The Unique Ohio Restaurant That Lets You Dine In The Comfort Of A Bank Vault

The food is what makes a restaurant, but ambience is an important part of the experience too. The opportunity to dine in a memorable atmosphere helps get patrons in the door — and then keep them coming back. A Cleveland restaurant located in a century-old former bank creates that appeal by offering a table in the former bank vault.

The restaurant, Dante, is stationed in what was a bank for more than 80 years. The bank opened in 1924 as the home of Lincoln Heights Savings and Loan (which later became another bank). Award-winning chef Dante Boccuzzi transformed it into his namesake restaurant with a renovation that repurposed the vault as a dining space. It wasn't an easy feat. Installing ventilation required breaking through more than a foot-and-a-half of thick cement and steel around it, which took more than a week with a jackhammer.

The cozy vault dining space has a table that seats four people (apparently you can bump it up to five if you don't mind a tighter fit). Claustrophobics don't need to worry about being trapped inside, as the vault's massive steel door remains wide open to the rest of the restaurant. An area behind steel bars at the back of the vault contains cured meats hanging on display. Boccuzzi kept other features and fixtures from the building's days as a bank, including the high ceilings and pillars. This creative building repurposing isn't alone in Ohio, where there's a steakhouse in Wooster that's in a former jail, but they don't go as far as having diners sit in cells.

Dante is the flagship of several Cleveland restaurants owned by Dante Boccuzzi, a native of nearby suburban Parma, Ohio, who returned home after a successful culinary career and launched a local restaurant empire. His years away included working his way up to executive chef at acclaimed New York City restaurant Aureole and as a personal chef for Robert DeNiro. He also ran restaurants in San Francisco, Hong Kong, and Milan, and won a prestigious Michelin star; the highest honor a restaurant can have, created by Michelin Tires.

Diners at Dante, including those able to snag a reservation for the vault, enjoy Boccuzzi's Modern American menu with International influences, most certainly stemming from his years working in restaurants in Europe and elsewhere. It features five-course tasting menus, hand-made pasta, house-cured meats like salami and prosciutto, and three kinds of polenta; one of the regional Italian foods chefs think everyone should try. Main courses include Colorado lamb, swordfish, Hawaiian Tuna Tartare, and roasted foie gras as well as a creative dessert selection with three different tasting menus. Entries include Mocha Mousse Cake, a chocolate cake and coffee mousse confection with Bailey's anglaise and Cafe au Lait ice cream, and olive oil pear cake with toasted hazelnut, whipped ginger cream, candied phyllo, and a cranberry pear sorbet. All of which sound so good it makes you want to jump on a plane to Cleveland to try them.