About a year ago I had one of the worst culinary experiences in my life at a dingy little place called Zeke’s. Seriously, I wanted to vomit. 1 year later and, surprise, Zeke’s is no longer gracing the corner of rt 21 and Fitzwater in Brecksville Oh. In it’s place is the newest restaurant to try and make it at this location, Seared (I think there have been 4 different restaurants in this building over the last 5 years.)
The environment is nice. The new owners have done a nice job opening the space up and allowing some natural light to come into an otherwise very dark space. The table clothes weren’t pressed, which I thought looked shoddy, but other than that, the old tavern has cleaned up rather nicely. Seriously though, if you are going to have nice tablecloths, press them for goodness sake. Old booths have been removed and replaced with open seating that really allows the space to breathe a little. The lower section features a very nice bar which will, no doubt, be a favorite of the Brecksville business crowd. 
The experience started a bit awkward as the server asked us if she could “start us out with a bottled water.” You feel like a goof saying, “no just regular old tap water is just fine for me,” but you gotta do what you gotta do. Frankly I think that this ploy is ridiculous. We all know that the highest profit margin in a restaurant is on the drinks, and if you have ever served, you know to always offer alcohol. But the pushing bottled water thing is too much for me, especially when we had a “servers assistant” whose apparent job was to refill our lowly tap water every 2 minutes (when she wasn’t spilling it on the floor) . At least my drink never ran out! She was at our table probably 10 times filling up water which made me wonder what else she was responsible for. The tap water was delicious by the way!
Seared seems to be trying to create an upscale environment, but their servers need a little more training to pull it off.
Our waitress was very nice, but she seemed a little over-zealous when she exclaimed “Oh yes, when we did our training they let us try all of the food!” when I asked about her experience with the menu. It was similar to an 8th grader telling their friends that their dad let them have a beer. I applaud Seared for doing this – a server needs to know the menu and know the food (something that previous tenants in this building forgot to do) – but her inexperience with fine dining was glaring. More to come on that!
The Lunch menu is mediocre. My tastes are obviously unique to me, but there is nothing on the lunch menu that would make me go back, but the food was very good. Have you ever had that experience – the food is good, but nothing on the menu gets you excited? Our group started with the house-made hummus which didn’t last long partly because it was good, and partly because they only gave us 5 wedges of pita. We asked for some more, and got 5 more pieces – odd. It was fine, but doesn’t add up the Super Duper Extra Famous Bishai Hummus that you can make it your own home.
I chose the yellowfin tuna sandwich for my entree. I’m not a raving tuna fan, but I can usually get a pretty good idea if a chef knows what they are doing by seeing how he/she cooks seafood. The sandwich was a little underdone for me. Again, not that he cooked it poorly, but I like my tuna mid-well – not cold in the middle. I know that this makes some tuna-lovers cringe, but that’s the way I like it. ANYWAY – It was still a very good sandwich: The brioche bun was excellent and the pepper of the arugula played well against the tuna and the garlic sauce. The sandwich came with fries and garlic aioli for dipping. The aioli was a nice touch instead of boring old ketchup.
The problem came when I was about half-way finished with my meal. The waitress came over and asked how everything was, and we gave thumbs up all around. She pushed a little bit – “are you sure?” At this point I started to mention the done-ness of my tuna, but decided to leave it alone – it was a good sandwich. But she pushed again saying, “we really need all the feedback we can get,” so I mentioned that the tuna was a little underdone for my liking but that it wasn’t a problem. She left and about a minute later, reached around my shoulder, took the remainder of my sandwich and fries, and said “I need to take this,” and scurried away. So, I’m thinking, maybe they have a policy that if there are any issues that they must take it in and make a new dish. No big deal, but very unnecessary.
She comes back 3 minutes later and says, “the chef said that our tuna is done that way normally, and that next time you should ask for your tuna to be cooked to your liking.” I said that it was fine and that next time I would. So she comes back out with a fresh plate of fries – no sandwich. This was the first time that I was bothered. I didn’t need a new sandwich, but she took mine away. So there I was with no new sandwich to eat and no old sandwich to finish. So I had paid for the sandwich and had the opportunity to only eat half of it – NOT happy!
So I mentioned my problem to the waitress. When I did, she was mortified and said that she would go have the chef make me a new one – which I declined because I had to go. “How about I have him make you one to heat up later at home?” Reheated tuna didn’t sound great to me, so I declined this as well. She finally all but forced me into a free dessert – the chocolate lava cake – DELICIOUS.
So, all in all, the experience was a little awkward. The food was good, but the menu doesn’t excite me. Maybe the dinner menu will – I think I might give dinner a try sometime soon. Here is my thing – if you are going to set things up to be fine dining – then train your servers accordingly to complete the experience. Honestly, if I took a date there and the wait staff acted like they did, I would have been embarrassed. The wait staff just didn’t seem to fit the rest of the environment. I know it’s all new, so maybe they just need some time to get their feet under them. Head on out and give it a try yourself.
