Nestled in the heart of downtown Cleveland, Ohio, is Pickwick and Frolic. The restaurant name promises fun and the dining experience includes plenty of laughs – but it doesn’t joke around when it comes to high-quality beef.
The historic Euclid Avenue Opera House once stood here and figures into the current name, taken from Charles Dickens’ The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club.
In an area full of excitement, Pickwick and Frolic sets itself apart by offering four distinct entertainment venues in its 27,000-square-foot facility: a restaurant, comedy club, cabaret theatre and a martini bar.
The menu features “rustic American” food, the kind of cooking that reminds you of home no matter where you’re from.
“It’s simple food but all the cooking techniques are done really well,” says Ken Sherepita (“share a PITA”), executive chef at Pickwick and Frolic. “Even though it may not come across as fine dining, there is a lot of detail behind every plate. We try to let the food do the talking, so even if it is pretty simple, it’s excellent quality, flavorful and juicy.”
The kitchen features fire, and lots of it. Sherepita describes it as “the cowboy way,” bringing out the flavor by using wood-fire grills, ovens and rotisseries.
The house specialty is a Certified Angus Beef ® brand prime rib cooked slowly on the wood-fire rotisserie and then finished on the grill. This dish, like many others at Pickwick and Frolic, is very different from the style of barbecue locals expect.
If there were such a thing as “Cleveland-style barbecue,” Sherepita says it would involve using less flavorful cuts of meat and smothering them in a sweet and tangy barbecue sauce. But at Pickwick and Frolic, the menu features high-quality meat with no overpowering sauce.
Serving premium beef has helped increase steak sales and add value to their business, just as the brand does throughout all the links in the beef production cycle.
Since making that switch three years ago, Sherepita only recalls one complaint. Overwhelmingly, guests acknowledge and appreciate the dependable quality of meat. And so does the chef.
“Consistency. With everything that happens in a day-to-day operation, that’s one thing I don’t have to worry about, making sure that I have a good product,” he says.
As a take on the restaurant’s name, Sherepita recently began offering a Pick Quick Lunch menu that features low-and-slow-cooked cuts such as tri tip and sirloin flap. By selecting a protein, side and sauce from the menu, guests can create 1,200 different combinations.
It’s a unique concept that brings in both new and repeat customers looking for quick service and high quality. And it doubled beef sales at lunch.
Based on opportunities that come from greater carcass utilization, the featured cuts are flavorful but not found on most menus. That makes them available at lower prices from packers that want to sell more of the carcass as whole muscle cuts rather than grinds.
These cuts also work well with existing equipment in the kitchen, a key consideration when Sherepita is planning new menu items.
Such common-sense business judgment is the same from ranch to restaurant, he knows. The main goal of any daily operation is minimizing waste and maximizing efficiency all along that chain.
“You know, some of the customers and guests come in and use the words ‘local,’ ‘sustainable’ and those types of things, but that’s what farming is,” says Sherepita. “That’s not new to farming; it wouldn’t make sense to do it any other way. They do things the right ways for the right reasons.”
Like chefs, they work long hours in jobs that aren’t nearly as glamorous as the media portrays, where most of the business goes on behind the scenes, Sherepita says.
His message for beef producers? Keep raising high-quality beef.
“People that are successful in something have passion for it,” he says. “I appreciate their passion for what they do.”
Source: Certified Angus Beef Brand
