Stone Oven Bakery Cafe

This is a very relaxed coffee shop with some extraordinary baked goods and sandwiches. We love the curry chicken sandwich and their daily special soups. This is a fine spot for studying/​working, or simply meeting up with friends, because nobody will come bother you once you get settled. They spaced their tables just enough so you are not bumping into your neighbor’s elbows while trying to get a bite. Although I do prefer places with comfy couches, (hence the 4-​star and not 5,) it definitely is a great place in the community.

Very poor service. Employees likely have their own priorities, but customer service is not one of them. I’ve witnessed employees ignore customers and take customers out of cue/​sequence, and have seen at least 4 sales lost due to employee inattention as pissed-​off customers walked out before placing their orders. One thing they do well is drive customers to Starbucks.

Some classmates and I met here for breakfast Sunday morning and I’m so glad we decided to go as early as we did because this place filled up fast! It was hoppin’ by 9:15! I had some scrambled eggs with a variety of veggies and some toast as well as a latte with almond milk. It was just what I needed since I almost never get up that early! Adding to the pleasantness of the morning was the fact that everything was less than $ 10! What a cool place!

I love this place! This is one of the businesses in my neighborhood that makes me love where I live.
On most visits I run in here to grab a loaf of bread (my kids’ very favorite bread is the pugliese), a challah on Friday, or a quick cup of coffee. But it’s also the place I take my kids for a special «breakfast» (in quotes bc it’s more like dessert) before the first and last day of school. The pastries they order are delicious and tasty and usually include the ham and swiss croissant, a cinnamon roll/​croissant, and breakfast breads. I order the stone ground oatmeal and nibble off theirs. All of it is super yummy!
This is also a great place to grab lunch. The sandwiches and salads are fresh, LARGE, and really tasty. I’m a big fan of their salad with the scoop of tuna… I think it’s called Sasha’s choice. They also have a delicious Mediterranean salad that my boyfriend likes to get with a scoop of the tarragon chicken salad. The turkey sandwich and the roasted veggie sandwich are other fantastic choices. I tried the roast beef sandwich once and couldn’t bite through the tough meat so I don’t recommend it (disclaimer: I never order roast beef so maybe it’s always like this?). When ordering a sandwich, get either the tabbouleh (garlic-​y lemony deliciousness) or the chips (the crunchy kettle-​cooked kind). The couscous is just a dry and not very delicious accompaniment to a bread sandwich, IMO.
This is also a great place to pick up dessert for a dinner party when you don’t have time to bake. I lived on the brownies and lemon squares when I was pregnant.
Awesome local bakery and neighborhood gathering place.

just got some takeout lunch, salmon salad with capers sandwich on absolutely beautiful rye bread, the tabbouleh was magnificent. ¹⁰⁄₁₀ will eat there again. great portion size, reasonably priced, super fresh :)

I used to really enjoy the stone oven. I used to sneak their cookies into movies at the cedar lee. Lately when I go there, service is spotty. No matter what I order it always ends up tasting the same. Their menu needs an update. I can’t justify the money anymore for bland pastries and soup.

Great food. My favorite items are the «chicken curry salad sandwich and the rice pudding». Wonderful location right in the heart of Cleveland heights and far enough from other bakeries that it makes a worthwhile walk to grab lunch. Staff is always berry pleasant and polite.

The bread and pastries here are worth the trip all by themselves. I’m a fan of taking a 2:00pm break here, with a coffee and pastry, even though the coffee is just ok.
For lunch, most of the sandwiches are spot-​on. In my opinion, the tarragon chicken salad is a bit plain, but that’s to be expected with a mild spice like tarragon. A better alternative is the chicken curry salad, and with focaccia bread it is incredible! It can get very busy, but going around 12:30 normally misses the rush.
Bottom line, it’s a solid lunch spot in the Heights.

I am starting to wonder if only the rudest kids in town get selected to work the counter here. If once and a while one is more polite and effective within one week he or she will either disappear or get accustomed to the otherwise typical attitude.
NO GOOD and definitely room for improvement, then again: where to start?
The bread is very good, also the croissants. Even if one wanted to be less anal about names for ways of preparing coffee that have not much left in common with what these names originally meant in places where they originated from, the kids serving do not all do the same thing and what you end up with is still a lucky dip, even if you learned your vocabulary well.
Another place that thinks paper cups and environmental pollution have absolutely nothing to do with each other.
Coffee spoons are an unknown, so if you wish to swirl sugar in your coffee or cream you get referred to a soup spoon. It’s all the same to some, I guess. For the price they ask for I want a decent coffee spoon, for sure, in a decent mug from ceramic.
This shop COULD in theory be the ‘less-​over-​the-​top-​alternative’ to the recent «artisan-​coffee shop”-craze that Cleveland is drowning itself in, but then again it is not, for a number of reasons.
The acoustics are hell. There seems to be a very large very lively group of seniors meeting there for every-​morning-​discussion, which is absolutely fine, God bless them, and the fact that they are seniors is certainly not the issue, but they happen to be so loud that one can’t hear one’s own thoughts sitting anywhere near them (which means practically anywhere in the not that large shop) which makes me not want to go there and stay. It does make me wonder if they are really that loud (??) or if the place has acoustics like the Sydney Opera House.
Anyways, just to buy your bread this is a very good place, one of the best.

Fantastic egg salad! Also enjoyed some soup and a coconut bar. Bustling atmosphere and friendly staff makes for a great lunch!

I came in last week and ordered a ham and cheese croissant and a loaf of sour dough bread to go. I was so excited that I stopped in! The service was friendly and I can’t wait to come back and order sandwiches or other kinds of croissants.
The sour dough bread I took home tasted like sour dough from San Fran!

The Stone Oven makes sandwiches that just cannot be bettered. The recipes and the fresh ingredients, not to mention the delicious and wide variety of breads make this place one of the best little restaurants in Cleveland. The staff is friendly and efficient too. The only mildly disappointing thing was that they don’t serve whole milk with the cappuccino. It’s good that they’re health conscious but I wish they at least offered the option. Otherwise this is the go-​to restaurant for a light, healthy unbelievably delicious sandwich!
I am yet to try their deserts. Will update this space once I come around to it.
P. S. I’m a vegetarian so my review is good for all vegetarians out there. I think they have a couple of vegan sandwiches too but I’m not sure since I eat cheese and I don’t pay much attention to that.

What a pleasant experience! I immediately ventured to this place after the disappointment of On the Rise Artisan (which I have reviewed!). Ordering and wait time was excellent. I ended up with the turkey orzo soup, roasted veggie sandwich on multigrain bread, and couscous. It sounds like a regular sized meal, but I was STUFFED. I ate it all while I studied for two hours.
Soup was delicious and piping hot, just the way I like it! Bread was a great balance of crusty outside and soft inside. The sandwich was a good mix of favors, but I’ll probably try something else next time. This was my first taste of couscous, and it wasn’t bad! Dill isn’t my favorite flavor, but it was tolerable in this side dish.
In the end, it was a good meal to help me get through my studying.

Very underwhelmed. We had a pb&j (over $ 4.00 for some Smuckers for a little kid?!) with couscous and a cold chicken salad sandwich on wheat. The pb&j was your regular pb and j. The chicken salad was sad. It had no real flavor and was dressed with a piece of tired old lettuce. Panera is waaaay better tasting. The bread was soft and was the only thing decent besides the tabbouleh, which was excellent. Couscous was bland.
The restaurant ambiance was fine, but the floor needed attention, tons of garbage and crumbs all over. The napkins are impossible to find. The employees looked bored, no one was particularly friendly. Bought a cookie for the kid, she liked it. Husband bought a brownie… it was dry.

I’ve been here a couple of times now, and I’ve liked it both times.
I came here for the first time in the summer when I was interviewing for a job. I got a salad then, and remembered really liking it. We sat outside on the patio in the back, which is super cute!
This time, I had a couple of gift certificates from 2011 (yep, you read that right. I can’t believe I held onto them that long…) that allegedly never expired. I brought them in, skeptical that they would be honored. To my surprise, they were accepted without a second glance. Service was otherwise very nice as well.
My boyfriend got the roast beef sandwich with tabbouleh and I got the tarragon chicken salad with couscous. We also got a couple of desserts.
I enjoyed my chicken salad. I liked the roast beef better, surprisingly, because it had this delicious horseradish mayo on it. I also preferred the tabbouleh to the couscous. Though both were good, I thought the tabbouleh had a bit more flavor.
I got a couple of tea cookies which were exactly what I was hoping! Delicious, sweet, and scrumptious. My boyfriend got a brownie and a cupcake. He liked everything except for the cupcake, because he said the icing was a little strange and tasted a little store-​bought. Everything else was great!
I like the atmosphere of this place, I like the food, I like the service. Prices were fairly reasonable, too — our sandwiches with sides came to just a little over $ 15. I probably would have spent more at a place like Panera. Parking was also pretty easy — there’s a metered lot in the back. Glad we had an excuse to come here!

This place is great. Went for breakfast and lunch in the same week. I love the soup/​salad/​sandwich combos. The focaccia was out of this world! Same cost as a panera lunch but with more flavor and awesomeness.

I came here for a quick dinner and I have to say the food was ok, typical café food style and quality. I ordered roasted vege sandwich with Italian bread. I have to say the flavor was pretty good but I wish they had a toasted option for me so I’m not eating a cold sandwich in the winter for dinner. also, I’m not sure if I saw eggplant in my sandwich, although its supposed to be one of the ingredients. I also got th tabbouleh because of many people’s recommendation. I think it was way too sour for me and a little too dry. the portion size was very generous, but I probably won’t come here unless I need something quick and ready to go. I’m also kinda curious about their desserts so maybe ill stop by next time to try the sweets.

I came with a friend for a quick dinner and since I’m feeling a little under the weather, I decided to get a bowl of soup. I got the turkey orzo and boy was it SALTY! I’m sick and so my taste buds should be a little dull, but even with that, I could taste the salt. The turkey in the soup was the chunky pieces of deli turkey, super processed. I thought it would be more like real turkey, so I was a bit disappointed. The orzo also was a little … slimey? Is that the word I’m looking for? Something about the texture was a little off for me, but I’m not a huge fan of textured foods.
I did like the bread that came with the soup. It was very tasty. I wish there was more because it would have definitely helped cut down on the saltiness of the food.
This place reminds me very much of a Panera Bread. It’s good for a quick meal, but I wouldn’t say it’s the best thing I’ve ever had.
Their pastries do look very tempting and so next time I’m by Phoenix, I’ll definitely stop by Stone Oven for some yummy looking cookies or cupcakes.

I have been here a few times and have had a pleasant experience each time. From what I saw this is a basic bakery that also serves food, mainly breakfast and lunch. I have had breakfast here twice and lunch here once. It is not a full service restaurant, order at the counter and they bring it to your table.
Stone Oven’s croissants are some of the best I’ve had and you can add them onto your breakfast and lunch items. I noticed that some others had mention pricing and I actually didn’t think it was that bad. Under 10 $ for breakfast and the same for lunch, which I don’t think is too bad for fresh baked bread/​pastries ect.
I can also confirm the coffee is not good here. I wouldn’t say its the worst coffee I’ve ever drank, it’s actually not that bad, I just wouldn’t hold off on drinking my wake up coffee to have one over breakfast here.
I will definitely be back to Stone Oven for breakfast and lunch. This would also be a great place to takeout from and bring home as it can get crowded. I would suggest the breakfast scramble with a croissant. If you can’t find their breakfast menu it’s because it’s printed and hanging on the window in front of the pastries, don’t miss it like I did the first time here!

I have a very important announcement to make: The roasted veggie sandwich on multi-​grain bread with a side of tabbouleh is where it’s at, man.
In need of a quick bite to eat after my hair appointment, I stopped in to scoop up something nutritious. My vegan friend suggested the roasted veg sandie, and although I’m not strictly a plant eater, I tend to dabble once in a while.
Anyways, I ordered this thing on a whim, trusting my friend that it wouldn’t be a tasteless, soggy abomination to the sandwich kingdom. Hail to the frickin’ veg – this thing was yummy.
The bread was soft, delicious and went perfectly with the roasted zucchini, eggplant, red peppers and artichoke pesto. I had them add some swiss cheese and although it was good, it wasn’t necessary. Plus, no sogginess!
Also, these ‘wiches are huge! I made it through half of this monster, gave up, and sent the other half with my friend. The tabbouleh? Super garlic-​y and just delish. It can get a little sketchy when you try foods like this at a place that doesn’t specialize in that cuisine – Stone Oven nails it.
P. S. I was told the gazpacho is also a game changer… I’ll be back.