Shell Shocker
It may say "Hodge's" on the big red sign hanging over the bar, but Chris Hodgson's downtown restaurant includes a good dose of his fiancee, Jacquelyn Romanin, as well. "A lot of things you see on my menu come from her favorites," he says. Fans of Hodgson's Hodge Podge truck on the Food Network's Great Food Truck Race will remember Romanin and Hodgson's sister Catie as his partners in the four-wheeled adventure. But Romanin's culinary tastes are more Ford than Maserati. So her affection for French onion soup becomes Hodge's popular French onion ravioli. "She loves mussels, which is crazy because she has never been the most adventurous eater," says Hodgson. For that, we should all be thankful. The mussels appetizer ($12.50) fits Hodge's global-inspired comfort food philosophy and provides a tasty link to Hodgson's food truck beginnings. He replaces the usual white wine, tomato and butter with an Asian combo of coconut milk, curry, lemongrass and ginger for the Prince Edward Island beauties. Sweet Korean sausage adds just the right pop against the spicy broth. "It was definitely a great segue from the food truck into the restaurant," he says. 668 Euclid Ave., Cleveland, 216-771-4000, hodgescleveland.com
Culture Flash
Calling Cowell & Hubbard a French-inspired restaurant may be shortchanging chef Zack Bruell's creativity or Parisian cuisine or both. Take Bruell's crispy pork stack appetizer ($8), in which the Far East and Southern low country converge to create joie de vivre for the senses. Bruell uses the Japanese chirashi technique of artfully arranging a smattering of items with Southern flair — risotto with short-grain Arborio rice, braised collard greens, pulled pork shoulder and a one-hour poached egg. "Usually chirashi involves a layer of rice with raw fish and something else on top," says Bruell. "This dish is a play on that with the pork shoulder. I like to cross-utilize the ingredients on my menu but twist in different cultures and techniques used at my other restaurants." The stack is then topped with a gastrique, fresh Parmesan cheese, sea salt, beurre fondue (a butter emulsion) and Chef's Garden microgreens. Break the poached egg and the yolk unravels the flavors and bathes the dish as a rich sauce. "Modern Paris is not just about French food," Bruell says. "There are other influences there, too." 1305 Euclid Ave., Cleveland, 216-479-0555, cowellhubbard.com
Fill Factor
Your eyes aren't deceiving you. What you're looking at is Crop Bistro & Bar's sizable duo of house-made ravioli ($24) — just beckoning to be eaten. "With most traditional ravioli the percent of dough to filling is off," says chef and owner Steve Schimoler. "There's too much pasta and not enough filling. By doing these pillow raviolis you get a really great amount of filling." There's enough of the grilled asparagus, mascarpone cheese and tarragon stuffing for about eight normal-sized raviolis. Schimoler gives the pair a quick pan-fry in a little brown butter "to give it a great nuttiness and a little caramelization," he says. It also helps with the plate presentation. "By finishing the ravioli in the brown butter, you are getting kind of a patina with the brown flecks of the butter." The dish is then topped with fresh morel mushrooms, blanched asparagus, sauteed red bell pepper and red onion, miso broth, cream and butter. "If it looks like we paid attention when we plated it, it's because we do," Schimoler says. "There's a place for everything. We will blueprint this so that every ravioli that goes out will look like this." 2537 Lorain Ave., Cleveland, 216-696-2767, cropbistro.com
Fresh Catch
The Copper River snakes nearly 300 miles as it descends through the Alaskan subarctic rain forest, carrying some of the world's finest wild salmon to the sea and then providing them a route back to their birthplace in order to spawn. "What makes the wild salmon so healthy and taste so good is the journey that they have to make," explains Pier W chef Regan Reik. "The Copper River is about the most treacherous for salmon to return. They instinctively know they really have to fill themselves up for the trip." The tiny, 2,000-resident town of Cordova located along the river earns its livelihood from the rich run of salmon, and it's where Reik gets the fish for the grilled Pacific wild king salmon with poached rhubarb, portabella mushroom terrine and sorrel liquid nitrogen ice cream ($35) on Pier W's menu. Reik says the salmon arrives at the restaurant within a day of being caught, shipped directly from the fisherman and then broken down in Pier W's fish-cutting room. "In terms of seafood, every time you go from a whole fish down to a single filet, every time it's touched, its shelf-life is shortened," says Reik. "When you come in and dine, you're getting something that's been handled as little as possible." 12700 Lake Ave., Lakewood, 216-228-2250, pierw.com
Home Grown
Letting ingredients speak for themselves may be the concept behind Spice Kitchen & Bar, but don't be fooled by chef and owner Ben Bebenroth's simple approach. A lot of careful thought and consideration goes into each plate of food, from when vegetables are harvested to how to get the most out of meat. He has connections to more than 50 local farms and vendors, plus a greenhouse behind his Gordon Square restaurant. At his Broadview Heights home, called Spice Acres, he tends to two hoop houses and a quarter-acre garden (did we mention his front yard is seeded with about 2,000 heads of garlic?) making almost everything that enters the kitchen locally grown. The lamb two ways entree ($30), using meat from Dee-Jays Custom Butchering & Processing in Fredericktown, is a perfect example of Bebenroth's philosophy. "There are only so many local lambs, so we try to make sure we use more parts of it," says executive chef Brandon Walukas. So Walukas serves up a rack of lamb with garlic and herb lamb sausage made using the leftover meat. The dish comes with fiddlehead ferns from the Chef's Garden in Huron, garlic grown at Spice Acres, rosemary, a potato puree and port-lamb jus. "There's an old famous saying: When it comes out of the ground together, it goes together," Walukas says. "The garlic and fiddlehead ferns are just beautiful with the spring potatoes. It's just well-balanced." 5800 Detroit Ave., Cleveland, 216-961-9637, spicekitchenandbar.com
Tricky Treats
Lola pastry chef Summer Genetti's key lime parfait ($9) is a visual departure from the staple dessert its name suggests. "Most people associate a parfait with something that's layered," she explains. "But it's really just a style of mousse." Even with a long list of other components — coconut-lime sorbet, gluten-free gingersnap streusel, coconut meringues, passion fruit caramel and spherized mango coulis — the individual parts never upstage the classic flavor they create together. Genetti knows she's competing with our memories and the emotional connection we have with sweets. "Some people use desserts as a reward for a good day or a type of topical treatment for a bad day," she says. "Nobody ever celebrated their birthday with a meatloaf." But Genetti also looks for ways to bring ingredients usually found on other parts of the menu to the meal's closing act, like the manchego cheesecake with chorizo confit, chorizo caramel sauce, braised pineapples, pineapple chips, pineapple-buttermilk sorbet and petite cilantro she created for Lola's winter dessert menu. "When I go out to dinner, I definitely get dessert if there's a pastry chef," she says. "I'll pick the thing I'm craving, and then I'll pick the weirdest thing on the menu, because I know it probably has the most amount of thought in it." 2058 E. Fourth St., Cleveland, 216-621-5652, lolabistro.com
