News Local news Immi­grant Son Brew­ery in Lake­wood nears open­ing, found­ed on her­itage, good beer, qual­i­ty food

Immi­grant Son Brew­ery in Lake­wood nears open­ing, found­ed on her­itage, good beer, qual­i­ty food

Some­times own­ers base names for their brew­eries on an imp­ish whim, an epiphany or a theme they keep com­ing back to. Then there is Andrew Revy.

In his case, he is the brewery’s name.

Revy’s Immi­grant Son Brew­ery, which he hopes to open by June, could not be any more auto­bi­o­graph­i­cal in its nature.

“Both of my par­ents immi­grat­ed from Hun­gary,” said Revy, who attend­ed Hun­gar­i­an scouts and school grow­ing up in Lake­wood. “Eng­lish actu­al­ly was my sec­ond lan­guage. I grew up speak­ing Hun­gar­i­an, and my moth­er learned Eng­lish with us.

Decades ago, his father’s fam­i­ly saw what was com­ing in their home­land — com­mu­nism and Rus­sians. They urged his father to leave. He escaped across the Aus­tri­an bor­der and made his way to Ellis Island.

New York, it turns out, paint­ed a sur­pris­ing pic­ture for Revy’s father. It was Jan. 1, 1957.

Immigrant Son Brewery, which is eyeing a late spring opening, is being built on heritage as much as quality food and beer. Here’s owner Andrew Revy’s story.
Andrew Revy

“It was a cold win­ter, ear­ly morn­ing, 6 a.m.,” Revy said of his father’s first day in the Unit­ed States. “The only thing left on the streets were partiers still out and vagrants and peo­ple hud­dled in door­ways. And a bunch of garbage ‘cause it was New Year’s Eve (the night before). He’s look­ing around like ‘This is Amer­i­ca?’ He was cold, mis­er­able, alone, and didn’t speak English.”

But like so many immi­grants flood­ing into this coun­try over decades, fun­nel­ing off boats into Ellis Island, he mus­tered his way through. He made it to fam­i­ly in Cleve­land and even­tu­al­ly brought over Revy’s mother.

“Yes,” Revy said proud­ly, “I am the immi­grant son.

A brew­ery is born

When it came time to name the brew­ery, Revy was sur­prised it was available.

“I was sur­prised no one had tak­en it before because we’re a nation of immi­grants,” he said. “The immi­grant vein is real­ly very strong through our nation and his­to­ry. I was more than mild­ly sur­prised it was avail­able once I did the deep­er dive for trade­marks and legal aspects.

Immigrant Son Brewery, which is eyeing a late spring opening, is being built on heritage as much as quality food and beer. Here’s owner Andrew Revy’s story.
The build­out for Immi­grant Son Brew­ery in Lake­wood is under way.

“It real­ly res­onates with me on a per­son­al lev­el of my par­ents’ voy­age here, of mine and my sib­lings assim­i­lat­ing, but also just how Amer­i­ca has grown. The oth­er aspect, this is why it’s so fan­tas­tic from a brew­pub expe­ri­ence … every cul­ture has great beer and food. All these cul­tures have brought it here to Amer­i­ca. That’s the con­cept we have. It’s the old-world con­cepts and new-world techniques.”

That extends to the design of the space, ele­ments work­ing togeth­er – steel, wood and glass in the for­mer Constantino’s Mar­ket at 18120 Sloane Ave., Lakewood.

“What I am real­ly envi­sion­ing here,” Revy said, “is a com­mu­ni­ty space.”

To fill that space he looked to con­nect the right peo­ple with the right jobs. He craft­ed what he sees as an all-star team. Mutu­al friends led him to Cara Bak­er, an award-win­ning home brew­er who had expe­ri­ence work­ing with com­mer­cial brew­ers in the area, and Vin­nie Cimi­no, a vet­er­an chef orig­i­nal­ly from Akron. Round­ing out the team is gen­er­al man­ag­er Eric Kaiz­er, a ser­vice-indus­try veteran.

“Our goal here is to have con­sis­tent qual­i­ty beers,” said Revy, adding he hopes brew­ing can start in May.

“Cara brings this brew­ing acu­men and cre­ativ­i­ty,” said Revy about Bak­er, who will be one of a very few female head brew­ers in Ohio.

Immigrant Son Brewery, which is eyeing a late spring opening, is being built on heritage as much as quality food and beer. Here’s owner Andrew Revy’s story.
Immi­grant Son Brew­ery will start with four core cans: Amer­i­can Pil­sner, Com­mon Ale, Sai­son and India Pale Ale.

To start, a quar­tet of core cans will be offered: Amer­i­can Pil­sner, India Pale Ale, Sai­son and Com­mon Ale. In the works: Wit­bier, Amer­i­can Stout, Cof­fee Porter and Bel­gian Blonde, which will help fill out 20 taps even­tu­al­ly. A bar­rel-aging pro­gram and sea­son­al beers are planned. (Immi­grant Son will have a full liquor license, so a cock­tail pro­gram and wines that match the food are planned. He and his wife curat­ed the wine list at Constantino’s, he said.)

‘A culi­nary destination’

With Cimi­no, Revy hopes to make Immi­grant Son “a culi­nary des­ti­na­tion as well. It gets the hop­heads, the beer afi­ciona­dos, as well as the ones seek­ing a great culi­nary experience.”

Cimi­no is work­ing with an ini­tial menu that looks to include the likes of a local cheese board and spicy cucum­ber sal­ad with Kir­by cucum­bers, red onion, fer­ment­ed red pep­per, sesame-bar­be­cued car­rots and roast­ed beet, jalapeno yogurt and za’atar – a spice mix­ture. Also being con­sid­ered: Grilled octo­pus, pork bel­ly, Nava­jo tacos, smoked-bacon smash burg­er, char­cu­terie with smoked Hun­gar­i­an sausage, chick­en ril­lette and black-pep­per mor­tadel­la. Revy said lan­gos – Hun­gar­i­an fried bread – also is a pos­si­bil­i­ty, along with sea­son­al oys­ters to be paired with beer.

“What’s bet­ter at 3 in the after­noon than oys­ters and beer? Or mid­night,” he said.

The word ‘immi­grant’ might con­sti­tute old tra­di­tions, but that’s not the sole mean­ing for Revy. He is about respect­ing the past while look­ing ahead.

Immigrant Son Brewery, which is eyeing a late spring opening, is being built on heritage as much as quality food and beer. Here’s owner Andrew Revy’s story.
Immi­grant Son is on Sloane Avenue in Lakewood.

“Some­times bar food, cer­tain aspects of brew­pubs, there’s just this sort of stale epi­cure­an (approach),” he said. “What we have here is a well-craft­ed, well-cre­at­ed menu. … We’re mak­ing sure we’re doing it right. There’s a lot to accom­plish, and there’s a lot in the queue.”

Revy, 49, has been mulling the idea for a brew­ery for quite some time, through a vari­ety of accu­mu­lat­ed jobs and expe­ri­ences. The oppor­tu­ni­ty came up with the Sloane Avenue space, which he pur­chased for Constantino’s Mar­ket as part of the fam­i­ly busi­ness. That Constantino’s closed in 2019.

“It’s almost as if it was built to be a brew­ery,” he said. “As I was real­ly look­ing at it I start­ed to see it. I’ve always liked brew­eries, I’ve always liked craft beer.”

Mesh­ing his pas­sion, knowl­edge and expe­ri­ence in the ser­vice indus­try, he con­clud­ed: “You know, we’re going to make this happen.”

Revy lined up the work. Signs and per­mits were approved. Ini­tial con­struc­tion was just about to start in March 2020 “and every­thing came to an abrupt halt.”

It’s become a sad but true prover­bial wrench thrown into best-laid plans: Coro­n­avirus restric­tions. But he doesn’t complain.

Immigrant Son Brewery, which is eyeing a late spring opening, is being built on heritage as much as quality food and beer. Here’s owner Andrew Revy’s story.
Immi­grant Son Brew­ery is eye­ing a late spring opening.

“It goes to the under­stand­ing of the strug­gle of open­ing a busi­ness,” Revy said. “It’s not like all of a sud­den man­dates start­ed eas­ing up and you pick up where you left off. There’s a lot of things that hap­pen sequentially.”

Trades work­ers and sub-con­trac­tors have their own dead­lines to keep. Covid just threw a giant eras­er into their sched­ules. By the time Revy was able to kick­start the project over the sum­mer, many work­ers had moved on to oth­er jobs.

Revy was left with what he calls “the mag­ic behind the cur­tain” — the sched­ul­ing, plan­ning and finan­cial prepa­ra­tion. He was pre­pared because of work expe­ri­ences that he says describes his career as “cir­cuitous.”

“I’ve worked in the pri­vate sec­tor, pub­lic sec­tor, non-prof­it. I’ve been in busi­ness for myself, I’ve worked for oth­er peo­ple. There’s pros and cons to all of it. I’ve seen it from all sides. I think that’s also giv­en me a very healthy out­look on life in gen­er­al. It’s real­ly giv­en me a keen under­stand­ing to the rela­tion­ship between man­age­ment and employ­ee,” said Revy, who has worked for for­mer Cuya­hoga Coun­ty Com­mis­sion­er Tim Hagan and in the county’s Office of Bud­get and Management.

“It’s great to dream – crawl, walk, run,” he said. “My goal is to get open and make sure of what we cre­ate in the begin­ning. Then the growth will come.

In the short term, brew­ing equip­ment is expect­ed this month. Self dis­tri­b­u­tion “for the fore­see­able future” is likely.

“Prof­itabil­i­ty means the abil­i­ty pay your staff, the abil­i­ty to take care of the needs and con­tin­ue on and stay afloat,” he said. “And then the growth. If you’re not inno­vat­ing to do things to grow, you are dying on the vine. That’s the goal here. The growth poten­tial is here.”

Source: cleve​land​.com

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