“We hope you taste our passion for baking in everything we make.” These words greet all customers as they walk into The Stone Oven Bakery & Cafe on Lee Road in Cleveland Heights, OH.
What started as a passion in the home kitchen of Russian immigrant Tatyana Rehn has grown into a business and staple of the community for 30 years. Rehn and her then-husband, John Emerman, opened the first official location in 1995 before moving to Lee Road.
Emerman wrote a letter to the Heights Observer, announcing his plans to sell Stove Oven. Enter Nick Kalafatis and his partner, Chris Compton, who are no strangers to the food industry after operating a Firehouse Subs franchise for 11 years. Officially taking over on Feb. 1, 2024, Kalafatis told The Carroll News that the transition has been relatively smooth sailing.
“We’ve modernized some stuff, like reach-in coolers for beverages and expanded our production. We expanded our business hours so we can now offer dinner for some folks who were not upset, but verbalized, ‘Hey, I wish I can come to you guys for dinner, but you guys close at five.’ So we expanded our Monday-through-Friday hours by a couple of hours a day, so now we’re seven to seven during those days, and we expanded hours on the weekend.”
With their new hours, their menu has grown to include soups and salads in addition to delicacies such as breakfast sandwiches, croissants and Russian tea biscuits.
The success of Stove Oven is a result of their production and operation of all baked goods. “The bakers can be here as early as 3:30 a.m. They do all their magic downstairs, bake everything and then they prepare the bake for the next day. It’s a three-day process for bread. It’s something I didn’t know much about… but we’ve got really talented bakers downstairs that make bread and croissants from scratch.”
Front-of-house employee Kara Nottingham has worked at Stone Oven for almost three years and said that the customers are what make the bakery so special.
Nottingham said “I’ve really been struck by [how] people don’t just talk to us, they talk to each other. People come in, they join each other at their tables and I feel like there’s just a really welcoming atmosphere that people really like about The Stone Oven. And, I mean, the food is fantastic.”
Whether you’re craving an almond croissant or a fresh mozzarella roasted pepper sandwich, The Stone Oven offers made-from-scratch meals with a welcoming atmosphere.
