Who: Dana C. Crawford, PhD
What: Flying Cranes Café and Catering
Where: 13002 Larchmere Blvd, Cleveland, OH 44120
Where does East meet West? In Larchmere, apparently.
Steve and I were recently out and about on the weekend preparing to pick paint colors at the Home Depot. I, for one, cannot complete such as task on an empty stomach. So, we decided to stop in for some lunch before heading to Severance Town Center. Steve suggested Flying Cranes Café and Catering in Larchmere, a lunch spot he’s had his eye on for the last few months.
Flying Cranes, which opened in 2007, is a mom-and-pop shop serving most days for lunch, on the weekends for brunch, and Thursday-Saturday for dinner. The space is small, but the menu is big. Even more unusual and impressive is that this menu is a mix of Japanese and English plates. It turns out that the owners are a husband-and-wife team from England and Japan. This unique marriage on the menu translates to a range of plates that are sure to suit your mood of the day. For me, I was in a ramen state of mind, so we started with gyoza (Figure 1) and I had the pork ramen (Figure 2). Steve stratified his meal experience, resulting in a Japanese beginning (miso) with a British finish (the strata with spinach and sausage brunch deal).
We thoroughly enjoyed our respective meals, and are looking forward to returning. The menu lists high tea and hot pots as options; for those, advanced notice and reservations are required. Everything else, however, is fair game unless they run out for the day (like the chocolate chip cookies that day. Oh well!). We are not big brunch fans, but it’s great to know about this place for the special occasion and company. Needless to say, ramen needs no occasion!
Figure 1. Gyoza with a salad. The ginger salad dressing is a house specialty that can be bought in bottles for home use.
Figure 2. Regular ramen, with pork belly and egg in pork and chicken broth (foreground) and strata brunch special of the day (background).
