March 2nd, 2008 kyleroth Posted in Cleveland, Lifestyle, nightlife 2 Comments »

Live from Cleveland, it’s Saturday night

A Saturday to ourselves is just what the doctor ordered, but once it comes you have so much that you want to do that you end up not doing much of anything. Well did not want that to happen.

Being the last day of restaurant week, we wanted to go out and support some local independents. For lunch, we headed down to Crop Bistro, only to see it wasn’t open for lunch on Saturday. Note, by lunch, I am talking about 3:00. We then drove over to Ohio City only to see that Momocho, Light Bistro and the Flying Fig were all closed too.

Disappointed, we headed into Great Lakes Brewery to drown our sorrows. But after they told us it would be a wait of about 40 min. Erika suggested calling Bar Cento to see if they were open. Good call!

So we exited the brewery and walked around the corner to Bar Cento. We sat at the bar and Jonathon cooked up a great lunch. We finally tried the sunnyside special pizza, the skate wing and we had a bottle of organic wine, Medlock Ames Bell Mountain Red Alexander Merlot, that was featured at the Rock and Roll wine dinner which was very tasty. Chef Sawyer also wanted us to try a vegetable dish made from cardoon. Of course we obliged and it tasted great. Creamy and buttery. We finished off the meal with an Underberg with our new friend from Collinwood, Steve, and a few of his friends.

While at lunch, Steve really talked up the Beachland Ballroom and Erika has been wanting to go there. It just so happened that it was their 8 year anniversary last night, so we made plans to head to the ballroom.

Before going to the Beachland Ballroom, we had to have another bite to eat, so we went down to E. 4th Street and sat down to eat at the Wonder Bar. We sampled from the fixed price menu and the food was ok. It would have been tough to top the lunch we had at Bar Cento. A few of the other patrons were pretty annoying and rude to the bartenders and staff and there was some sort of weird smell at the bar. Could have been the cheese I guess.

After the Wonder Bar, we headed out to the Beachland Ballroom for the show. We have never been to the ballroom, so we had to check it all out. The basement houses a vintage store with vinyl, posters, clothes and kitsch. There were some very interesting items in the store.

We then made our way up to the main ballroom and headed back to the bar since the band had not taken the stage yet. Erika described the bar as a lot like the Sandusky American Legion. There was a lot of Pabst signage among vintage posters and the Liquor sign above was hanging behind the bar. Once we heard music coming from the ballroom, we headed in to see the bands.

The first act was the Whiskey Daredevils, a rock-a-billy band that we have actually seen perform before. The second act was The Sadies. We really enjoyed their music and the ballroom. Now that we have experienced it, we will definitely be back. I see that there is a Mike Doughty concert coming up this month.

So when the kids are away, the parents will play. We like to think we can live a rock-n-roll lifestyle, but by midnight we were both ready to get home and get to sleep.