Diners can expect to have a lot of great conversations at the Blue Door Cafe & Bakery in Cuyahoga Falls now. That’s because owner Michael Bruno has renovated the dining room with sound walls to cut back on the noise when the restaurant gets busy.
In the past, Bruno has had difficulty hearing dinner companions talking right across the table from him. Customers also complained about the noise level over the years.
“It was so loud, it was distracting,” he said at the restaurant May 1.
Now, sound walls have been installed floor to ceiling by Audimute in a cream color interspersed with contrasting vertical strips of brown. Vertical “ribs” will be extended from the darker sections to add architectural interest.
Black sound paneling also runs along the dining room’s lower walls, below chair rails, in the formerly echoey restaurant.
The sound walls, which Audimute makes for drummers’ studios, were installed over a three-day period in late April.
Along with the new sound walls, elegant new sconces in gold and black, with dimmers, have been installed to better light the dining room’s formerly dark interior. Blue Door was unable to mount light fixtures on the wall before the renovation because they were concrete block.
A new Sonos sound system also allows for adjusted balances in music volume.
New wine room
Another new enhancement at the restaurant is a new wine cellar, which formerly was a cubby on the back wall of the dining room that stored wine, a cart, menus and cleaning buckets.
Before, the restaurant stored about 100 bottles of wine. Now, with the custom work of carpenters who are retired Cleveland firefighters, new maple wine racks store 300 bottles of wine.
Adorning the back wall of the wine room, which is enclosed by a glass door, is a 1907 painting owned by Bruno’s mother called “Die Weinprobe.” That’s the German phrase for “the wine sampling,” with the painting depicting two gentlemen in a wine cellar.
“Our capacity to have wines has increased exponentially,” Bruno said. “We’re going to be able to bring in some Bordeaux, bring in some Burgundies, bring in some tempranillos.”
These wines are meticulously chosen to be paired with Blue Door’s new dinner menu, created by new chef Jimmy Pintiello.
Bruno also has extended a brick wall down the hall from the wine cellar to match a brick accent wall nearby, with the goal of creating the feel of an old house.
New chef since December
Pintiello has been Blue Door’s dinner chef since December, returning after working as the Blue Door brunch chef more than a decade ago. He has created a new dinner menu with French and other European influences.
“It’s taken our dinner service, I feel, to a whole new level,” Bruno said of Pintiello’s creations.
The international dinner menu, which change on a weekly basis, features appetizers such as tartare or apples and brie, hand-made pastas and entrees from Provencal short rib to Catalonian chicken and jagerschnitzel.
Pintiello, originally from Cuyahoga Falls, worked at the former Pucci’s in the Valley in Akron years ago, before moving to California and Las Vegas. He also worked at Nuevo Akron and Cleveland and, most recently, Crave.
In the kitchen on a recent late afternoon, Pintiello was preparing for dinner service with ingredients for a classic French-apple and brie appetizer, beef tartare, a wild mushroom crepe, Catalonian chicken with pickled ramps and risotto a la carbonara with asparagus.
“We have a wild mustard crepe that we’re doing that’s really nice,” Pintiello said. “It has a corn pudding with local ramps that have been perfect for the season right now.”
He talked about creating a balance between masculine and feminine flavors in dishes and also stressed how special it is that the Blue Door changes at least a handful of menu items every week or two.
“It’s an ever-evolving menu that allows not only me as a chef but the staff to take ingredients and do something that we haven’t done before,” Pintiello said. “I feel the kitchen should be a learning environment for everybody and kind of like an evolution of everybody’s skills and talents.”
Ongoing goals
Bruno’s goal with all the changes at Blue Door is warmth and elegance. In another improvement, new bistro tables and chairs from Austria adorn the patio for an elegant look, accented with new painting and flower pots.
The restaurateur, who always has a mind toward improvements at Blue Door, plans to do a full back bar renovation in late summer. He renovated the concrete-top bar itself in 2023.
Arts and restaurant writer Kerry Clawson may be reached at 330-996-3527 or kclawson@thebeaconjournal.com.
This article originally appeared on Akron Beacon Journal: Better sound, wine cellar, new chef are recent changes at Blue Door
Reporting by Kerry Clawson, Akron Beacon Journal / Akron Beacon Journal
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