Polish Boys in Cleveland

When I told people my wife and I would be visiting Cleveland for our anniversary this year, reactions (apart from the obligatory Rock and Roll Hall of Fame references) were divided, seemingly between those who had visited Cleveland previously (“What a great town! You have to check out…”) and those who had not (“Cleveland? Really? Such a romantic, Jim”). I suppose there’s a certain prosaic impression of Cleveland as a typical blue collar Rust Belt town.

Luckily for me, I have a wife who is very tolerant of my particular foibles, and enjoys visiting new places and trying their lowbrow eats as much as I do. Cleveland’s signature Polish Boy sandwich gave us an excuse to visit this new-to-us place. As we discovered, Cleveland Rocks!

On our way in to Cleveland, we stopped at a friend-recommended spot for our first Polish Boy of the trip, Banter, a small shop split between a retail beverage shop and a poutine-and-sausage-focused eatery. We knew we had dinner reservations in a few hours and therefore couldn’t order too much, but it had been many hours since breakfast with nothing but chips to snack on during the 6 hour drive, and we needed something to tide us over. We decided to split an order of fried cheese curds and the Banter rendition of the Polish Boy.

Banter’s cheese curds were outstanding, with a light crisp breading barely containing the molten cheese goodness within. Served with a small ramekin of good marinara sauce, the curds themselves were good enough not to require enhancement but the marinara’s bright acidity and additional savory flavor was a welcome foil for the oozing cheese envelopes.

Banter’s Polish Boy uses a house-made Polish sausage, thick-cut fries that are cooked to a medium brown (a good habit to be in for a poutine shop, cooking those fries extra crispy), a sweet barbecue sauce (in which I thought I detected some aromatic pie-type spices–cinnamon and allspice perhaps) and a vinegar-based slaw. We wondered aloud to our server how people generally ate these. “There are forks on every table for a reason,” he grinned, and availing ourselves of a pair we dug in. We found the sausage a touch on the lean side, and the large-cut strips of cabbage in the slaw would have made it an awkward sandwich condiment without the forks. The nicely griddled New England-style bun made a sturdy platform for what was a large and messy pile of food.

Asking our server for recommendations about other places serving a Polish Boy, we were stunned to learn that Hot Sauce Williams, a classic Polish Boy joint that was one of my targeted stops, had just closed a few months prior. He was hesitant to send us anywhere else, but allowed that Seti’s, a local food truck that stopped daily outside a West side health center, also made an acceptable Polish Boy. He also mentioned the Polish Girl sandwich available at a downtown chef-driven barbecue restaurant called Mabel’s. We thanked him and rushed out to try and make our check-in time.

We stayed at the Clifford House Bed & Breakfast in the Ohio City neighborhood of Cleveland. Our gregarious host Jim Miner got this photo of us, along with his normally camera-shy dog Sherlock. Mindy and I are not B&B folks normally but Jim was very accommodating and the house was beautiful. Jim sources ingredients for the breakfasts from nearby West Side Market, a massive indoor/outdoor market space with numerous vendors of produce, meats, and baked goods.

Perhaps the best thing about staying in a B&B for us was having an opportunity to get to know the neighborhood like a local, rather than the sort of geographic and personal isolation that can come with a hotel stay. Ohio City boasts a dizzying number of craft breweries (including heavy hitter Great Lakes Brewing Company, just a few blocks from Clifford House), the aforementioned West Side Market, and a number of boutique shops and restaurants both on the main strip of 25th Street and along the numerous side streets. We found many a fun and surprising sight just walking the neighborhood.

We arrived at the B&B around 4pm, giving us just enough time to get freshened up and head back out to the cutesy suburb Avon for our 7pm reservations at Strip Steakhouse, occupying the Ewer Barn building in Olde Avon Village.

The steaks were gigantic and the drinks were pretty good; we ordered too much food though and left with a massive doggie bag. Arriving back at the B&B after dark, we headed out to walk the neighborhood for a bit, finding ourselves at local favorite Mitchell’s Homemade Ice Cream.

Suddenly we weren’t quite so full anymore, though we agreed to limit ourselves to one scoop each. I for one had to try the Mint Cookies & Cream flavor touted on the marquee. Mindy, however, took to Yelp during our wait in line and was fascinated by the many mentions of something called Wild Berry Crumble. Both were excellent but as usual, she chose the best ice cream flavor.

The ice cream would have been a good way to end our anniversary. But we had one more stop to make, a place that I’d been wanting to try since Michael Ruhlman called it the best cocktail bar in the world, the Velvet Tango Room.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Jim (@jimthebeerguy)

Do yourself a favor. Go to the VTR, talk to a bartender, tell them what kind of flavors you like, what kind of spirits you like. They will fix you up with the perfect drink for you. As it turns out, my perfect drink was their take on the Ninth Ward. Clearly I need to acquire some falernum and do some experimenting on my own.

The next morning, after a bleary-eyed breakfast with our host and another guest, Mindy and I walked over to Cleveland’s West Side Market to see what all the hubbub was about.

West Side Market is absolutely gigantic, bustling with activity, with a line of roofed open-air produce stalls on the north and east sides of a building enclosing so many butchers and delis and and spice shops and purveyors of baked goods that I had a hard time taking it all in. We had planned on filling a cooler with sausages and other items to take home with us but we were simply too overwhelmed. Analysis paralysis is real. We did pick up some candy and scoped out the hot dog stands though (no Polish Boy on offer there).

The trip to the Market was not entirely in vain though, as it let us work off enough of our breakfast (and, truth be told, the previous evening’s dinner as well) to contemplate our next Polish Boy. This time we headed over to 44th and Lorain and found the Seti’s truck waiting for us in its usual spot, not far at all from our temporary home in Ohio City.

Seti’s is a no-nonsense type of truck, unapologetically serving street food for the masses. Since they only cook the food once it’s ordered, we waited a few minutes while our Polish Boy was prepared (once again, we shared one).

Seti’s Polish Boy consists of a section of smoked kielbasa in a standard hot dog bun with a layer of coleslaw tucked directly around the sausage and a good-sized order of thick fries on top, doused in a sweet barbecue sauce. It came tightly wrapped in foil and they were kind enough to provide us with two plastic forks and napkins. All the paper products in the world would not be enough for this sandwich though. We took it to the car and covered ourselves with paper towels before eating it and I still got barbecue sauce on my shirt.

The construction of this sandwich made more sense than the version we’d had at Banter the day before. The finely shredded creamy coleslaw was better suited for use as a condiment than the more picturesque vinaigrette slaw used at Banter, and the fries being on top allowed us to eat them first, before the barbecue sauce robbed them of all texture, and to eat the sausage, slaw, and bun with fry remnants once we’d reduced the pile to a manageable size. The hot dog bun does lose structural integrity after soaking in so much slaw dressing and BBQ sauce but the tradeoff seems worth it.

Even though we only shared a single sandwich, Mindy and I were both stuffed, still recovering from breakfast and the previous evening’s anniversary dinner. We made a day of it, taking in some of what Cleveland has to offer, visiting the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as nearly everybody had advised us we must (it really was a good museum, though overpriced), checking out the site where my pal Vaughn is going to be opening Ohio City’s newest brewery later this year (check out Bookhouse Brewing if you get to Cleveland after they’ve opened, I know this cat makes good beer), and finally getting dinner at a German restaurant/brewery called Hansa in Ohio City (what do you know? They serve a Pljeskavica) before chilling in our B&B and watching Law & Order SVU (as we old married couples are wont to do).

Not even the infamous Gamergate episode of SVU could keep us in all night though, and Mindy, though tired, agreed to accompany me downtown to try the Polish Boy variant offered by chef Michael Symon’s barbecue restaurant, Mabel’s.

Mabel’s is located in the East 4th Street corridor of downtown Cleveland, a shopping and dining destination also home to his flagship restaurant Lola, steps from the Gateway Sports and Entertainment Complex. The restaurant was surprisingly unbusy for a Friday evening, and we were escorted to an upstairs table immediately upon arrival, our intent to order cocktails and wait for a while before trying the sandwich. However, we soon realized how tired we were and put in the food order.

Mabel’s serves a “Polish Girl” rather than a Polish Boy. Similar in construction to the Polish Boy we’d had from Banter, the Polish Girl replaces the French fries with pulled pork and comes in both a classic and a spicy version, which uses a different, spicier sausage.

The roll used for this sandwich is quite large, and it uses a vinaigrette-based coarsely shredded slaw similar to the one we encountered at Banter. The pulled pork was a bit on the dry side, not unexpected for a late night visit to a barbecue restaurant, but also unsauced. Between the dry pork, the thick, bready roll, and the sparingly dressed slaw, the sandwich could have used some lubrication, though the sausage itself was good. Under different circumstances I would be a fan, and I’d have liked to try some more of Mabel’s menu, but we didn’t have the appetite or the time that evening. We stepped outside and requested an uber.

Then the fireworks went off, and people by the thousands started pouring out of the sports complex. Both the Indians and the Cavaliers were playing games that evening (Cavs won to tie the conference finals 3-3, Indians got blown out 11-2 in the last 2 innings), and the streets quickly filled with both sports fans and their cars. It took us a half an hour to find our uber driver, stuck in the mess, and another 45 minutes for her to extricate her Rav4 from the mess. She stayed cheerful the whole time, though, and once we got moving she had us home quickly.

The following morning, after our last breakfast with our host and another walk through the West Side Market, we headed to the East side, to University Circle and Cleveland’s Museum of Contemporary Art.

Many people had told us upon hearing our plans that we should visit the world-class Museum of Art instead, and perhaps we should have. But modern art museums hold a certain fascination for Mindy and I’ve learned to appreciate them as well. MOCA was fairly small, with only a few exhibitions going on, but it was a unique experience that we don’t regret.

We were ready to go home, but I had one last stop to make. The general consensus appears to be that a man named Virgil Whitmore invented the Polish Boy at a BBQ shack bearing his name in the Mt. Pleasant neighborhood of southeast Cleveland back in the 1940s. The original Whitmore’s BBQ location, according to their website, is the Mt. Pleasant BBQ located on Kinsman Ave. since 1942.

We arrived at 12:08pm, believing based on Google results that the place opened at noon. However, the entrance was locked up tight, and some fellows sitting outside the kitchen entrance around the side of the building informed us that they wouldn’t open until 1pm. We were ready to throw in the towel and start our drive back to Illinois but a gentleman came out of the kitchen and asked us what we wanted.

“We heard this was where the Polish Boy was invented,” I replied. “We came to try the real thing.”

He said he’d bring one out to us and went back into the kitchen while I chatted with his mates outside. One man also worked in the kitchen there and listed off the type of barbecue they offered–ribs (short ribs and long ribs he said), rib tips, shoulder (“you might call it pulled pork,” he explained), hot links. After a while he wandered off and eventually the cook returned with our Polish Boy and talked to us while I photographed the sandwich, asking where we were from, how long we’d been married, and offering that he’d been working for this establishment since 1966. Suddenly he stood up, said “Well I’d better not let my ribs burn,” and returned to the kitchen, leaving us alone on the sidewalk.

The Mt. Pleasant Polish Boy came wrapped in a double layer of foil, and he’d cut it in half for us to split. A plain hot dog bun stuffed with a thick, hot kielbasa, creamy coleslaw, and topped with a good-sized handful of fresh-cut fries, all drizzled with a mild and sweet barbecue sauce. It was not photogenic, not by a long shot. The bun was sodden from meat juices, coleslaw dressing, and barbecue sauce. It reminded me of a dipped Italian beef, only the bread was not as sturdy and hung dripping from the sausage rather than supporting it. There were no forks and very few napkins. We ate it out of hand, trying our hardest to contain any escaping fries or slaw with the foil.

“I think this is the best one we’ve had,” said Mindy. I could only agree. The Polish Boy is not haute cuisine. It’s a sloppy messy street food, whether eaten daintily with a fork or unwrapped from its foil and slopped directly into one’s mouth one bite at a time. Some things are not improved by being given the chef’s treatment and fancied up until nearly unrecognizable. If we ever return to Cleveland and find ourselves in the mood for a Polish Boy, Seti’s or Mt. Pleasant would be the places we’d go.

But we were done with Cleveland for now, so we got in our car and began the long drive home. Thank you Cleveland, and goodnight!