Noodle Cat Creeps Out of the Bag

I was lucky enough to be called in to sample the incredibly awaited fare at Noodle Cat, in downtown Cleveland, on their coveted Friends and Family pre-opening night.  Noodle Cat, for those of you out of the loop, is the incredible Japanese noodle house created by the famous Chef Sawyer of Greenhouse Tavern, which is slated to open, this coming Tuesday July 19th.  Noodle Cat's plan is simple, fresh and delicious Japanese influenced noodle dishes (and maybe a few other dishes too).

  The noodles are super fresh and made in house.  The flavors are clean, salty, and perfect for slurping.  We started with the bright cucumber miso appetizer,

which featured fresh local crispy cucumbers with three types of miso (including a spicy miso).  We also had the amazing chicken wings,

which I have raved about before, and the pickled plate.  For dinner, we all ordered one each of the entrees.  I managed to finish off the udon with silken tofu and mushrooms in a seaweed broth,

while also tasting the shredded pork ramen, the pork belly ramen, and the soba noodles.

 All were excellent.  If Chef Sawyer runs Noodle Cat anything like he does Greenhouse, it is sure to be a humongous success.  If you love Japanese, get in line on Tuesday.  I'll see you there.

Wong Shows Cleveland Some Love

Cleveland is making strides in the race to provide its citizens with great food and talented chefs.  Jonathon Sawyer from the delicious Greenhouse Tavern on East 4th St. just pulled off his first Cleveland execution of a pop-up restaurant.  The "Brick and Mortar" pop-up was held last weekend, just around the corner from Greenhouse Tavern, in the soon to be home of the brand new Noodle Cat (a full service noodle and dumpling house).  As downtown continues to struggle economically, the addition of the pop-up restaurant, which helps to draw lots of young working people into downtown, is just what Cleveland needs.  The featured chef was Lee Anne Wong, and many of the movers and shakers in the Cleveland food scene showed up to give their support, and most importantly, to eat.

Lee Anne was one of the top contenders on Top Chef's first season, and has since worked with Bravo and many other big names in creating and promoting interesting cuisine.  The theme of the dinner was Easy Japaneasy, and featured a perfectly sized array of simple Japanese influenced dishes.  We started off the tasting menu with an order of the Vanilla-Shichimi Pepper Chicken Wings. While Greenhouse makes amazingly moist and flavorful wings- these were unbelievably twice as good.  The tender meat was slightly sweet, incredibly tender (falling off of the bone), and mostly spicy!  Wings can be a bit messy to eat, but being able to taste such a perfect debut of a chicken wing...was well worth the very slight embarrassment of when the waiter came by to clean off (with both hands) our pile of crumpled napkins .

Next we had the Tonkatsu Sliders with mustard-katsu sauce and cabbage salad.

The pork was fried crispy and light- cooked perfectly throughout, while the cabbage salad provided the tangy bright citrus flavor to balance out the dish. So good.

They offered a few different cocktails and my favorite Japanese beer, Hitachino.  We finished off the tasting menu with the Hatcho Miso Marinated Beef and the Chilled Buckwheat Soba Noodles.  Both were also fantastic, while the chicken wings had to be my favorite.  

The finale was a small dish of soft serve with soy caramel, topped with black sesame brittle, matcha rice krispies and marinated mango.  Even though the soft serve was a bit too soft, as Sawyer had just bought his very first soft serve machine, it was pure heaven.  The caramel, nutty soy flavor of the soft serve, made the perfect backdrop for the crunchy machta krispies and super fresh mango.  I wounder if they can just set up an ice cream stand while the restaurant is closed... 

We posed for a quick picture with Lee Anne, and thanked her for the delicious meal, and all of her hard work.  

If you are around for the next pop-up, check it out.  You should be willing to try new foods and appreciate the creativity of the chef.  Follow Sawyer and his pop-ups on Facebook.

See you there next time!

Flour Puts Its Mark On Cleveland

  We arrived back in Cleveland in the late afternoon, after a busy past few days of travel.  We were starving.  I usually have no idea where to get a quick and delicious meal when I step off the plane knowing that my refrigerator is empty.  However, I had been wanting to try the new Flour restaurant that just opened, not far from Chagrin Falls.  Flour offers rustic Italian food, creating their own house-cured meats, and wood fired pizzas.  They source seasonally and locally.   While Flour is not anywhere near the airport, and nowhere near my home, the enticement of great food, far outweighed the few more minutes of travel that I had to endure.  

Truthfully, I am really quite picky when it comes to restaurants, as I feel that it is fairly easy to make good food at home.  That said, Flour was fantastic.  The service was quick and knowledgeable.  The atmosphere was modern and relaxed, and most importantly, the food was top notch.  Growing up Italian, in San Francisco, this is exactly the food that makes me feel at home.  

We started with the calamari   They were light, crispy and not oily or overly salted.  They were garnished with a fried basil leaf and a few tiny slices of fried lemon.

Then we had the panzanella, which was grilled bread with black olives, roasted red peppers, garlic, olive oil, white balsamic and a bit of fresh basil. Fresh, light and not the least bit soggy or heavy. 

For the main course I ordered the fungi pizza with Taleggio cheese and truffle oil.  The crust, the most difficult part of making pizza, was perfect.  It is actually the best I have tried in Cleveland so far. 

  

Brian had the Lamb Conserva, a perfect nugget of moist tender lamb with a few added vegetable for garnish.

Brian finished that one off pretty easily.

If you haven't made the trek yet, (or maybe you are lucky enough to live close by) Flour is becoming a favorite for me, and is definitely worth a trip.  With a full bar and a full menu of interesting, local, rustic Italian specialties, I will be back very soon.  Maybe they could think about moving downtown- closer to me?   

Padrons Spice It Up!

 I awoke to this helicopter right outside of my bedroom window this past Sunday morning. Waking up to the very loud propeller, literally right outside of our window was not quiet like gently opening your eyes to the sweet sound of little birds chirping outside.  I jumped up onto the bed, (and stepped on Brian's arm in the process) to look outside.  All I could see at that moment was a crowd of people on the street looking up (not very settling). A few minutes of twisting my neck and smashing my face against the window later, the helicopter moved into view... and I could finally see what was actually happening.  A construction team decided that Sunday morning was the perfect time to drop a helicopter into the middle of our residential airspace, so that they could move a few large air conditioning units from one building to another.  Although a simple notice under my door mentioning the expected disturbance would have been appreciated, I was just glad that it was not a rescue expedition of some sort.  I really do not have pajamas that I would want the city of Cleveland to see me in. 

So with that sudden awakening, I moved into my office/living room to catch up on reading some of my favorite blogs.  There sure are a lot of bloggers out there... Everybody talking about something interesting (or not).  Reading through different sites, I kept getting enticed to click on their favorite blog links.  Before I knew it, not knowing how, or why, an hour later I ended up on random blogger site #45 reading about some girl's confessions of her cohabitational life.  Who could ever miss the Sunday paper, when you have the Internet? It is a never ending Sunday paper.    

Ok so, back to what is important. Cooking!  Nothing like some spicy fresh Padron peppers to add a little heat to our Cleveland overcast skies .

While we were out, we picked up these, at the local produce market. 

These are a bit larger than the Padron peppers that I have had many times before, but just as bright and beautiful. 

I washed them and tossed them in olive oil, a small handful of smashed garlic and salt and pepper.

I put them on a sheet pan and popped them under the broiler, on high, for about 5 minutes.  

When they were done, I spritzed them with a squirt of Meyer lemon juice, and ate them warm. 

Unfortunately, I could live off of these, so they do not last very long with me around. But be warned.  They may not look it, but they can be spicy! This batch was especially spicy, which I love, but they left Brian running for water a few times...and not to mention some stomach troubles the next morning.  I told him to just keep practicing.

Sweet Cleveland.

Cleveland really loves it's ice cream.  Here it is the end of March and Sweet Moses, a re-created old-time soda shop, is having its grand opening. What a perfect day for ice cream...sunny, blue skies... and 30 degrees.  Honestly, this soda shop has so much more than just ice cream.  

There are chocolates,

 and rocky road,

 and toffee,

  

 and much more.  The best part, of course, is that they make all of their ice cream, toppings, sauces, chocolates, and candies in house.   Today, being the opening day celebration, they were handing out samples of their different treats and mini ice-cream cones that gathered a fan base immediately. 

Although, I have only gone to an authentic soda fountain once or twice...I remember travelling through California with my family and my parents suddenly decided that we need to let the kids out to breathe for little.  So we stopped to get ice cream in some small town with no stop light.  Sweet Moses takes that old time sweetness and makes it new and shiny.  The 16-foot Tennessee marble counter-top and the dark-wood bar, make it elegant, while the small location in the middle of the Gordon Arts district make it quaint.  I wanted to pull up a seat at the counter and watch the smiling, nimble, bow-tied bar man make those creamy, frothy, rich milkshakes. Sweet Moses makes me think of my grandmother and how she would love to take me and my younger sister to a place just like this on a Saturday afternoon.  She would tell us to order whatever we wanted.  And she might even get a little pushy until we would let loose a little, and order an elaborate sundae or other specialty. 

 I still wonder why the frozen yogurt craze has not yet hit Cleveland, but why would it, when they can have real homemade ice cream and sweets, like at Sweet Moses.