Locavore Lesson Plan

When Laura Adiletta left Cleveland in 2009, she had no idea she would make a return under such delicious circumstances.

Or that she would bring 33 high school students from Marianapolis Preparatory School in Connecticut  with her.

This week Adiletta is taking the students on a tour of the city as she teaches them about sustainable foods.

“The title of the course is Taste of Cleveland," explains Adiletta, who is also a chef at Vanilla Bean Cafe in Pomfret, Conn.  "So not only will they get a taste of the food and the stuff that’s growing around Cleveland, they’re also getting to experience the culture that really makes Cleveland unique.”




A few places on their packed itinerary include the Flying Fig, Greenhouse Tavern, and Spice Kitchen & Bar, where they will be treated to chef-led talks and tours. They’ll also get right into the source of their meals by visiting the Culinary Vegetable Institute in Milan, Ohio, and West Side Market’s urban farm.

 Adiletta's history with Cleveland (she graduated from Case Western Reserve University and also worked as an editor at Cleveland Magazine) influenced her decision to use it as an example for her course, but the city's emerging focus on sustainable food also caught her eye.

“I’ve been following the local food in Cleveland for years, really ever since I started cooking,” she says. “I jumped on the opportunity to highlight Cleveland and the food scene that’s brewing there.”

Many of the students Adiletta will be taking around the city are international, so this trip is an opportunity to show those kids there is more to American food than drive-thru fare.

“I want the kids to ask where their food is coming from,” she says. “I want to be an ambassador to American food culture and say we’re not all about McDonald's hamburgers.”

The  local food education doesn't stop with the students. Adiletta and her students are using social media to engage with the community about what they learned. Follow along through Twitter with the @eatloCLE handle and #eatloCLE hashtag and a website made for the trip, eatlocle.com.

After Party, After Sandy

 I was hanging out at Noodlecat late Saturday night,  mingling with some of the hard working chefs who so generously donated time and talent to the utterly fabulous and financially successful West Side Market Gala. As if he hadn't already done enough,  'Cat owner and chef extraordinaire Jonathon Sawyer, who worked with Michael Symon on the big fundraiser, rolled out the welcome mat for an afterparty. He wanted to be sure that those who worked the main event also had a chance to kick back, relax, and enjoy some nice food and drink. Ben Bebenroth, who's own Spice Kitchen and Bar had been closed last week due to the power outages that crippled so many Cleveland neighborhoods, was outside grilling.

Eric Williams and I chatted about how Storm Sandy had hurt us here. Momocho, his Ohio City restaurant, was dark for three days. He lost about $5,000 worth of food and the building suffered some serious wind and water damage. He estimates his total losses at $15, 000, a lot for a small business but not much, we agreed, compared to the hit taken by those on the east coast, including some of the chefs scheduled to be here for the Gala. I mentioned reading an article in The New York Times about how tough things were for that city's hourly wage workers: their desperate attempts to get to work despite the dangers and transportation shut down because they couldn't afford to miss a day of work, and the despair of those who  lost desperately needed income when their employers didn't or couldn't open for business. Williams told me that, worried about his own people, he had gone to the bank, made a cash withdrawal and paid his staff for the days Momocho was shuttered. "I did it," he said, "because it was the right thing to do."

He didn't tell me this to boast or make himself look good. I wasn't on the job and he had no reason to think I'd write about it. We were just two people chatting about what had been going on. But thinking about it afterwards, I realized that I wanted to share the conversation because it encapsulates both some of the grief the hurricane left in its wake and the way people step up to help one another in times of crisis. The entire evening- the super efforts Symon and Sawyer made to find replacements for the chefs from out of town who were not able to make it here; how everyone pulled together to insure that the fundraiser went ahead as planned including Williams who cooked for the event; Bebenroth showing up with his usual smile despite a hellish week and troubles of his own; and my exchange with Eric- was a little story within a big a disaster and a testament to resiliency and goodness.

Gordon Square District Goings-On

The husband and I decided to start off our evening with a stop at Happy Dog last Friday night. We parked across Detroit, on West 58th Street and noticed lights on inside Spice Kitchen and Bar, the soon-to-open restaurant on the corner. I went up close for a look and spotted Ben Bebenroth, chef and owner, hard at work. He put down his paintbrush to unlock the door for us.

With his dad’s help, he was just about done applying the final coats of taupe, beige and white to the once candy-colored walls. They were putting in some extra after dark hours because the pressure’s on to ready the place for a special New Year’s Eve Preview Pop-Up Dinner. There will be two seatings for the five-course prix fixe menu. Four Bells Sparkling will be on tap for the event, just one of the festive beverages available.

Bebenroth, and his food, have quite the following, so tickets have been selling fast. But as of five nights ago, there were still some spots available. Call 216-432-9090 for prepaid reservations.

Then he’s closing to finish the makeover and organize the staff, but only briefly if all goes according to plan (does it ever?), the restaurant should be completely ready and serving meals Tuesday through Saturday toward the end of the second week in January.

It was nice chatting with Ben, but we were hungry, so we headed on to Happy Dog. The bar was wall to wall people, a rowdy crowd gathered to enjoy the particular peculiar pleasure of DJ Kishka and his annual Christmas show (he does his thing there monthly). I was in need of food, not polka tunes, and I feared the servers would never find us in the bouncing boozing mob. Luckily there was an alternative close at hand: Underdog.

The proprietors of the tavern cleaned and remodeled the basement, turning it into another seating area and underground playroom for grown-ups. It’s been open just a couple of months. A long shuffleboard runs parallel to the bar. There are three old-fashioned pinball machines and a large screen for cartoons. On Thursdays only, a limited number of burgers, 24 to be exact, are offered on a first-come, first-serve basis. The rest of the time, it’s the same menu as upstairs: hot dogs and your choice of 50 toppings (as many as you want) that run the gamut from traditional (house-made ketchup, dill pickle and baked beans) and ethnically eclectic (Brazilian chimichurri, Korean kim chee, and Thai chile and garlic sauce), to gourmet (Brie, black truffle honey mustard and wasabi aioli) and kind of out there (chunky peanut butter, caramel applesauce and chipotle hollandaise).

I was restrained, choosing a modest three, and relatively conventional in my selections (Guinness sauerkraut, caramelized onions and barbecue sauce) and very happy with the result. I washed it down with a cold Shiner Bock. The husband ventured into more creative territory with Oaxacan red chile and chocolate mole. An order of tater tots arrived and disappeared in short order too.

We ate, we drank, we ran into people we know and were glad we’d decided to cross the river and make a visit to one of Cleveland’s coolest up and coming neighborhoods.