Cantine

What starts out as a delightful evening at a charming little eatery and craft beer & wine bottle shop before morphing into an experience rife with disappointment and frustration? Why our trip to Cantine, that’s what.
First, the good.
The concept is something I can totally get behind. Combine a bistro/​café, wine bar and bottle shop. There’s an entire wall from floor to ceiling that’s just bottles of wine and along the back wall there’s a cooler filled with beer and a few more shelves off to the left. You can purchase the beer/​wine for consumption on premise (the corkage fees are $ 10 for wine, $ 2/​$ 3 per beer depending on whether it’s a 12oz or larger bottle) or you can get it to go at retail prices. I don’t know all that much about wine, but what I saw in the beer area is pretty impressive. While they don’t have a very large selection what they do have is well curated. I was able to find several beers that I’ve yet to see at my regular, Cleveland-​area bottle shops.
There were 8 taps, if memory serves, and they were heavy on the local flavor. Two were Fat Head’s, one from Great Lakes and another from Platform Beer Co. Sure, it’s a tiny little selection, but when you’ve got dozens of bottles at your beck and call, you probably won’t miss it much.
The ambiance. Sure, Cantine’s in a strip mall, but once you’re inside you forget all about it. It’s classy, well decorated and just big enough to feel cozy without being crampt. There’s a long bar that stretches nearly the entire length of the main dining area with a few small tables here and there and longer, more communal tables in the center. The feel is definitely gastropub-​ish. Dim lighting, wooden table tops, metal stools. It’s pretty comfortable.
The food at Cantine, the highlight of our visit — is what most would consider upscale bistro fare. The concise menu is filled with snacky gastropub fare like pomme frites, bruschetta and charcuterie alongside some more substantial, small plates with the likes of mussels, calamari, chorizo tacos and arancini. Prices are reasonable with most of the snack items around coming in around $ 6 and most of the small plates hovering around the $ 13 mark.
We started with the soft pretzels & beer cheese. I’m somewhat of a soft pretzel snob and don’t suffer fools lightly in this category. Cantine nailed it. The fresh from the oven pretzels were baked to perfection — crispy, dark brown on the outside, soft, chewy doughy goodness inside — and the beer cheese was smooth, creamy and seasoned perfectly. Our server (one of many throughout the evening) was unable to tell us what beer or cheese was used in the recipe, but damn, it was delicious.
We then shared the Caprese Skewers ($ 5), a due of fresh mozzarella and cherry tomatoes run through with wooden sticks and drizzled with balsamic vinegar. Not my thing but my other half was pleased.
My wife ordered the seared sea scallops ($ 13) for her main. A trio of perfectly seared scallops drizzled with a sweet soy glaze and served with a side of corn and bacon relish. The crispy, caramelized scallops were both briny and sweet, yielding tenderly to the fork. The relish, while seasoned well and tasty, was a bit on the chewy side.
Being the meat-​loving carnivore I am, I went with the hangar steak and fingerlings small plate ($ 14). I was in the mood for some well-​prepared meat and that’s exactly what I got. The steak arrived sliced into 4 pieces, cooked a perfect medium with a delicious hard sear. Seasoning was spot on and the accompanying romesco sauce added just a touch of sweetness. The generous helping of roasted fingerling potatoes were fork tender and buttery. The pile of undressed arugula was completely unnecessary but I did like the little dollops of what I think was some kind of garlic aioli. It was nice for dipping the taters.
Now for the bad. Service. Ugh, the service.
With such a promising start (greeted immediately and promptly served our first drinks) I was surprised as how quickly it crashed and burned. After we were served our first round of drinks and our app, we must have inadvertently donned our cloak of invisibility. Hello, we’re still here. While we were eating, several large parties had entered and it was clear that the staff was all but dedicated to taking care of them. Another miss, my wife’s dinner was served nearly 10 minutes before mine. Then, after we were done, we waited, coats on, empty glasses on the table, for what seemed like forever for someone to bring us the check. No one did. I eventually had to go up to the cashier and request it myself.
So, this is the story of what could have been, at worst, a four-​star review but instead wound up a poor, middle-​of-​the-​road 3. We really enjoyed our food, I loved the craft beer, but a lackluster performance by the front of the house left us wanting. I have a feeling we’ll be back once the stink of this experience has worn off. After all, they have all those bottles…

The saying goes, «When pigs fly.» When talking about the impossible. But obviously those ppl have never been to Cantine because they would know that in fact pigs MUST fly… I mean– where else would they get those delicious Pork Wings from???
If you get nothing else — you have to order those. They were crispy on the outside, tender and moist on the inside, sweet, salty, and spicy all rolled into one. Impossibly good.
My second favorite dish was the chèvre stuffed peppadews. Creamy saltiness paired with sweet peppers, the arugula and balsamic reduction made me want to savor every bite. They should make it into a salad. Next time I’m not sharing it with anyone. Get your own!
I love calamari but it’s rarely very impressive from a uniqueness standpoint. Cantine definitely puts their own unique spin on things! The hot sauce and Gorgonzola cheese were tasty, but I missed the sweetness of a marinara sauce. Overall it was very good, but not something I would be compelled to order again (simply because there are SO many other things I want to try!)
The last dish we ate was the pomme frites with sriracha and truffles. This one would have been one of my favorites except I had some issue with the over starchiness of the fries. It didn’t have that light and fluffy and crispy quality I would have liked to have seen. I bet they could hit this one out of the park if they made it with sweet potato frites instead. Sticking to that sweet savory mashup that they seem to do so well with.
Another thing that is cool about this joint is that you can buy a bottle of wine at regular store prices and drink it with you meal. It’s like BYOB but better! They seem to have a huge selection.
You would never expect to have such gourmet small plates at reasonable prices in a strip mall near a gas station. But then again– anything’s possible when pigs fly!
I’ll definitely make sure this quaint neighborhood joint is on my to do list whenever I visit CLE from DC!

I came here tonight for my first time. Great spot! We had the mussels and chorizo tacos. The ambience and atmosphere was exactly what we needed!

Came here after having a few beers at the Dark Bar down the strip. Didn’t even know this place existed until my friend asked if I wanted to have a Lake Erie Monster before I drive back to Cleveland. Bright idea. Needless to say we did and I liked the place! Its a shining beacon in homogenized, chain-​loving suburbia. To me it looks like literally every eatery/​gastropub/​restaurant that has opened in the past 3 years though. Restoration Hardware mirrors and repurposed industrial stuff. Pretty cool, but not re-​inventing the wheel. Great beer selection and priced pretty well. The food looked super small portions and is served on those big white dishes… again been done a million times. The couple next to us at the bar had a sea of white plates in front of em. Totaled up in my head would of been about 60 bux worth of food but only was a few handfuls of stuff in total. Really expensive for what ya get. Bartenders were OK. Not very social. They looked too busy, constantly running all over washing the 127 different glasses they have for drinks and making charcuterie boards. Odd to see that being made right behind the bar. Pulling olives out of plastic tubs and putting em on a plate is more BOH stuff, no? I adhere to the old adage that bartending is 10% accounting, 10% chemistry and 80% babysitting. This new wave of places popping up seems to have the adage of 10% babysitting 40% chemistry and 50% raking in profit. Like Billy Joel said «He’s quick with a joke or to light up your smoke». That kind of bartending is going by the wayside…

Pork wings… amaze balls
PierogiS and tacos were bomb
Sunday food and drink special plus tues taco night, can’t go wrong
Will def return soon

I really hate to give Cantine three stars because I have always enjoyed the place on previous visits, but service tonight was subpar.
My sister and I arrived around 7:30 and decided to sit outside. After receiving our drinks, the others on the patio had left and it was only us two.
An hour+ goes by and our server has not come back to check on us. In that hour, I finished both my wine and water. My sister finished her drink. What if we had decided we wanted to order food? Or another drink? I literally sat there parched (and no, I’m not being dramatic – I really could have used more water).
Finally, another server comes by and asks if we need anything. We ask for the check. He drops it and leaves only for us to find out the check is wrong. Then another completely different server brings us the new check. I have no idea who our actual server was supposed to be.
Poor service aside, I enjoyed my glass of shiraz and my sister enjoyed her dessert martini, which was made perfectly – not too strong and not too sweet.
I’ll be back, cautiously hoping the service improves.

Very cool and hip wine and craft beer oasis in an unsuspecting location (strip mallish). Bottle beer and wine with corkage fees, but reasonable. Also some draft beer and wines by the glass. Very good food. Chorizo tacos are good, grilled cheese sandwich is excellent. Worth a stop if in the area.

My boyfriend and I went in here on a Tuesday night to meet a friend… and it was absolutely packed. None of us had ever been here, so we had no idea it was «Taco Tuesday.» The bartender greeted us, took our name, and offered to get us a drink while we were waiting.
We were seated after about 35 minutes, and had a bit of an issue with our table mates (two parties were seated at one of the long tables – not a big deal, and the issue is neither here nor there, as the bartender helped to sort it out).
Luckily we’d gotten that drink before being seated, because we didn’t see a waitress for quite a while. All three of us had finished our beverage and had been looking around for 10 minutes or so. Finally our waitress came over (it seemed like she was the only person working besides the bartender? Bad idea for a busy night), and asked me (no one else) if I wanted another glass of wine; I said yes, and she walked away… without knowing what I had been drinking. Surprise, surprise, she comes back 5 minutes later and asks which wine I had – my boyfriend and friend jump in to give their drink orders, too.
So we get our drinks a few minutes later, and she walks away… again. Mind you, we still haven’t gotten menus, heard any specials, been asked if we’re eating…
Next time the waitress appears at our table mates’ sides, I flag her down and ask if we could have some food menus. We order, get our food, yada yada yada. The service was similar throughout the entire evening – even when it slowed down and the restaurant started clearing out. And not ONCE did ANYONE mention anything about the specials. I still have no idea what the exact deal is, but we were venting our frustrations to another friend who’d recommended the place later that week, and she told us why they were so busy on Tuesday.
On food: we got a few small plates – the charcuterie board, the olives, and the pan con tomate. Largely good, though the pan con tomate was a bit bitter… too much garlic/​not enough tomato, perhaps.
TL;DR: If you go on Tuesday, know already that it’s «Taco Tuesday» and that you will have slow service and no one will give you any indication about what is going on. The bartender will probably pay more attention (to your table) than your waitress. Tasty wine and food, for the most part.
Will try this again (not on a Tuesday) to compare; may try Tuesday night again if an off night shows it’s worth it.

Disappointing — I was hoping for something new and great.
Menu looked (and I emphasize LOOKED) fantastic. I liked the idea of ordering a bunch of small plates and apps to get a variety and try different things they had to offer. We ordered the calamari, scallops, and Sicilian pizza. Also tried to order the butternut squash ravioli, but were told it is no longer offered.
Calamari had potential. It was cooked well, not too heavy, nice texture. Here is the problem: they drenched it in buffalo wing sauce and gorgonzola cheese. You have probably never seen a restaurant do this before… and there is a reason why. Yuck! Why ruin a good thing with buffalo wing sauce?!?
Next were the scallops. You get three not-​so-​plump scallops with the order. I couldn’t tell if they were extremely sandy or if it was the bread crumb topping — either way, I just didn’t want to devour them after the first bite. They were also swimming in a pool of strawberry or raspberry sauce of some sort. Again… if your going to serve a sauce with something that does not need it, at least make it good.
The pizza was ok. We probably liked that the most but wasn’t anything special.
The menu read like a high-​end trendy restaurant. Unfortunately the food didn’t live up to the hype. Do you ever eat somewhere and the food is almost there but something is just missing? You get the feeling that the person cooking doesn’t have real training or that extra something to make it really good with the right flavor pairings? That was our experience here.
Atmosphere left something to be desired. I don’t think I would call it trendy or cozy. Kinda bare bones and industrial… I almost felt like I was in an upscale Chipotle. Maybe a good place to stop in if you want to grab a cocktail or glass of wine. Probably better off just going next door to the Italian restaurant though.
On a good note — Our server was pleasant and the service was good.

Love love love this place! Can’t say enough so I won’t say much. Comfortable, clean, cool, hip, everything needed in area

Went here last night with my Fiancé and my mother. He was very excited about going. We went at a busy time and we walked in and found a table and asked if we could sit there and the server said yes but there was a table that just left in the back. We went back and the table had not been bussed yet. I was patient for a while but servers would come and take a couple things off the table at a time. I was getting close to picking it up myself cause we waited probably ten minutes after being acknowledged, us and the table.
Finally they took care of the table and we were able to sit down. I obviously had a poor vision of how the night was going to go. Gina our server and the one who finally bussed the table was nice, she was timely with the food and drinks. I had wine and it was really good, but I have to admit the food saved the whole experience. I had the mussels and we also had the scallops and calamari and everything was amazing. I would definitely go back!

Had my birthday here and it was a great place to enjoy ohio city/​tremont atmosphere and drinks, with great food and drink selections. I love that you can pull a bottle of wine down from the wall or a beer from the cooler and drink it right there. Food was awesome and so was my wine flight!

This place has great food and drinks are sweet! Claims and spaghetti is a must to get! This is now my second time coming and I have nothing to complain about! Great staff, food, and drinks!

Great food! Cute place! Great wine & craft beer selection! Needs some vegetarian options :)

Checked out this place with The Wife and our new little pea this afternoon. In short I was really impressed. The feel of the place is like a hip urban wine bar but it is located in a suburban strip mall next to Subway. Shelves are lined with wine at reasonable prices. There is also a section for refrigerated beers and ciders at the back. I also appreciated that the prices were pretty much the same as you would get in a grocery store except that you have to pay a corking fee. Since we came on a Sunday afternoon it was happy hour which meant that there was a discount on wines food items and draft beers.
Since we were not that hungry we decided just to go with the pork wings and clam spaghetti. These were both very well done — I was very impressed, the ribs were tender pork ribs fried and coated in a light sweet and sour sauce. The spaghetti clams were a generous portion of well done pasta and plentiful amount of fresh clams in a flavorful briny sauce.
Service was friendly and I heard the neighboring table complain not very nicely about the dish she had. The manager listened to her complaint and without any defensiveness offered to replace the dish to make her happy. Very classy.
I don’t know what Broadview Heights did to start getting restaurants of the caliber of Cantine and Cork and Cleaver, but whatever it was, I’m loving it. I will be back here to try some of the other small plates. Hope this place does well.

Wow! This place is awesome. A little bit under the radar but do yourself a favor and find it. Its in a strip mall next to a Subway but The food is top notch. I had the tacos and they were quite possibly the best ones Ive had in a long time (saying a lot bc Im in Phoenix quite a bit). They also sell wine by the bottle and have a cool little bar. I cant wait to get hungry again so I can come back.

I can’t wait for my husband to get home from his business trip so we can go back again. Dropped in today to get just a bottle of wine and even that made me smile. We will probably go tomorrow for Sunday which just happens to be all day happy hour. They’re small plates are different than most places but definitely fun and filling.

So my friends and I were looking for somewhere to have a nice double date and I stumbled upon this gem!
Walking in to Cantine, I was expecting a quaint little restaurant but I swear, if you don’t look outside you would think you were in Ohio City or Tremont. This trendy little wine and light bite place was awesome. From the chunky wood furniture to the modern light fixtures and décor, this was perfect for us! Also, I loved the bathroom and plan on stealing some ideas for my own… shhhh don’t tell.
We started with a long and eclectic drink list. I had the Riesling and my boyfriend had the Game of Thrones beer. I know right? Then we were looking to order some delicious food, but our waiter was nowhere to be found. We had to go up to the bar and ask for him to come over. That was my only complaint. It would have brought the rating down (since it happened again with bills) if the food wasn’t so GD amazing!
I had the clam and spaghetti. I realize a lot of people don’t like clams but the dish was so well put together. The sauce was light and flavorful, just all around delicious. Trevor had the grilled cheese and love it as well. Especially the fries, which he told me were «sooo good» with a handful in his mouth. Our couple guests really enjoyed their food as well and after talking it over, decided this would be a great little place to wine and dine again very soon!

Great wine bar! Went there on Friday night and the place had a great crowd. Greeted promptly upon entering and seated at a cozy table. Attentive server gave us a rundown of wines and she gave us several tips on pairing with the menu. All in all a great wine bar in the area!
Will be back!

Cosy new jig here. Happy hours are Monday –Friday 3−6pm. They have wine tastings each week that I hope to one day enjoy. There’s a corking fee of $ 10 for wine, and $ 1.50 for beers. If you’d rather take any to go they are sold at retail price. Haven’t had any food here yet, but the small plates they have look and smell great. I’m in love with their grapefruit mule, it’s refreshing with a bitter and sour touch. Give it a try even if you aren’t partial to grapefruit!
So I’ve tried the calamari and the stuffed peppadews. Both were awesome. The calamari was crispy, had a touch of spice from hot sauce and topped with Gorgonzola cheese. The peppadews are delightful. I’d recommend either of these. We also ordered some focaccia bread with Rosemary and olive oil. All these came with cheese so needless to say I was happy.