Vinnie Cimino

Coming Up

Professional kitchens teach early what the line rewards: repetition, pace, and the ability to stay exact when the room is moving fast. As cook at Russo's in Peninsula, Ohio, and then as cook at Ken Stewart's in Akron, Ohio, Vinnie Cimino built that base one service at a time, learning the discipline that turns kitchen work into reliable craft. The move to 4th sous chef at Greenhouse Tavern, then to Head Chef at Greenhouse Tavern, marks a climb earned in front of the brigade, where consistency and command have to hold under pressure. Range matters in a kitchen career because each room leaves a different set of habits. After Greenhouse Tavern, Cimino took on Head Chef at Trentina, chef at Michael's Genuine Food and Drink in Shaker Heights, Ohio, and chef at The Summer House in Lakewood's Gold Coast, Ohio. In 2022, Vinnie Cimino became chef-partner of Cordelia, a role that gathers those years of line work, management, and menu thinking into one place.

Where They Are Now

Since 2022, chef-partner at Cordelia in Cleveland, Ohio, has been the position where Vinnie Cimino’s cooking is organized around what he calls the modern grandma menu. That framing gives the restaurant a clear trade language: familiar food, sharpened and reset for a contemporary dining room. The idea is not nostalgia as décor, but a working method for building dishes that feel known without being left untouched. The cooking is described by Cimino in plain terms: “It's just familiar flavors, re-imagined.” That line points to a kitchen logic that values recognition and restraint over novelty for its own sake. Another phrase, “Our story is one of modern Midwest heritage,” places Cordelia inside region and lineage, where the menu reads as an argument for how local memory can be carried forward without being embalmed. Taken together, those statements show a chef using identity as structure rather than ornament. At Cordelia, Cimino frames the restaurant through the mechanics of recollection, regional reference, and revision, so the food can speak in a register that is both domestic and contemporary.

Signature

Modern Grandma is the signature dish associated with Vinnie Cimino. As a name, it signals a kitchen that works from familiarity and then edits that familiarity with intention. The value of the signature is in the method it names: food built to feel recognizable, but not static.

In Their Words “My name is Vinny Cimino, and I am the chef-partner of Cordelia in Cleveland, Ohio.” “Our story is one of modern Midwest heritage.”

Honors

Vinnie's honors include James Beard Award finalist, Best Chef: Great Lakes (2024) and Food & Wine Best New Chef (2025).