In a building you could almost miss off the beaten path, Ohio City’s ultra-cool, artfully branded pizza shop would be right at home in a bigger city like Los Angeles or New York, where chef and entrepreneur Vincent Morelli learned to make pizza. Thankfully, this wood fired pizzeria is all Cleveland’s. 5010 Lorain Ave., Cleveland, centspizza.com
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Here are three must-try dishes at the restaurant.
1. Sunday gravy ($18). Inspired by his grandparents’ Sunday pasta dinners, Morelli uses his grandmother’s meatball recipe. “This pizza is basically that Sunday pasta sauce but built onto a pizza,” he says. “The smell and taste are nostalgic for me.”
2. Cherry pie ($20). This savory and sweet pizza offers tomato sauce, mozzarella cheese, spicy Italian salumi and dollops of ricotta cheese dotted with syrupy Luxardo cherries and sprigs of fresh mint.
3. Canchovy with Wonderbread ($16). High-grade Ortiz Cantabrian anchovies cure in salt for five months before being hand-filleted and packed in olive oil. Cent’s serves them over a bed of parsley with butter and lemon juice. “It’s salty and umami from the anchovies and tangy and creamy from our house-cultured butter,” Morelli says. Spread the concoction over a hunk of puffy Wonderbread.
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