The News Herald (Willoughby, OH)
‘Making the best of a bad situation’
Zack Bruell restaurants not compromising food, service amid pandemic precautions
Zack Bruell’s small kingdom of restaurants has worked with Cleveland Clinic physicians to devise their protocols.
Zack Bruell’s small kingdom of restaurants in the Cleveland area has worked with Cleveland Clinic physicians to devise their pandemic protocols. And it’s a formula that seems to be functioning with very few glitches.
“Our partnership with the Clinic helped us reopen without compromising the food or service,” Bruell said.
“I know Toby Cosgrove well and he and I sat down with a team of physicians at L’Albatros and walked through every step of our preparation and service,” Bruell explained. Cosgrove, now executive advisor for the Cleveland Clinic Health System was its president and chief executive officer when he worked with Bruell to transform the former Classics Restaurant into today’s Table 45. Table 45, in the Intercontinental Hotel on the Cleveland Clinic campus near University Circle, is one of five restaurants in the Zack Bruell Restaurant Group.
It can’t be called a chain because each restaurant has its niche and is totally different from the others.
Bruell thought, at first, that servers would have to wear gloves but learned from the medical team that frequent hand washing would be better. “So servers wash their hands frequently, before and after serving each table, and carry only two plates at a time.”
Everyone wears a mask. Bruell has gotten so good at spotting the proper dining protocols he can tell about compliance at a glance. “If I walk in and see place settings at the table, I’d turn around and walk out,” he said.
When I joined a friend at the annual July 14 Bastille Day celebration at L’Albatros, we requested a table outside. “Everyone wants to be outside these days,” I was told when I made the phone reservation. Our plans for an early arrival, however, cinched our request for a table on the patio. To my way of thinking, the patio at L’Albatros is one of the most delightful outdoor dining experiences in Northeast Ohio. It’s nicest at twilight but when we arrived at 5 only a few of the socially distanced tables were occupied.
We wore masks and our temperatures were checked before we were escorted to our table near a wisteria climbing the wall and prolific blooms in pots and small garden plots separating the spaces. “You can remove your masks while eating and drinking but you must put them back in place if you get up from the table,” we were told.
It was a fixed price menu three-course that night, priced at $35 with an extra $25 for wine pairings. Our bread was served in a brown paper bag with dipping oil, pandemic style.
“L’Albatros is a true expression of Parisian brasserie in Cleveland,” Bruell said. “We have our daily specials, but just as in Paris, the menu never changes.”
To develop his menu, Bruell traveled to France and ate in more than a dozen unpretentious restaurants during a two-week visit.
He’s been back several times since and has traveled extensively throughout Europe.
“I wanted to learn the reference point of French food and then lighten up the dishes for Cleveland diners,” he said. To Bruell, dining out is an experience of travel, transporting by tastes to new horizons. All his restaurants have a French inf luence.
“We’re making the best of a bad situation,” he said. “We’ve got very good people both on staff and as our customers.”
In the months when only carryout was permitted, his restaurants developed to-go menus and touchless delivery to car trunks. “It’s very popular at Parallax but it’s not economically sustainable for long,” he said. “I hope we can maintain in November when the weather flips and we can no longer eat outside.”
As a result of Bruell’s discipline and painstaking attention to detail, L’Albatros has often been on prestigious lists of the best French restaurants in the country.
It’s worldly, but at the same time offers rustic and approachable food with clean tastes and bold flavors. The service is impeccable. That applies to all of his restaurants, each having a different niche.
Our Bastille Day menu began with a choice of seafood dumplings or French onion pot stickers. My dumplings were deliciously napped with a Sauce American — classic French creation of chopped onions, tomatoes, white wine, brandy, salt, cayenne pepper, butter and fish stock. My friend’s potstickers were sauced with a soubis, another French classic made from longcooked onions with cream and Gamay wine.
Bastille Day, celebrated throughout France on July 14, is the country’s independence day — a day to remember the French Revolution which followed the storming of the Bastille in 1789. French royalty was overthrown then and it’s been a holiday ever since. It’s usually a very busy night at L’Albatros, especially among Francophiles.
For our second course of the Bastille Day dinner, my companion chose the salmon almondine with tomato concasse and a beurre noisette with pinot blanc. Almond slivers topped the salmon. The beurre sauce is simply butter cooked until it’s brown with a splash of pinot blanc and shallots. A cabernet franc wine was used to create the peppercorn jus sauce on my hanger steak au poivre. After tucking into the deliciously rich potato gratin, I was unable to finish the generously sized hanger steak. My husband had it for lunch the next day.
“I don’t follow a recipe when I cook,” Bruell confides about his methods of developing dishes. “I favor braises and cook the way our grandmothers would have cooked.”
His son Julian has joined him in the business as director of service for the restaurants.
He graduated from Cornell University’s hospitality program and first worked for well-known restaurants in New York City before coming home.
“We’re making the best of a bad situation. We’ve got very good people both on staff and as our customers.” — Zach Bruell