahead for a reservation.

I greatly enjoyed my food and dining experience tonight at Casa Perfetto. While Casa Mimi may be a thing of the past, Casa Perfetto will likely be keeping the Italian food tradition alive for quite a few more years. If this type of Italian fare appeals to you, I would heartily recommend you track them down and give them a try yourself. While cheaper Italian fare can be had elsewhere, the kind of quality ingredients and successful execution of old-school Italian classics at this level is a rare treat indeed.

The Veggie-Vegan Project: Deagan's Kitchen & Bar

For the fourth installment of The Veggie-Vegan Project, I turned to a friend and fellow food blogger, Jill, who through the Meetup group she managed, Cleveland Eats, taught me about this month's dining hotspot, Deagan's Kitchen & Bar. It turned out that Deagan's offered a daily specials menu and on Wednesdays, not only could you order from their regular menu, but also from a specially prepared list of both vegetarian and vegan based dishes. While I was originally supposed to join the Cleveland Eats group when they originally went back in February, unforeseen personal circumstances kept me from that night.

So, to rectify the situation, this past Wednesday, myself, Eric, Paul, and Edsel descended upon Deagan's around 6:30 PM to sample some of the veggie-vegan treats off the menu. Deagan's was located at 14810 Detroit Avenue, Lakewood, OH 44107 and can be reached at 216-767-5775. They have a website as well. There was a street-side entrance and a rear entrance behind the building where additional parking was located. I happened to park in a parking lot across the street from Deagan's and walked the five minutes to discover the front entrance:


Once inside, my eyes quickly adjusted to the dim lighting of the bar area. It turned out that the hostess stand was at the opposite end of the restaurant and as I started walking in that direction, the hostess must have spotted me entering the restaurant from Detroit because she began walking towards me. After requesting a table for four, she sat me at a nice out of the way table by the window in the front of the restaurant.

Here were photographs of Deagan's regular dinner menu:




What impressed me about Deagan's regular menu was that even on a regular non-Vegan night, there were still a handful of options from which to choose. The special dining menu for the evening obviously added a few more choices:


After our group fully assembled and received our round of drinks, we decided to start off the evening with some shared items. First up was the Ponzu Marinated Tofu with Soba Noodle Salad:


The tofu had been coated with a type of starch before deep frying resulting in the tofu having a nice crispy exterior while still maintaining a soft interior. The ponzu marinade, typically comprised of soy sauce and yuzu (a Japanese citrus) added notes of citrus, salt, and umami. The soba noodle salad had been dressed lightly and the flavors worked quite well together. All in all, this was a really tasty appetizer.

Our second appetizer was off of today's specials menu, the Sundried Tomato Hummos:


While red in appearance, that was about as close to tomato as this hummos got. That's not to say it tasted bad, but there was almost no discernible acidic bite from the sundried tomatoes. There was, however, an abundance of cumin, which besides the tahini, were the primary flavors. I'm not personally a fan of cumin in hummos, but I know that enough restaurants offer it that way to know that it is not an unusual ingredient. The pita wedges that came with the hummos went from soft and pliable to stiff and a bit stale. I'll give Deagan's the benefit of the doubt and admit that the stale wedges might have been the ones sitting on top exposed to the air. If you are interested in hummos, I would recommend you order this. If you are interested in sundried tomato hummos, I'd say skip it.

Our final appetizer, the House Roasted Nuts, was an immediate hit at our table:


Finished in fresh rosemary and just a touch of spice (from cayenne pepper, I'm guessing), these were tasty, herbaceous, and spicy, all at the same time. Additionally, at the cost of only $4, this would make a killer bar snack. The dish contained cashews, marcona almonds, walnuts, and pecans which had been toasted to bring out all of the nut oils which made them even more tasty. Unless you have nut sensitivities, this is one appetizer sure to please your palate AND your wallet.

Our starters out of the way, we next moved on to our entree portion of the meal. As with many other modern restaurants, Deagan's offered various sized food options. There were appetizers, small plates, large plates, and sides. Since I had already eaten quite a bit during our appetizers, I decided to go with a small plate and a side for my dinner tonight. For my small plate, I choose the Crisp Eggplant with Ricotta, Arugula, and Stewed Tomatoes:


This was as tasty to eat as it was to look at. The eggplant had been rolled around the ricotta filling, almost involtini-style. The breading on the eggplant was crispy and not greasy, the filling was cheesy and delicious and the acidity from the stewed tomatoes worked well against the fatty components of the dish. The only item on the plate that didn't really bring its party hat was the arugula. Usually nice and peppery, tonight's version was sort of bland and lifeless. It wasn't a question of freshness, just that this particular batch didn't add anything to the dish.

For my side, I decided on going with the Truffled Cream Corn:


Even before this dish was placed on the table, I could pick up the heady aroma of truffle oil. While truffle oil usually makes everything better, in tonight's case, it really couldn't do much for the cream corn itself. While definitely containing cream, the sauce was too thin and instead of coating the corn, in reality it was closer to swimming in it. The corn itself, while I understand that this is March and not August, didn't offer the level of sweetness I've come to expect even in frozen corn kernels. It was also lacking just a tiny bit in the salt department as well. I think, in the end, what hurt this dish the most was that the corn itself, just like the arugula had been, was too flat in flavor.

My dining companion, Edsel, ordered the Potato Gnocchi from the daily specials menu:


He graciously let me have a bite of his dish and while the gnocchi were tender, they had almost no resistance to them, making them too soft. The flavor of the sauce, however, was quite good, although the peas were a bit on the starchy side. In fact, both Paul and Eric had ordered the Griddled Polenta which came with mushrooms and peas and each of them also noted how starchy the peas were, too. Surely a sign that they were used before being ripe enough.

On the whole, Deagan's had some hits and some misses. All of us agreed that we would come back for another meal, but I don't think this initial impression lived up to the hype that the restaurant had been given by others. The one item that impressed all of us tonight was the variety of vegetarian and vegan options available at a restaurant which definitely serves its fair share of meat-based dishes. The bill was also equally as impressive. The dinner for the four of us with six cocktails/beers and tax came to a very reasonable $90.

Would I recommend Deagan's Kitchen & Bar? Yes, I would. Although some of the ingredients tonight weren't at their peak, the only major food execution error that I saw tonight was the overly creamy cream corn. With the availability of better produce available just around the corner, I'm hoping that the flat tasting and starchy vegetable problem will correct itself soon enough. One thing is for certain, if you are looking for vegetarian and vegan options, you won't be disappointed in your choice selection.

Sharing A Meal At One Red Door

As part of the 2010 Taste of Hudson "challenge," similar to the one I created at the 2010 Taste of Akron, I targeted three vendors whose restaurants had yet to be reviewed here on the blog. This year, the three selectees were the North End Restaurant with Chef Jeff Jarrett (who has since departed to open up a new restaurant, Palate Restaurant & Lounge), Blue Canyon with Chef Brandt Evans, and a relative newcomer to the First and Main scene, One Red Door with Chef Shawn Monday who had recently left another Hudson institution, Downtown 140, to open up and run his own restaurant.

Realizing that the restaurant had opened up right around the same time as the Taste of Hudson, I wanted to give him and his staff a couple of weeks to get settled into their routine and work out any kinks in both the front of the house as well as the back. While it seems like it would be great to be the first person publishing a critical review of a new restaurant, often until things calm down and the staff discovers its groove, the experience of eating at a newly opened restaurant can vary wildly.

Five weeks after they opened, I contacted my good friend and public relations/marketing guru Jayni (designer of the awesome business cards for the blog) and asked if she would join me for dinner. After agreeing on a time and date for our meal, when the day finally came, I drove over to Hudson with great anticipation. One Red Door was situated in the First and Main district, specifically where Vue Restaurant used to be located. The address for One Red Door was 49 Village Way, Hudson, OH 44236 and they can be reached at 330-342-3667 or at info@onereddoorhudson.com. They also have a website (Warning: Heavy Flash content with music turned on by default). Free parking was either at curbside parking spots on the street or in the parking garage a five minute walk from the restaurant.

Not knowing how long it would take to get from my job to the restaurant, I showed up thirty minutes before our reservation time. After taking a picture of the front door,


I decided to check in with the hostess to let her know that I had arrived and would be having a cocktail in the bar. After settling down in one of the seats at the bar, I proceeded to order a favorite pre-dinner cocktail, a Grey Goose Martini, up, with bleu cheese stuffed olives:


Execution-wise, the martini was okay. I've had versions of this cocktail where the bartender shook the vodka and ice so thoroughly that a thin, almost imperceptible layer of ice crystals floated on top of the liquid. As you sipped the drink, the finely distributed crystals would instantly melt in your mouth. Today's cocktail, while cold, also came with sizable unmelted pieces of ice which definitely did not melt upon sipping.

The cocktail aside, however, it was listening to the bartender's banter with the other guests at the bar that caught my attention. When I am by myself at a bar (or a restaurant for that matter), I am usually engaged in checking websites or email messages on my smartphone. In addition to that activity, I am usually multi-tasking and listening in to the conversations happening around me. As the bartender was regaling several of the other patrons about a woman who had complained that the service had been off during the restaurant's first week of business, my ears perked up and I tuned in.

"Of course there were some problems," he told the complaining woman. "We've only been open for a week."

I saw this as my chance. "So have all the kinks been worked out yet?" I asked.

"Oh, yeah. We've been open for a little over five weeks now and it's all good."

In case you're wondering, gentle reader, I am somewhat playfully using a technique called foreshadowing.

As I continued to sip my cocktail and wait for my guest to arrive, the banter of the bartender actually turned a fair bit crass, dutifully detailing his theory on why his current wife had never gotten pregnant with prior sexual partners. I understand the need to talk to your audience in order to connect with them, but this didn't seem quite appropriate given the surroundings.

Jayni arrived promptly at 6:30 and after a quick return trip to check in at the hostess stand, we were promptly shown to our table and handed the single page menu. I opted to take three photographs, one of each "pane" of the menu:




In addition to catching up with a friend, my dining companion was excited to be joining me on one of my anonymous blogging expeditions and wanted to know all about my "process." I explained that other than trying to taste as many flavors as possible, just order what sounds good. To that end, we agreed to split one item from the Tastes, one from the Flatbreads, and one from the Shared items. When our server finally returned with our drink orders, I indicated that we'd be splitting the first part of the meal. Since the Shared item was a salad, he helpfully suggested that the kitchen could just split it onto two plates. After placing our order, Jayni and I got down to the serious business of catching up, something we had both been too busy to do for quite some time.

It was at this point I noticed the first glitch in service tonight. Other tables had bread plates with bread on them. Ours remained empty. No worries, I thought to myself, I'm sure he'll back around with the bread basket. Sadly, I was mistaken and by the time our appetizers arrived, skipping the bread course just seemed like a foregone conclusion.

First up were the warmed olives with oil and herbs:


Serving plates of warmed olives seems to be a trendy thing to do nowadays as I've seen it at all sorts of other restaurants. Warming the olives, in theory, will help release more of their natural flavor and the fresh herbs used help to provide a counterpoint to their flavor. Tonight's olives were small Nicoise olives and a larger, unexpectedly sweeter green olive (whose name I never got). These were okay and if you're into warmed olives, this would be right up your alley. I, however, was not particularly enamored by them (and to be fair, nor would I be at most restaurants).

Next up was the three cheese marinara flatbread with parsley and basil:


Made with actual Italian 00 flour, I wanted to see what Chef Monday's take on this thin crispy bread would be. When the flatbread arrived, I inspected both the top and the bottom. While there was definitely freshly chopped parsley sprinkled on top, I didn't detect any sign of fresh basil as the menu had suggested. The bottom of the pizza had been browned only to the point where the crust was mostly blond with a spot of tasty brownness every now and again. One of the hallmarks of a nicely cooked pie (or flatbread in this case) is the presence of a nice brown caramelized crust.

I took a bite and while I could taste the sharpness from the cheeses and the richness from the marinara sauce, the flatbread only achieved half of its raison d'etre. While it did have a nice crispy crust, it lacked the chewiness in the crumb that was the hallmark of a really good Neopolitan style pizza. Which, okay, technically it wasn't being called a pizza on the menu, but let's call a spade a spade. It wasn't a bad pie, in fact it was better than average. It just wasn't great.

It was during our appetizer noshing that service issue number two reared its ugly head: refills. Jayni was a Diet Coke drinker and as such, had finished her first glass in no time flat. When the server came over to check on us, she asked him for a refill. When he returned to the table a second time, sans refill, she had to remind him again before he brought her another beverage. Had this happened once during the meal, it would be pretty easy to brush off. However, this happened several times, going from the slightly inconvenient to quite annoying.

Our third appetizer was a poached Bartlett pear salad with hazelnuts and crumbled bleu cheese:


What you see in the photograph was a half portion of the salad as my dining companion and I split this. Both of us felt that the full size salad would've been enough for an entire meal. You may want to keep that in mind should you decide to order this on your visit, gentle reader. The salad was flavorful, the salad greens were dressed nicely in a hazelnut vinaigrette, and the textural balance between the creamy cheese and the crunchy toasted hazelnuts worked quite well. In short, this was a tasty salad. The pear had been properly poached and as such was soft without being mushy and turned out to be a nicely sweet contrast to the tangy and salty elements in the dish.

Having finished our starters, our server now returned to the table to take our entrée orders. Jayni ordered the chicken, which I was also considering, but instead ended up going with the pan seared Grouper with lobster gnocchi and Maine lobster jus. When I asked our server if the kitchen cooked the fish to a specific temperature, he looked puzzled and asked me what I meant. "Uh, oh," I thought to myself. I started to try and explain my question but realized that his continued look of apprehension over this line of questioning meant that for sure there would be a breakdown in communications. I changed my tune and simply said, "However the chef recommends it will be fine."

After some time (and still with no bread and Jayni's glass of Diet Coke sitting empty), our dinner plates finally made their way out of the kitchen. In what turned out to be another service hiccup, after removing our salad plates from the table which contained both of our knives, the server never came back around with new cutlery to replace the removed pieces. When our entrées arrived, I had to point out that we would be needing two new knives and it took several minutes for him to return with the proper silverware. I have a funny feeling that with the multiple service mistakes we had experienced tonight, it wasn't necessarily One Red Door's issue, but this particular server.

Continuing forward, here was my grouper:


The grouper had been pan seared on the presentation side (the side you see first) and the crust on the fish was an enjoyable contrast to the soft, creaminess of the flesh underneath. I'd say the fish came out somewhere between medium and medium-well, which meant while it was moist, it could've been just a touch moister. The potato gnocchi accompanying the fish was also caramelized and, just as with the fish, served as a nice contrast to the interior of the small potato dumplings.

The lobster portion of "potato lobster gnocchi" was simply pieces of cooked lobster meat tossed in with the gnocchi. Sadly, the lobster meat was a bit chewy and honestly, other than the Maine lobster jus served underneath the fish, it felt a little out of place. The broth, however was properly seasoned (as was the entire dish) and the sautéed spinach located underneath the grouper was a nice touch. The only real complaint I had about the dish was the perceived value. At $25.50, this was the second most expensive item on the menu and both Jayni and I felt that the portion seemed small for that price point.

Not normally a dessert person, when Jayni suggested that we split one, I quickly agreed. Here was a shot of the dessert menu:


Figuring that Jayni's sweet tooth needed to be satisfied more than mine, I gave control of the dessert selection to her. She picked the Maple Carrot Cake with Cream Cheese Frosting and Candied Walnut:


At $8, this seemed on the high side for desserts in northeast Ohio. While the cake had a very good flavor and the crumb was incredibly moist, what Jayni and I noticed almost right away was that there wasn't any textural contrast to the cake. One would assume that if the cake had been adorned with a candied walnut that there would be chopped walnuts inside the cake, too. Not so. Even the carrots, normally added in their crunchy raw state, had softened to the point where they didn't add a contrast either. Don't get me wrong, it was a good piece of carrot cake. But it didn't wow either one of us. The other thing that both of noticed was that there wasn't anything particularly impressive about the presentation; an average size piece of cake, sitting on a white plate sprinkled with powdered sugar and adorned with a sliced and fanned strawberry (albeit a tasty one).

While we did finish the cake, it left us both feeling like it could have been much more than it was.

For the two of us, between tip and tax, it came to $100 (not counting my cocktail earlier in the evening). While I think you will get a tasty meal at One Red Door, the service blips between the bartender and our server were a bit too obvious to ignore. While the bartender may have been referring to the kitchen working out its kinks, I think the front of house staff needs to undergo the same level of scrutiny as the back. With the dish I had tasted from One Red Door during the Taste of Hudson had left me slightly worried, tonight's dinner definitely redeemed them in my eyes. I definitely recommend that you check them out.