Top 20 Best New Restaurants 2007

Table 45
Cleveland, Ohio

By John Mariani
10/11/2006, 12:00 AM

You don't run across many fine-dining restaurants owned by hospitals, but the Cleveland Clinic Foundation has long been landlord of the InterContinental Hotel and its restaurant, which for years was a good but dull French dining room. Now, as Table 45, it's one of the most strikingly modern in America, costing (some say) $12 million. Divided into five "zones" allowing for high-end dining or a casual nosh at the counter, the place is sleek, polished, and very cool -- curving-glass private rooms, a blond-wood bar buffed to a low sheen, leather-covered curved metal chairs -- like a retro-modern first-class dining room on a Richard Branson space station.

Chef Zachary Bruell has never been more versatile, drawing on global influences in dishes like his homespun bowl of Vietnamese noodles and veal meatballs. Chicken emerges from the fierce heat of a tandoori oven red-orange and sizzling.


John Mariani and Chef Zachary Bruell

When you make a reservation, gather five friends and sit at the chef's table in the kitchen. InterContinental Hotel, 9801 Carnegie Avenue; 216-707-4045; tbl45.com.