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| - Like millions of others, the wife and I seem to get sucked into the celebrity-chef culture that seems to dominate high-end American dining these days. So when we came to Cleveland, we dutifully went off to Michael Symon's Lola.
We lived in New Orleans for more than a decade, during the heyday of Emeril's long run as America's Big-Time Celebrity Chef. Although the food at Lola is inspired by cuisines and ingredients different from those of Emeril's flagship in New Orleans, the entire production at Lola reminds me quite a bit of Emeril's: It's a big bustling restaurant with very good food, mostly excellent service, big portions for an upscale place, and a lot of crowd-pleasing menu items. And it's probably somewhat overpriced because of the mostly-absent chef/owner's notoriety.
There's something a bit clunky about Lola. I'm not a fan of the decor and atmosphere at all: seriously dark, with almost no colors other than black and grey, the restaurant brings to mind a somewhat cheesy upscale cocktail lounge. The soundtrack of heard-them-a-million-times classic-rock songs was kind of annoying, too. The menu, too, doesn't exactly seem to jibe as far as pairing apps and entrees go; ingredients and influences seem like they're all over the map.
What we had was good, though. The beef cheek pierogis were absolutely terrific as an appetizer: melt-in-your-mouth texture and huge, deep beefy flavor. The smoked Berkshire pork chop, served with a cheesy polenta, is upscale comfort food and a massive sliced slab of meat; it was very satisfying and maybe even too much a good thing. The wife got the wild salmon, which was served with fava beans, chanterelles, baby tomatoes, and a delicious green-pea-and-mint puree. She reported that most of it was cooked perfectly, although the one bite she left over for me seemed a little overdone. A green salad was pretty unmemorable, and had too many giant leaves in it.
Our server was talkative and quite efficient, but I got the impression by the end of the meal that his knowledge of the food and wine list (stored on an iPad) wasn't as thorough as he'd have liked you to believe.
Overall, an enjoyable evening, but after we were done, we wondered whether we should have instead checked out some undersung Cleveland restaurant, e.g., Crop, instead of making a beeline for the Big Boy's place.
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