With move, EDWINS has more space for fine dining, second-chance mission

Brandon Chrostowski‘s attention-getting culinary fare, which works with formerly incarcerated, now at former Nighttown in Cleveland Heights

Brandon Chrostowski‘s belief that everyone deserves a second chance grew from his own scrapes with the wrong side of the law as a teenager in Detroit.

After a judge suspended the 10-year sentence he could have faced, he got a chance to alter his future with hard work.

“I was 18 when a chef mentored me and changed my life,” he says.

Today’s EDWINS Leadership and Restaurant Institute is the direct result of Chrostowski‘s second chance 27 years ago. Since its beginning in 2007, the nonprofit program has graduated 700 formerly incarcerated adults who now work to shape their futures while employed in restaurants and food-service facilities throughout the country. Chrostowski is its founder, chef, president and CEO.

EDWINS students and most of its staff have served prison time for robbery, kidnapping, drug trafficking and other criminal offenses. Some even were heroin addicts. However, all have completed Chrostowski‘s rigorous six-month training program with its tough love focus against the unlikely backdrop of French fine dining.

Only half of those who begin the program complete it, but those who do have learned to prepare the menu’s elaborate dishes, along with butchery, bakery, bartending and service. They’ve also learned how to pronounce and explain “escargot” and “foie gras” and how to recommend wine pairings and choose cheese tastes.

It’s just a foundation for a better future, Chrostowski says. Learning on the job follows with mastery of more skills.

Because it is organized as a non-profit concern, all revenues including tips from patrons, go back to EDWINS Leadership and Restaurant Institute.

Recently, EDWINS moved from its popular Shaker Square location to a Cleveland Heights building at the top of Cedar Hill that once was home to the Nighttown jazz club. The new 12,000-square-foot space, which is four times larger than the Shaker Square spot, will allow the restaurant to serve 400 people at a time in three dining rooms, two bars, a patio and a well-ventilated cigar bar.

Its large basement also will provide more room for classes. EDWINS graduates 75 students every six months.

Who knew the Tabernacle No. 142 Robusto Cigar, at $16, would pair well with a peaty, smoky Islay single malt Scotch? Edwins’ servers do. One might also recommend snacking on the chocolate-dipped bacon mentioned at the bottom of the Cigar Menu.

Chrostowski, whose fifth child is due in August, understands firsthand that families want to be able to afford dining out. So EDWINS’ new Brasserie menu gives diners a lower price point for their meals. Its kids section, called Pour es Enfants, lists a Gruyère Fondue and Ham and Cheese Crepe among selections that also include Chicken Tenders. Adult meals from that menu, served in the restaurant’s Brasserie and bars, will cost about $40, he says.

Items on the Fine Dining menu, served in the Salon, cost much more. The Paupiette de Bar (potato wrapped sea bass) has long been among the most popular dishes. At $38, it’s served with haricot vert and sauce beurre rouge. If you ask, a server will tell you that’s French green beans and a butter sauce made with red wine and shallots.

At the rear of the main restaurant is an entrance for Edwins Too, a breakfast and carryout restaurant, where guests can book private parties.

Chrostowski, a 2023 James Beard Best Restaurateur finalist, graduated in 2006 from the Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, New York. He honed his culinary skills in kitchens from Chicago to France.

Thanks to the support of a proud donor, he will take a group of EDWINS students to visit the CIA later this month. He will return there in May when he’ll be honored with CIA’s 2025 Leadership Award, one of the most prestigious of culinary honors. Past honorees include Jacques Pépin, Martha Stewart and Thomas Keller.

In 2011, Chrostowski, now 45, began teaching the culinary program at Grafton Correctional Institution in Lorain County, an initiative that, he says, has evolved into the largest such prison educational program in the United States. His groundbreaking virtual curriculum has reached more than 400,000 inmates throughout the country. Chrostowski continues to teach at that state prison in Grafton, which houses inmates at medium- and minimum-security levels.

According to Chrostowski, EDWINS’ success rate is characterized by a 1 percent rate of recidivism for its graduates. That’s in dramatic contrast with a national 43 percent recidivism rate as reported by the Bureau of Justice Assistance. That means nearly half of those released in 2023 from U.S. prisons returned there within one year — one of the highest rates in the world.

Those statistics have brought a lot of attention to Chrostowski, including national stories and “Knife Skills,” a documentary about EDWINS. Nominated for a 2018 Academy Award, it can be viewed on YouTube.

Because of his success, Chrostowski has been asked to consult in the formation of similar endeavors. Locally, that includes Sérénité Restaurant and Culinary Institute in Medina, which educates and employs alcohol and drug abusers.

And Chrostowski partnered with the Cleveland Capuchin Ministries to open The Friars’ Table restaurant in Playhouse Square in December.

“Our hope for The Friars’ Table is to become a gathering space where people from the neighborhood and those visiting the theater can form a community in an inviting room where men and women employed by the Table, whether they were formerly incarcerated, are seeking a new home in this country or are among the working poor, can learn the skills necessary to find opportunities for a new start in life,” the Rev. Philip Bernier said in a statement last year. “These dreams all intersect around a table of simple, wholesome food to nourish both the body and the soul.”

Challenges faced by the formerly incarcerated include obtaining training, employment, housing, and childcare. But in addition to culinary schooling, EDWINS students get free housing and childcare, plus access to a farm, garden, library and fitness training. Many work at the restaurant when their schooling is complete or take advantage of placement in other restaurants.

EDWINS, after all, is an acronym for EDucation WINS.

And as the sign at the entrance to the Cigar Bar says: Eat Well. Do Good.

EDWINS Leadership and Restaurant Institute

Where: 12383 Cedar Road, Cleveland Heights.

Brasserie dining hours: 4 p.m. to midnight Monday through Saturday; Sunday Brunch 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.

Fine dining in Salon: 5 to 10 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday.

Info: edwinsrestaurant.org or 216-921-3333.