To celebrate our 23rd wedding anniversary we took a trip to downtown Cleveland last Friday night. I surprised Courtney and instead of taking a right turn on the way home from work we took a left turn and drove to the Ritz. I was surprised that Courtney was surprised because it took a bit of doing to arrange everything and to keep the girls quiet. We were very happy once we checked in to find out that we were upgraded to a beautiful two room corner suite with a huge sitting room, two bathrooms and great bathtub.
After unwinding and having a glass of wine in our room we headed down to the lounge in the Ritz for a cockail. We then took a stroll around downtown on our way to dinner.
We took another stroll downtown the next morning before breakfast. We walked around the new convention center/ medical mart construction area, down to the rock hall / voinovich park and then back up 9th to Euclid. I am so happy to report that I am optimistic about downtown Cleveland after a long time of not being so. I hope it lasts! Michael Symon had a nice bit today in the Huffington on Post about Cleveland. Let’s hope that all this positivity keeps on going. Article here.
I picked the wrong book to get me out of my reading block. Although it is always interesting to read about the crazy Nazi’s and the unbelievable reality of not that long ago, I just can’t get too into it. I had trouble reading Larson’s other books, and don’t think I ever finished them, but I am happy that I did plow through this one. I didn’t like the pacing of this book. It seemed like some of the book went into minute details of days and weeks for chapters and chapters and then it quickly went over years at a time in several paragraphs. There really is not much plot to it besides the history behind it all. Yawn.
We finally made it Lola after trying several times over the years to make a reservation without thinking weeks ahead. I made this reservation about three weeks ahead of time. I surprised Courtney on Friday and instead of going home after work we took a left turn instead of a right turn and went to downtown Cleveland and spent the night at the Ritz and went out to dinner at Lola. We had a great night…more details on my personal blog…eventually. Lola is of course Michael Simon’s flagship restauraunt that is now located on East 4th Street. We were at the orginial Lola probably about ten years ago when it was over on the west side. After a glass of wine in our beautiful room at the Ritz and a complimentary cocktail in the lounge, we headed to East 4th. Lola is very dark, with a beautiful bar, looking out on the street, with an alibaster top lighted from underneath with a huge wall of wine behind the bar. Very cool. We had a nice table right in the middle overlooking the open kitchen. We ordered ourselves a bottle of white burgandy and relaxed. I had beef cheek pierogies for an appetizer and Courtney had the artichoke soup. The pierogies were filled with tender pot roast like beef with a gravy like sauce and some horseradish sauce drizzled over it. Very rich and delicious. The artichoke soup was earthy, tasty with hazelnuts sprinkled in it as well as chuncks of bacon. I had the smoked pork shop that came sliced on top of creamy polenta sauced with a barbeque sauce. Courtney had hangar steak which came with a tasty, coarsley chopped gremolata sauce that was very good. The hangar steak also came with an order of fries…which won the prize for the night as they were perfectly done. Overall I would say that the meal was great…but not over the top. I think we are becoming food snobs. We probably ordered too many heavy things though. The menu is almost all meat. But I would definately recommend going there and would like to go back and eat at the bar.
Eat On Edgecliff 