Ever since going to Emeril’s restaurant in Vegas I’ve become cautious about going to a ‘celebrity’ chef restaurant. Our experiences (Emeril, Wolfgang Puck, frontera grill, etc) have been that they are over-hyped, over-crowded, expensive and poorly staffed. With that said we both enjoyed Lola Bistro (Michael Symon of Food TV, Iron Chef, etc…) in Cleveland.
To start I’ll say the iPad drink/wine menu was a bit gimmicky but what the heck.
The restaurant is very well done inside. The room is bigger than I would have expected but felt comfortable. The bar was very nice with the entire wine collection behind glass on display. The kitchen is open with limited seating for watching the cooking while you eat (wish we knew that ahead of time.)
After a drink we had:
- Bibb Salad: pickled red onions, pancetta, pecorino, buttermilk dressing
- Beet Salad: roasted beets, blue cheese, grapes, almonds
- Smoked Hampshire Pork Chop: chiles, cheesy polenta, bbq onions
- Duck: sweetpotato, cranberries, mushroom, kale
- Lola Fries
All of the food was very tasty, out waiter was fantastic. With the exception of one overly loud diner, the atmosphere was good, albeit a bit loud (music, not talking).
For desert we had the Chocolate-Hazelnut Flourless Cake: beet parfait, dark chocolate-praline sauce, tangerine emulsion, beet paper, hazelnut ice cream. Very good. Overall we liked it and would go back again after visiting a few of the other restaurants in the area first.
Seems stupid COVID-19 does not care if you are famous or not…