Review: The Hipp in Mid Town Cleveland

This past weekend was my birthday weekend, and I had overly ambitious plans for things I wanted to do and places I wanted to see.  After party rocking on Friday night in Tremont, most of those plans went out the window, but I was able to muster up enough strength to head to Mid Town to check out The Hipp.  

The Hipp's cool wall mural



Located in a building adjacent to the Agora concert hall, The Hipp is the brainchild of Sandy Madachik and Jae Stulock, best known for their vegan and vegetarian friendly food truck, Umami Moto. (which is my favorite CLE food truck, BTW - their massaman curry is incredible)  The restaurant is housed in a space that has hosted more restaurants than I can name here, but I'm hoping that The Hipp has better luck.



Interior of The Hipp

My boyfriend and I dropped by for lunch on Saturday at an off time - after 2:00 pm - and we were the only people in the restaurant.  But considering that this was The Hipp's first week in business, I didn't expect it to be hopping. But I do hope business picks up in the future.  Since we were the only people there, we got to talk to Sandy for a little about the restaurant and the businesses nearby.  I'm not familiar with Mid Town, but apparently it was a flourishing neighborhood at some point.  Now, it's in "transition," like so many other Cleveland neighborhoods, but hopefully things are on the upswing there. (sometimes it just takes a couple businesses to bring a neighborhood back - who would have thought the Gordon Square area whould be so built up?)

I'm proud of myself for remembering to take photos, considering how terrible I felt during lunch. (because of a hangover, not my lunch)  I started off with a carrot ginger bisque.  It was pretty incredible.  I like ginger a lot, and you could definitely taste it in this vegan soup, but it wasn't overpowering.

Carrot ginger bisque

I also ordered an eggplant sammie. (yes, that's the actual name of the sandwich)  It was basically deep fried strips of breaded eggplant accompanied with freshly roasted red peppers.  I don't even like peppers all that much, but the peppers on this sandwich were really good.  Very fresh tasting.  The portion size was huge, too.  (almost too huge - I had a sandwich explosion when I bit into it - I had to deconstruct my sandwich to eat it more neatly)

Eggplant sammie

My boyfriend - who humors me by trying out new restaurants although he's not that into food - really loved his tuna blt.  He repeatedly said he wished he knew how to make tuna like the tuna in his sandwich at home.  (But thankfully he doesn't, so restaurants like The Hipp can stay in business!) He also appreciated the large portion of chips that came along with his sandwich.

The Hipp has a little bit of everything - from vegan and vegetarian options to bacony goodness for the meat eaters.  I appreciate that Umami Moto and The Hipp always provide at least one vegan and/or vegetarian option and really hope that their new restaurant does very well.  You may not have any reason to be in Mid Town, but it's definitely worth the drive to check out The Hipp!