Chef Jeff Jarrett started settling into Amp 150's head chef position in June, a week after closing Palate in Strongsville, but he's just recently recharged the Marriott restaurant's menu. "A lot of what was on there sold well," he says of Amp's well-worn offerings. "But now, I'm not looking to do any of that." Still honoring the restaurant's promise of farm-to-table fare, Jarrett has assembled an array of seasonal dishes, including pancetta-wrapped pheasant. "It's been said before that it's like Thanksgiving on a plate," he jokes. "But it's pheasant instead of turkey, and your butternut squash is the sweet potato or yam aspect of it." He also includes cranberry chutney, Brussels sprouts with Ohio maple syrup gastrique and potatoes grown at The Chef's Garden in Huron. "When things grow in the same season, they go well together, like the Brussels sprouts and the butternut squash," says Jarrett. "We want to go in a lot of different directions. It's kind of a mix-match of everything, which to me, is what American food is."
The executive chef of Boka in Chicago also has a new cookbook titled, Boka the Cookbook, and is hosting a sold-out event at Cordelia on April 16. By Dillon Stewart
Opening April 25, the restaurant from Paul Neundorfer and José Coronado, formerly of Felice Urban Cafe, is part of a turn-of-the-century building that was recently renovated into a boutique hotel and bar. By Douglas Trattner