Flour Restaurant | The 25 Essential Cleveland Restaurants 2015

Flour is one of the few restaurants that always manages to have a few surprises up its sleeves regardless how often one visits. On its surface, it’s a contemporary Italian bistro, with familiar-sounding dishes like stuffed peppers, calamari, Neapolitan pizzas, and pasta galore. But dig a little deeper and you’ll find that regardless how familiar a dish might sound, there’s always more to the story. In place of linguini with clam sauce you get cockles with spaghetti and caviar. Short ribs are char-grilled before a slow braise in red wine and chocolate milk. Eggs Benny features fried mortadella in place of dry-ass Canadian bacon. When you have talent the likes of Paul Minnillo and Matt Mytro — “Old School” and “New School” — in the kitchen, it’s best to keep gaps between visits as brief as possible.