After nearly 10 years in business, The Office restaurant in Akron finally has a front door.
A front door for the dining room, that is.
The bar/bistro in Akron’s North Hill neighborhood has reopened as The Office City Tavern after being temporarily closed for a makeover, including a new menu, and now has a glass main entrance door off Main Street.
For years, diners entered through the long, narrow room next door that houses the bar.
“The bar itself has always been popular; we wanted to put more of the focus on the dining room that is now more warm, cozy,” said Adam Zaleski, who oversees sales and marketing for the Akron location and its sister restaurant, still called just The Office, in Cuyahoga Falls.
The interior revamp is significant, with more booths and new lighting aimed at giving the place a warm, pubby feel. A cutout map of Akron dominates the back wall of the dining room. Cleveland artist Adam Gruber used reclaimed wood to make the shape of Ohio that hangs nearby in an area that can be used for private dining.
The menu features more lower-cost items, prepared in a kitchen sporting new appliances. (Zaleski said he didn’t know how much was spent on the redo.)
“We wanted to make [the food] more approachable, while keeping the quality we’ve always had,” he said.
The new menu continues The Office’s tradition of going beyond standard bar fare. It includes barbecue baby back ribs ($14.99 half slab, $19.99 full slab, served with coleslaw and fries), grilled lamb chops with jalapeño mint jelly (at $24.99, the priciest item) and lasagna ($11.99, and the menu assures that it is homemade).
You can get a scallop slider with wasabi mayo ($5), a salmon slider with slaw ($4) or a chicken slider ($3). Other sandwiches include chicken salad on a toasted pretzel bun and mushroom swiss burger (both $8.99). The menu dropped pricier items such as sesame crusted ahi tuna, which you can still get in the Falls location.
New staff members include manager Lori Roberts, whose food-service career includes stints at Otani Restaurant & Pub in Hudson and Virtues Restaurant at Summa Akron City Hospital.
Roberts, like loyal patrons, is glad to see owner Frank Caetta continuing to invest in the brick building in the North Hill area. The changes come after the 2014 death of Stephen Turner, who along with Caetta opened the Akron Office in 2006.
Roberts points to new cocktails that celebrate the city, including The No. 7 (named for the nearby bus stop), featuring Irish whiskey, pomegranate syrup, nutmeg, and ginger beer. Main Street Blues features silver tequila, orange liqueur, fresh blueberries and basil, agave and lemon lime.
The phone number for both Office locations is 330-376-9550. The Office City Tavern has a Facebook page. It is at 778 N. Main St., south of Cuyahoga Falls Avenue.
Wood-fired pizza
“It’s wood-fired,” Joe Skye said of the big brick pizza oven in the open kitchen at his new restaurant, the Clay Oven, in a onetime Mogadore post office at 16 S. Cleveland Ave. “There’s no gas lines running to it.”
“A Woodfired Eatery,” says a green awning over the front door. No question, Skye and business partner Aaron Hale want you to know what sets their pizza place apart, with the oven that allows them to offer authentic Neapolitan-style pizza, with a light crust and crispy edges. A variety of fresh toppings are available.
It is more than a pizza joint. Along with stromboli, its offerings include wood-fired half chicken, bacon-wrapped pot roast and salads.
Skye and Hale took roughly three years to transform the old brick building, most recently a trophy shop, into the warm two-story eatery.
“It needed so much work,” Skye said. “We basically gutted the whole building. The whole town was ‘When are you going to be done?’ ”
Skye got into wood-fired pizza-making through his earlier career as a bricklayer. He thought he’d build brick ovens for homeowners as a side venture, then he had the idea of renting out an oven on a mobile unit. Someone dared him to make his own pizzas using the unit at a festival in Mogadore, and when he sold 350 wood-fired pies in one weekend, he knew he was on to something.
Enter Aaron Hale, his cousin, who had restaurant experience and their idea took off, albeit slowly, Skye acknowledges.
The place finally opened in September. Lunch hours will start soon. Call 330-628-1000 or go to The Clay Oven’s Facebook site.
More on Melt
In case you missed it: Matt Fish, founder and owner of the popular Melt Bar & Grilled regional chain, finally spoke — confirming Monday that the former Friendly’s at 3921 Medina Road (state Route 18) in Bath Township is to become the first Summit County Melt.
Folks with the Cleveland-based chain, known for its variety of grilled cheese sandwiches, previously had declined to comment on the news out of a township meeting that the place would become a Melt, which has a bit of a cult following.
Fish revealed this week that he hopes to open by sometime in March. He noted the building will undergo extensive renovations and the timetable is weather-dependent. It will seat about 120 people inside; a planned outdoor patio will seat about 35 to 40.
“We’re fortunate to get the space,” Fish said. “We’re very excited.” No fewer than four other restaurant groups looked at the building, he said.
“It’s a pretty hot spot,” he said. “The landlord liked us.”
The Medina Road building is still owned by O Ice LLC, a California company that bought it in 2007 from a company associated with Friendly’s. O Ice buys buildings from chains and leases back to them.
West Point tasting
West Point Market will host its First Friday casual wine tasting from 4 to 6 p.m. Friday Cost is $10 for samples of five wines and goodies. For information, call 330-864-2151 or go to www.westpointmarket.com.
This is the last First Friday at the store at 1711 W. Market St., and West Point wine director Bill Krauss notes, “As usual, we will be pouring five really cool wines from Wine Trends.” Appetizers will include pita chips, two types of hummus, tabouli, cheeses and veggies.
The store’s Bubbles Bash is at 7 p.m. Dec. 11. Reservations are required; cost is $45.
As previously reported, West Point plans to stay open through Christmas Eve, close Christmas Day and then reopen the next day, with all items priced at a significant discount.
A complex featuring a Whole Foods is to be built on the property. West Point plans to keep its valuable brand going with a new store in Fairlawn and also is planning “satellite stores.”
Tidbits
• Rice Paper Thai Cuisine has opened at 3867 Medina Road (state Route 18) in the West Market Shopping Plaza that houses the HoneyBaked Ham store. Rice Paper’s phone is 234-466-0499; its website is www.ricepaperthai.com.
• Marcelita’s at 7774 Darrow Road (state Route 91) in Hudson closed earlier this fall. Opened in 1978, it was one of the first non-chain Mexican restaurants in the area. The restaurant building is listed for sale, at a price of $750,000, with Kelly & Visconsi Associates LLC. The building is owned by JGC Darrow LLC, an investment group separate from Kevin Killeen, who owned the restaurant.
Reminders
• The Nightlight, downtown Akron’s independent film theater, is again offering a movie and brunch event. Academy Noms is scheduled for Saturday with a brunch prepared by chef Dick Kanatzar of Vaccaro’s Trattoria in Bath Township, followed by the showing of Oscar-nominated 1969 Western The Magnificent Seven.
Brunch begins at 10:30 a.m., the movie at 11:30 a.m. Tickets for the brunch and the movie are $25 at http://tilt.tc/90uT.
The Nightlight, which has a bar and offers locally made snacks, is at 30 N. High St., north of East Market Street. Movie-only tickets are available at www.nightlightcinema.com.
• Nuevo Modern Mexican & Tequila Bar, 54 E. Mill St., will host a holiday tasting from 5 to 9 p.m. Dec. 20. Stations will allow patrons to mingle, and employees will pour draft beers, including Perro Nuevo, made for the restaurant by Thirsty Dog Brewing Co. of Akron, wines and flavored margaritas. Cost is $40; call 330-762-8000 for reservations.
• Madrigal Dinners at St. Vincent de Paul Catholic Church in Akron will be Dec. 11 and 12, featuring roast pigs and chickens cooked outside on an open spit. Doors to Corrigan Hall will open at 6:30 p.m. with a fanfare, and dinner will begin at 7 p.m. Tickets are $40, available until Dec. 9 by calling 330-535-3135, ext. 103. St. Vincent de Paul is at 164 W. Market St.
The four-course meal includes mulled wine, ale and spiced cider and Christmas pudding. Local attorney and actor Tim Champion will lead the madrigal players. Members of Canticum Novum Renaissance Choir will sing carols and Keller Consort will perform on period instruments.
• Meet winemaker Joshua DeLoach from Hook & Ladder Vineyard in Sonoma, Calif., at a Holiday Wine Tasting from 4:30 to 7:30 p.m. Dec. 11 at the Fishers Foods Jackson Township store, 5215 Fulton Dr. NW.
The fee of $10 gets you four 2 oz. samples and lots of eats, including assorted cheeses, sushi, pork and walnut phyllo, roast beef crostini, smoked oyster pate and Pav’s ice cream.
Send local food news to Katie Byard at 330-996-3781 or kbyard@thebeaconjournal.com. You can follow her @KatieByardABJ on Twitter or become a fan on Facebook at www.facebook.com.