When the management team at Ohio City’s Jaja began the search for a new executive chef, one member of the kitchen staff summed up what everyone else was thinking: “Please just make sure you hire someone else nice,” they requested.
After all, the new chef had big shoes to fill in succeeding the talented and well-liked executive chef Brian Whalen, who’d been with the restaurant since it opened in fall 2022. After helping launch Jaja to success, Whalen had parted ways amiably for a new endeavor — and Nora O’Malley, chief operating officer of Jaja’s parent company Harbor Bay Hospitality, knew it would be a tall order to find his replacement.
“We wanted a chef who could carry on Brian’s creativity, passion and our style of shared dining,” O’Malley says. “We knew we needed someone who had worked with globally inspired flavors — classic foundations with modern techniques.”
And then along came executive chef John Bell.
Bell, a Georgia native and one-time kindergarten teacher, is an accomplished pastry chef who spent much of his hospitality career in hotels and catering, plus a 14-month stint as a private chef in Beijing, China. He moved to Cleveland in 2019, working at the Downtown Hilton and the Marriott at Key Tower before setting his sights on something new.
“Hotels are an awesome place to grow your career, but they’re driven by these scoring systems that become your motivation for everything,” Bell says, referring to the star ratings that rank hotels. “I started to want my work to have more to do with the customers, not just meeting those target numbers.”
Bell worked with a recruiter for more than a year to try to find a Cleveland restaurant that felt like the right fit. The night he got the call about Jaja, it felt like a sign from the universe: His wife, Anise, had eaten there with friends the night before — and he’d just been eyeing her leftovers in their fridge.
“These folks have really created something new, and they’re trying to give people a different dining experience,” Bell says in his light Southern drawl. “It really is meant to be more of an experience than just food on the table.”
He’s acclimated quickly to his role at Jaja, making tweaks to the existing menu to tighten up flavors and presentation. He has no plans to overhaul the concept, so diners can expect to still see the dishes they love. Still, he’s already dreaming of experiments to come — starting with his specialty, dessert, and a new spring menu.
“In every meal, the one thing everybody remembers is how it ends,” he says, “so I want to put an exclamation point on the end of it.”
In the past, he’s experimented with elements like fire and liquid nitrogen. He’s also inspired by other restaurants’ creativity, namely the famous, edible, abstract art dessert at Chicago’s Alinea, and hopes to create a version of his own.
For now, Bell is reveling in his new role at Jaja. It’s not unusual to spot him making the rounds in the dining room, saying hellos and welcoming diners’ feedback. His friendly, laid-back, Southern demeanor makes an ethereal dining experience feel all the more inviting.
“The fact that he has all of these global influences and all of this pastry discipline and that he’s just so nice,” O’Malley says. “We just feel really lucky that we found him.”
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