A Punk, a Rabbi, and a Theater Child Stroll Right into a Cleveland Restaurant — and They All Discover Dwelling

Strolling into Tommy’s Restaurant within the Coventry Village neighborhood of Cleveland Heights, Ohio, seems like stepping again in time. The picket paneled partitions, the open kitchen, the signal instructing prospects to “please check in and wait to be seated” — all of it stays unchanged from my reminiscences. Above the blond picket cubicles, anthropomorphized cartoon greens nonetheless fortunately march together with forks and spoons of their fingers, simply as they did many years in the past.

As a youngster, Tommy’s was a refuge for me. I grew to become a vegetarian at 15 in 1995, because of some PETA supplies that got here to my home, and far to my mom’s dismay, a vegan the yr after. (Blame a summer season camp romance.) However fortunately, there was Tommy’s, a cheerfully omnivorous restaurant that welcomed everybody from skater youngsters to outdated hippies to newly minted yuppie dad and mom. The vegetarian choices have been plentiful, however a staunchly Midwestern dad may nonetheless order a bacon cheeseburger with fries whereas his youngsters dug right into a barbecue seitan sandwich or a hefty spinach pie full of cheese and mushrooms. Everybody knew to complete their meal with one in every of Tommy’s legendary milkshakes, which after all included a Tofutti choice.

Coventry Village itself grew to become an extension of that refuge. The stretch of mom-and-pop retailers lining Coventry Street was the place I slipped away from the gaze of my rabbi father’s congregation and the preppy affluence of Shaker Heights, the place I grew up. Within the mid- to late ’90s, Coventry was effectively into its heyday — a vibrant gathering floor for leather-clad punk rockers, bell-bottomed Deadheads, and Goth school college students.

It was floor zero for the countercultural artistic scene of northeast Cleveland. I spent hours combing the racks of used CDs at File Revolution, sifting by way of classic toys at Huge Enjoyable, and shopping for my first lava lamp and beaded door curtain at Excessive Tide Rock Backside. As a highschool theater child with a penchant for Manic Panic hair dye and thrift store clothes, I’d settle into Arabica, the native espresso store, with a café mocha, guffawing with associates because the candy scent of clove cigarettes drifted round us.

When classmates teased me for refusing sizzling canines or pepperoni pizza, Tommy’s felt like a secure area the place I may sip on a juice-box-sized carton of Eden Soy Milk and dig right into a Delaney sandwich: a thick slab of pan-fried tempeh on grilled rye with sauerkraut, spinach, Swiss cheese, and vinaigrette. The hearty tempeh and crispy cheese curling across the edges of the grilled bread was a revelation.

Tommy’s thrived due to founder Tommy Fello’s willingness to feed anybody who walked by way of the door. “The truth that we have been capable of accommodate folks and their dietary restrictions, even again then … folks would strive issues that they’d by no means had,” he advised me in a current interview. “In the event that they preferred it, they’d come again, and there weren’t too many locations they may get it. That’s why I’m nonetheless in enterprise, utterly accidentally.”

It was additionally his openness to folks’s quirks and preferences. Many menu gadgets started as offbeat customized orders. The eponymous Quinn sandwich — 5 sorts of cheese, house-made peanut butter, and numerous veggies — was named for 2 brothers, Quinn and Allen, contractors who ate lunch there day by day throughout a Seventies actual property growth. Somewhat than rewrite the identical order each day, Tommy merely named it after them.

The Spiked Hummus — a bowl of thick, heat hummus buried underneath a blanket of melted cheddar and topped with olives, tomatoes, uncooked onion, and bitter cream — was conceived by a daily greatest recognized by his nickname, “Spike.” Practically each merchandise on the menu comes with a narrative like that, an ode to the individuals who helped form Tommy’s from its earliest days as a seven-seat soda fountain only a few doorways down.

Sadly, almost all of these companies that after outlined Coventry Village have disappeared. Even earlier than COVID, on-line ordering had begun to erode the quirky unbiased retailers; the pandemic worn out lots of the survivors. The once-colorful storefronts now sit largely vacant, save for a handful of old-timers and a smattering of vape retailers and comfort shops. And but, by some means, Tommy’s stays, nonetheless bustling and miraculously unchanged.

After I stroll in on a chilly, wet day in November, Tommy Fello is ready for me in one of many picket cubicles. My mind takes a beat, recognizing him once more after 20 years. A stroke he suffered on Christmas Day in 2023 has left him unable to stroll with out help. However his eyes brighten when he sees me, and his smile is undiminished. The acquainted smells of crisping falafel and scorching French fries envelop me like a heat hug. I’ve aged too, and I’m overwhelmed with nostalgia as I flip by way of the lineup on the double-sided laminated menu that, as far as I can inform, hasn’t modified in any respect.

What has modified, Tommy tells me, is the hire. He now pays $7,000 a month, a stunning leap from the $250 he remembers from the early days — an quantity that felt steep to a younger man, nearly nonetheless a youngster, who had boldly bought a soda fountain and begun serving hummus and spinach pies within the early Seventies. He regrets charging $6 for a milkshake after they as soon as price $.35. I guarantee him no one minds paying $6 for a milkshake that good.

His eyes widen. “Did you hear in regards to the woman who requested for a mocha shake when she was in hospice? It was on the entrance web page of the papers.” He tells me about Emily Pomeranz, who grew up in Cleveland however moved to Baltimore as an grownup. Dying of most cancers, she made one last want: a mocha milkshake from Tommy’s. The request discovered its strategy to him, and he by some means managed to ship it in a single day so she may get pleasure from it from her hospital mattress simply days earlier than she died. Midstory, his voice breaks. His eyes fill with tears. He covers his face as his shoulders shake in silence.

I stand to consolation him. I inform him how a lot Tommy’s means to me, to all of us who’ve walked by way of these doorways through the years with our associates, our dad and mom, our companions, our kids. I’m not simply saying it. Right here I’m, a girl in her forties, sitting in a sales space I sat in 30 years earlier, consuming the identical tempeh sandwich, remembering how proud I felt paying for it with my very own hard-earned a refund then.

How fortunate I used to be to develop up with Tommy’s magic. And the way fortunate I’m to return, many years later, to a spot that also seems like dwelling.