Best Restauraunts: Distill Table
This year's best new restaurant is as local as it gets.
While many restaurants simply throw the term on their menu and tout the trend as a way to seem hip, there’s a handful of spots that adhere to that farm-to-table philosophy. Relationships with local farms are culled, nearby gardens are tended to and seasonal menus reap the benefits of Northeast Ohio’s bounty.
Distill Table, this year’s Best New Restaurant, is an elevated take on the idea that what grows closest to you makes the best food.
“I dictate what the menu is going to be based on what I can get,” says chef Eddie Tancredi. “You have to look three, six, nine months out to determine what those menus are going to look like for the future.”
It helps that Distill Table, which shares space with Western Reserve Distillers in Lakewood’s Fridrich Building, has formed a partnership with West Salem’s Twin Parks Farm.
Spent grains from the distiller are used to feed the cattle, which in turn supplies the beef and pork used in dishes such as the Ohio beef burger ($12) and a newly added steak, which comes with roasted vegetables, a balsamic-tomato arugula salad and smoked tomato sour cream.
While Tancredi is still working to achieve his goal of having 75% of his products sourced locally, there’s plenty of dishes on the inventive menu of sandwiches, pizzas and cocktails that highlight those local relationships he’s already established.
For example, the pesto salmon gnocchi ($23), a bright seafood entree features a lemon-herb salad using lettuce from his partnership with the Boys and Girls Club of America’s Cleveland chapter.
The grape terrine ($10) with crispy spinach and a tangy orange-balsamic dressing, utilizes Lake Erie Creamery feta.Where we might just see a plate of delectable food, Tancredi sees a larger mission. “I don’t look at it as just the restaurant,” Tancredi says. “It’s a lot bigger than that.”
14221 Madison Ave., Lakewood, 216-505-5188, distilltable.com
Watch owner and chef Eddie Tancredi react as we tell him that Distill Table is our 2019 Best New Restaurant.
Click here for the full list of 25 Best Restaurants.
Click here for the full list of 2019 Silver Spoon Award Winners, as selected by the Cleveland Magazine readers.
