The Flying Fig to celebrate 21 years of business with food-filled bash

Karen Small, front of The Flying Fig restaurant.

The Flying Fig will celebrate its 21st birthday. (Photos by Joshua Gunter, cleveland.com; Peggy Turbett, The Plain Dealer)

CLEVELAND, Ohio -- The Flying Fig has proved to be an Ohio City staple for more than two decades, providing a mix of critically acclaimed, locally sourced food for Cleveland’s dining crowd.

The restaurant, which opened in 1999, reaches its 21st birthday this year. Owner and chef Karen Small will mark the occasion with an anniversary event on Feb. 23.

“I feel like people have given so much to us over the years that I want to use this opportunity to give back as well,” Small said.

Small will host a dinner featuring a selection of small plates, complimentary glasses of champagne, live music and games. Tickets cost $30 per person, and 10 percent of the event’s earnings will go to Refugee Response (Small is on the board of directors for the organization).

The star of the show is -- as it’s always been at The Flying Fig -- the food. A menu will feature selections that span the history of the restaurant, including past favorites like fried calamari with pickled ginger aioli, smoked chicken pasta, pear and walnut salad, crab spring rolls and braised rabbit gnocchi.

There will also be freshly made potato chips and wasabi dip at the bar the whole night -- a favorite among diners who visited the Flying Fig in the restaurant’s early years.

“Our menu changes a little bit more frequently than it did back then,” Small said. “But one thing that will never change is that we’ve always had that mission and commitment to local and supporting the local economy by buying local.”

Inside of restaurant.

(Photo by Marc Bona, cleveland.com)

The Flying Fig hit instant popularity with Cleveland’s dining crowds when it opened in 1999, selling out of food on its first night of business and on busy nights for the following six months. Small still remembers opening day vividly.

“We got so busy. We ran out of food by 8:30 p.m., and we just stood there and it was frightening,” Small said. “I was frustrated and happy all at the same time because I wanted to do it so perfectly … but we loved it at the end of the night. It felt great.”

At that time, Ohio City wasn’t the dining hotspot that it is today.

“There wasn’t much here. You know, it was pre-development,” Small said. “There weren’t all the breweries and the bars, and it was a little bit dangerous at that time.”

Small, a current member of Ohio City’s economic development committee, said she has always focused on retaining the neighborhood’s diversity whenever moving forward with revitalization projects.

“We’re hanging on as best as we can to having a good sense of diversity in this neighborhood,” she said. “We’re working hard to retain that and not let it become too gentrified.”

Small, now 65, has had the chance to fine-tune her menu and business since those early days of The Flying Fig, and the eatery’s business has always stayed regular. She was recognized in 2018, after years of local and regional acclaim, as a semifinalist for Best Chef, Great Lakes Region in the prestigious James Beard Foundation awards.

Small has also expanded business, little by little -- she added a market to the restaurant in 2010, offering local foods, wine and other items for sale. In 2019, Small opened a food stand at Rocket Mortgage Fieldhouse -- then named Quicken Loans Arena -- serving sandwiches and other fare.

This year, Small is preparing to open her new breakfast restaurant, Juneberry, which will take over the space formerly occupied by Jack Flaps restaurant in Ohio City.

But her home base is always The Flying Fig -- a vantage point from which Small has seen her neighborhood -- and its residents -- change and grow.

“Just to watch that whole continuum of 20 years in the same neighborhood, and so many of the people in the neighborhood have been here that long, too,” she said. “It’s pretty gratifying. I sometimes will look around the dining room and think, ‘I just watched this person go through life.’ It’s so much more than just being in a restaurant and feeding people good food.”

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