Chef Tony Fortner: Lakewood's Soul Food Fusion Master

Chef Tony Fortner, owner of Southern Cafe, 11817 Detroit Ave, Lakewood.

Chef Tony Fortner started cooking when he was fourteen years old. He worked the line at a restaurant called Earth by April, located at Cedar Ave and Lee Road in Cleveland Heights. It was his first job in a professional kitchen. Fortner’s mother, Matti Adams, was the inspiration behind his interest in food.   

“My mother was the inspiration behind becoming a culinarian,” he said in a phone interview. “She was an extraordinary cook, one of the best you’ve ever seen. She still does things that I can’t do.”

Fortner was impressed by her culinary skills. His favorite foods of hers were corn bread dressing, peach cobbler, and spaghetti. Everything she made was from scratch. She did nothing out of cans, according to him, and even when she made yams she would peel them, add butter, sugar, cinnamon, vanilla, and nutmeg. Green beans were always fresh. A garden in their back yard provided cabbage and tomatoes. 

“I used to dread the summer when we had to weed that garden every week. We used a pitchfork to loosen the soil to let the roots breathe. We were on our hands and knees pulling out weeds so the vegetables wouldn’t suffocate,” he said.

As early as age 7, Fortner helped his mother with cooking. He came from a large family, six siblings and two cousins, and the food was in the kitchen. Tasting food was part of cooking and by the time dinner was ready to serve, he was full. The other kids would get mad at him but they didn’t want to cook. 

“In order to get extra food, I would make the macaroni, pick greens from the garden, clean the beans, and stir the sauces. I blanched tomatoes and peeled the skins off for fresh spaghetti sauce. I learned how to make black bean chili, gumbo, jambalaya from scratch.”

Matti Adams was from the low country in South Carolina. Her mother was a great cook, too. While the whole family knew how to cook, Matti was the best of them. Vinegar and mustard sauces for pulled pork and smoked meats are common in the low country. The tangy tartness of the vinegar is considered a regional specialty. Further north, in Cleveland, people tend to prefer a sweet and spicy sauce, Fortner explained. Matti knew how to make both. 

When Earth by April opened in 1973, the Cleveland Heights spot aimed to be the area’s first counterculture seafood and vegetarian restaurant with a vast buffet of marinated vegetables and cold salads. The popular destination was named Restaurant of the Year six out of seven years. Celebrities including professional sports personalities from the Browns, Indians, and Cavaliers flocked there. Fortner started working there in 1979.

In 1983, Fortner joined the Navy where he was on an aircraft carrier with over 5,000 men. It was a different style of cooking than he had been used to.

“Cooking for that many people at one time taught me how to deal with pressure and paying attention to detail. It was a very good learning experience and prepared me for this profession,” he said.   

Fortner left the Navy in 1987 and returned home to Cleveland where he worked the local restaurant circuit cooking for some of the best places in the region including Lake Forest Country Club, Beechmont Country Club, Johnny’s Downtown, Embassy Suites Beachwood, and the Clifton Club. It was different style of cooking.

“The Navy was commercial institutionalized cooking but when I got out I went back to à la carte cooking. Ten people ordered ten different things. We had to serve them all at the same time,” he said, adding, “I did all the recipes and took care of the books. I wrote the menus. I was making everybody else successful and rich and never received credit for it. They couldn’t do what I did for them. ”Frustrated by the lack of recognition and financial gain despite working ten and twelve hour shifts, Fortner decided to open his own restaurant. 

“There aren’t many chefs in Cleveland that are as talented as I am. I’m not bragging, it’s just a fact,” he said. 

Prior to opening his first restaurant in 2008, Fortner did mostly catering through his company called Creative Catering with weddings and graduations, private parties, bridal showers. He was cooking like he had done in the Navy. The business was doing well but he missed the à la carte distinctive style of cooking in a restaurant, the “controlled chaos where you have to bring everything into control.” A la carte was better suited to his skill and talent. 

“Absolutely fits my talents better,” he said. “If I have a table of five or six people and one of them wants a long bone veal chop, one wants clams, and another wants a medium strip steak with a béarnaise sauce, you need to have skill to do it. When someone orders a rack of lamb and you don’t know how to break it down, that’s a problem.”

Southern Cafe, 11817 Detroit Ave, Lakewood, opened to critical fanfare. Reviews were good and business steady. The recipes, at least 90% of them, came from his mother.  It was the food he grew up on. Eventually, he added twists and variation on standards like walleyed and collard artichoke dip. His talents as a chef shined through once again.

“Momma taught you the recipes. She didn’t write them down. Old school chefs never wrote anything down. They showed you. You had to pay attention to get it right,” he said. 

“There were no standardized recipes which is why it’s so hard to replicate them. Home style cooking is the food most of us have grown up on. Pork chops with gravy and onions, liver, or meatloaf, everybody knows what that is. Basic, simple, clean food is where the money is. That’s what people eat.” 

Fortner sources all of his meats from Sam’s Club. “They have the best meats without hormones or antibiotics. All of their meat is grain fed, USDA Choice or better so it doesn’t have that musty flavor. It’s a very mild flavor. They have the best fish and lobster. Their shrimp is wild caught from Argentina not farm raised.” 

He opened a second restaurant on Kinsman Ave in the Mount Pleasant neighborhood (13905 Kinsman Road, Cleveland) last year two weeks before Gov. DeWine shut down the state because of COVID-19. It was devastating. Fortner was on the way to Edgewater Park when he got a call from one of his employees. They had to close the restaurants. He wasn’t prepared but fortunately his two sons were trained to work in the kitchens. They quickly mobilized both restaurants for takeout and delivery. 

“UberEats and Door Dash were taking 30% for delivery. It was ridiculous but if you couldn’t pay them, you weren’t moving your product,” he said. “The City of Cleveland finally stepped in and said they couldn’t take more than 15% and that was only recently. We paid the 30% for 15 months.”

The Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) didn’t help either. Small business owners like Fortner didn’t have the accountants and lawyers to help with processing their applications. The Paycheck Protection Program, as part of the $900 billion COVID-19 relief package passed in December 2020, allowed entities to apply for low-interest private loans to pay for their payroll and certain other costs.

“The PPP program wasn’t set up for small business like mine. They gave the Marriott Company more than $15 million dollars,” Fortner said. “Restaurants on the bottom end were devastated. The money got all sucked up by the big guys. It was a nightmare.”

Since restrictions were lifted earlier in June, Fortner has seen a steady rise in customers. While he can’t compete with companies like Amazon when it comes to hiring staff for his restaurants, he remains optimistic that people will find their way. He sure did.

Southern Cafe has two locations on 13905 Kinsman Road, Cleveland, 216-772-2222, and 11817 Detroit Road, Lakewood, 216-801-4535. 

Bruce Checefsky is a contributing writer for the Plain Press, East Side Daily News, Lakewood Observer, CAN Journal, Tremonster, and others. 

Bruce Checefsky

Bruce Checefsky is a contributing writer for the Plain Press, East Side Daily News, Lakewood Observer, CAN Journal, Tremonster, and others. 

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Volume 17, Issue 13, Posted 3:01 PM, 07.07.2021