I wasn’t shy about letting folks know I’d be undergoing major surgery late last year.
And I swear — wink, wink — I had no idea that folks would go overboard with gifts of yummy food during my several weeks of recovery from cervical fusion surgery.
But they did, allowing me to make some great local food discoveries while I was off work: everything from soup to locally baked bread to the best pastitsio — aka Greek lasagna — I have ever eaten.
And there was the Hot Cocoa Coffeecake that a friend ordered from Zingerman’s Bakehouse. Not local, but I have to let you know about it. It’s that good.
More about the cake later. First, here are my top picks of the local stuff that came my way:
• Pastitsio from Western Fruit Basket, 115 E. Market St., downtown Akron: This quirky shop, which sells gift baskets as well as homemade Greek food, has been an Akron presence for more than 100 years. It has long been known for its buttery spanakopita — phyllo dough stuffed with spinach and feta cheese. (Western Fruit’s spanakopita are shaped like fat sausages, though spanakopita often comes triangle-shaped.)
Lucky for me, my friend brought me some of these and Western Fruit Basket’s amazingly light pastitsio — tubular pasta topped with seasoned ground beef (some versions include lamb) and fluffy bechamel sauce.
The pastitsio runs a mere $10 for a “platter” portion that serves four. A single serving costs $5, a family platter $22.
This is a small operation, with co-owner Melissa Megois doing much of the cooking. Ordering ahead of time is encouraged. The menu is online at www.wfbasket.com. Her father and co-owner, Gregory, helps out in the kitchen.
They’re just the latest folks of Greek heritage who have owned the place in its long history. Melissa has brought some youthful energy, adding daily specials such as specialty gyros, including the Old BBQ — chicken with feta, onion rings and barbecue sauce. She notes her baklava is vegan. And the shop also offers vegan chili.
Much of the business is take-out, but there are a few tables in front of the counter at the minimalistic place.
Previous owner Angelo Detorakis often hangs out. He was there the other day, chatting with a friend at a table, and when the shop got especially busy he would leap up to help.
You’ll find Western Fruit Basket in the middle of the 1928 white terra cotta building at the corner of Market and Summit streets. The shop’s old sign still hangs on the Summit end of the building, where the shop previously was located.
Hours are 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Saturday. Call 330- 376-3917.
• Multigrain sourdough bread with seeds from Brimfield Bread Oven, 3956 state Route 43 (south of Interstate 76), Brimfield: I’d been wanting to check out this place since it opened early last year. Breads and other yummies are baked in an on-premise wood-fired brick oven. Yup, the only heat source is wood.
I finally got out there after friends brought me some get-well meatloaf and the bakery’s multigrain sourdough during my recovery. They had found the bread at a Mustard Seed grocery; in addition to its retail operation, Brimfield Bread Oven supplies various businesses, including the three Northeast Ohio Mustard Seeds.
The multigrain sourdough bread with extra seeds (there’s a version with fewer seeds) is a hearty, tasty mix of grains, including rye from Stutzman Farms outside Millersburg and spelt from Twin Parks Farm outside West Salem. Seeds include millet and sunflower. This wonder of a bread is about as far from Wonder Bread as you can get, and is worth deviating from any low-carb diet.
Like all Brimfield Bread Oven’s items, it contains no artificial ingredients. The multigrain bread, with the sourdough adding acidity, stays good for about a week, co-owners Genevieve and Jud Smith explained.
The couple, in their 30s, have been baking for a while. Jud first learned the craft as an employee at Great Lakes Baking Co. in Hudson. He honed his skills at the King Arthur Flour Bakery in Vermont, where Genevieve joined him, working as a pastry chef.
Why wood-fired? “Anybody who gets into this, you’re naturally drawn to wood-fired,” Jud Smith said. “We wanted something that was simple and kind of put all the power in our hands.”
Both from Northeast Ohio, the pair bought a house in Brimfield in 2014 and began the bakery as a cottage business, selling their goods at farmers markets. They opened their shop in January.
In addition to breads, it features pastries, and pizza from 5:30 to 9 p.m. Wednesdays through Saturdays. You can get a house favorite like pepperoni or margherita (fresh basil and mozzarella), or build your own, and sit at one of the tables just steps from the big, hulking brick oven to enjoy the enticing smells.
Brimfield Bread Oven is open 7 a.m. to 9 p.m. Wednesday through Friday; 8 a.m. to 9 p.m. Saturday and 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. Sunday.
• Lentil soup from Vasili’s Greek Cuisine, 1702 Merriman Road in Akron’s Merriman Valley: Yeah, there’s a bit of a Greek theme, I guess. My husband, Jim, snagged this for me in the early days following the surgery, knowing that I had a very sore throat. He was already a fan of this vegetarian soup; I would become one.
“Lots of garlic, basil and mint,” are just some of the flavors that go into the soup that has a lot of fans, said owner Vasili Hajdari, who opened the place in a small strip plaza in 2012. He operated a Greek restaurant in the food court at Summit Mall for more than six years.
One customer, he said, confessed she passed off a crock of the soup as her own. “I told her, ‘Hey, as long as you buy it here, I don’t care what you tell your family,’ ” he said. The recipe is from his mother, said Hajdari, a native of Thessaloniki, Greece, who moved to the United States in 2001.
Traditional foods such as spanakopita, grape leaves and Greek salad also are popular items, as is the recently introduced Greek-style shrimp stir-fry. On Fridays, he features a beer-battered fish dinner with french fries and choice of soup or salad for $9.99.
“Everything is homemade here,” he said, “except for the chicken tenders and mozzarella sticks for the kids.”
Vasili’s is open from 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. Monday through Saturday.
• Butternut squash bisque from Acme Fresh Market grocery stores: This proved to be a throat-saver. I could see from the label that while it’s not made by Akron-based Acme, it’s locally produced, at Sandridge Foods in Medina.
Acme spokeswoman Katie Swartz told me that Acme stores offer a variety of Sandridge soups, available hot or cold — from stuffed pepper to white chicken chili to the butternut squash bisque that folks found for me at the Acme No. 1 store deli on West Market Street in Akron.
Two Sandridge soups and one organic soup made by a different vendor are available hot in the stores each day, depending on customer demand and the season. More soups are offered cold; you can get 16 ounces for $4.99 and 32 ounces for $6.99.
Swartz said the organic soups are new at Acme and come from Blount Fine Foods of Fall River, Mass. Organic varieties include carrot and ginger, and kale and sweet potato.
Other yummy soups I discovered were chicken soup from Giant Eagle (made in the company’s Cranberry, Pa., facility, they tell me) and wedding soup from Papa Joe’s in the Merriman Valley.
Super wonderful co-workers had some of this stuff delivered. While I frequent Papa Joe’s, I had never tasted their version of the Italian classic, available seven days a week at the restaurant’s Italian Market.
• Oh, about that Hot Cocoa Coffeecake. A friend ordered it online from Zingerman’s Community of Businesses (all food-related, including a mail-order operation) in Ann Arbor, in that state up north. Very chocolatey, but not too sweet, this is now my favorite cake.
But its price will save me from over-indulging. A six-inch diameter cake runs $45. That’s one generous friend I have; she bought me the nine-inch one that costs $55.
Katie Byard can be reached at 330-996-3781 or kbyard@thebeaconjournal.com. You can follow her @KatieByardABJ on Twitter or on Facebook at www.facebook.com.