Food & Drink

Thyme Table: Cleveland's 25 Best Restaurants

With time, owner Mike Smith has built one of the West Side suburbs' best restaurants with some help from a stellar bar program.

by Dillon Stewart | Apr. 28, 2022 | 12:00 PM

Courtesy Thyme Table

Courtesy Thyme Table

The mural on the front of chef and owner Mike Smith’s Westlake restaurant reads “Good things take Thyme.” Opening just before the pandemic will give you that kind of patience.

In 2020, we named Thyme Table our Best New Restaurant. These days, lobster-topped tots ($14) offer a fun high-low appetizer, while the BBQ braised short ribs ($34) with creamy cheddar grits warmed me up on a January day. The seared lobster shrimp cakes ($27) arrived atop attractive jet-black noodles made from infused vegetable ash and a thick, tomato-based sauce.

Still, the craft cocktail menu from barkeep Eric Scott steals the show with drinks like the Earl Boss ($13), which uses oleo, a margarine made in house by soaking spiced orange peels in sugar and extracting their oils.

With time, Thyme Table has come into its own. thymextable.com

Our full list of 34 Best Restaurants, 10 Best New Restaurants and reader-voted Silver Spoon Awards is your guide to Cleveland’s best bites.

Dillon Stewart

Dillon Stewart is the editor of Cleveland Magazine. He studied web and magazine writing at Ohio University's E.W. Scripps School of Journalism and got his start as a Cleveland Magazine intern. His mission is to bring the storytelling, voice, beauty and quality of legacy print magazines into the digital age. He's always hungry for a great story about life in Northeast Ohio and beyond.

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