25 Best Restaurants: Fahrenheit

Before Rocco Whalen opened Fahrenheit in 2002 at age 24, his friend Michael Symon gave him three tips. Don't serve lunch. Don't serve brunch. Be the best you can be and use the best ingredients possible. Whalen's Professor Avenue mainstay thrives on that last one. Before Dante Boccuzzi and Zack Bruell moved in, Whalen helped make Tremont a dining hot spot by setting high standards with fresh ingredients, house-made pasta and bold flavor combinations such as the chili rub and vanilla parsnip puree on his coffee-and-mustard-crusted pork tenderloin ($27). Yet the restaurant's constant evolution has kept Clevelanders coming back for 14 years. Every six to eight weeks, Whalen reinvents the menu with seasonal twists such as a wood-grilled avocado served with a goat cheese crostini ($11), while keeping classics such as braised Kobe beef short ribs ($35). What drives his innovation? Fellow chefs. "All of these transformations happening a couple of blocks away, I can't just let my place get sluggish," Whalen says. Don't Miss: There may be cloth napkins here, but Whalen knows the hard-working heart of his customers calls for comfort food like the Cleveland nachos ($14.75), razor-thin potatoes, goat cheese fondue, bacon and scallions. "That's Cleveland to me, because we are a meat-and-potatoes, roll-up-your-sleeves town," he says. Kitchen Confidential: On Friday and Saturday after 11 p.m. at the Literary Cafe, find Whalen and chef friends including Symon or Flour's Matthew Mytro knocking back Rolling Rocks. "That's the chef's hang of the neighborhood," he says. 2417 Professor Ave., Cleveland, 216-781-8858, chefroccowhalen.com