Plain Dealer January 19, 2007

Unmatched neighborhood tavern raises the bar with new specialties

Tony Brown

A suggestion to chill the suburban soul: Collinwood. At night.

But I'm suggesting exactly that, no matter where you live hereabouts. For North Collinwood is home to "the Grovewood," the finest neighborhood tavern I've ever haunted. And, at age 8, it has reinvented itself with a new menu.

Once "the Pride of the East Side" according to the 2002 comic-caper "Welcome to Collinwood," the neighborhood fell on hard times. But in recent years, North Collinwood has begun to show signs of a comeback.

Artists, academics and tax refugees from the Heights (including, in full disclosure, myself) are moving in. Galleries are opening and hot spots continue to spring or spruce up: the Beachland Ballroom, Bistro 185, the Thermadore bar and Delicatessen Baltika to name some.

Despite a recent influx of newer hip places, the Grovewood remains the quintessential North Collinwood joint. And joint it once was, until a group of friends bought the working-class bar and started wine tastings that evolved into a locus of exuberantly unostentatious oenophilia.

Under three previous executive chefs, the Grovewood developed a distinctive comfort-cuisine unmatched at local tavernae.

The Grovewood honors its past, with funky swag lamps and age-burnished woodwork. Likewise, current exec chef Brandon Kercher updates old faves and brings in new dishes.

Still available: garlicky grilled Caesar salads ($5.50-$11.50); a Thai mussels appetizer (at $10, a real meal); yakatori Japanese barbecue ($13.25-$17.75), "Quackatori" in a duck incarnation; and a charry cheeseburger ($8, including fries).

Bison continues to graze here, house-smoked in crepes ($16), sliced lean in a sandwich ($10.50) and mountainous in a big, slow-cooked pot roast ($19). The last is a tad salty, but falls gloriously apart, upon gentle forkage, into yummy threads on a bed of wild mushrooms, root vegetables and mashed potatoes.

New to the menu: a seared pork tenderloin ($14) comes with bracing pear butter and apple slaw. The zinfandel-braised Black Angus short ribs ($18.75) spread their osso bucco tenderness across barley risotto. Rosemary and garlic spike the lamb T-bones ($24), which come with a sherry-black currant demiglace and herbed risotto.

Pillowy blackened diver scallops surface in two different cream sauces, flavored with cilantro-lime tequila as an appetizer ($11) and finish-poached in ancho chile-honey as an entree ($25.50). Rosemary and lemon syrup baste the veal loin chops ($18-$31), accompanied by more risotto and a roma tomato-spinach-garlic saute.

And a single serving of the hunky lasagna ($15) and aromatic garlic bread could sate the entire Italian military.

The staff remains chatty, fast (sometimes too fast for leisurely dining) and unpretentiously knowledgeable about the 100-label wine list (at reasonable mark-ups) and craft beers.

To finish, try the "Burnin' Down the House" (for two, $18). Lights dim as a chef arrives tableside to ladle flaming 151-proof rum into a hollow, dark-chocolate swan filled with berries. He then spoons the melted, caramelized result onto vanilla ice cream.

It's a tasty metaphor for a neighborhood that went down in flames as the city's river burned. Collinwood is on fire once again.