The Sleepy Rooster in Chagrin Falls Lands on Yelp’s Top 100 U.S. Restaurants of 2022 List

The Sleepy Rooster, Craig and Sarah Fitzgerald's breakfast and lunch cafe in Chagrin Falls, was a quick hit when it opened mid-pandemic in 2021.

Scene dining editor Doug Trattner was among the early fans when he reviewed the restaurant last summer, and the meal lingered all year as one of his favorites, finding a spot on his list of the best things he ate in 2021:

Craig Fitzgerald is wise enough to know when and how to play the chef card. Most of his culinary school chops are reserved for ingredient selection, technique and execution in the kitchen rather than wild creativity on the plate. It’s breakfast after all. In the stellar biscuits and gravy, those flaky house-baked comfort cakes are smothered in peppery sausage gravy, which seeps into the crispy home fries, which also are exemplary. 

He's not alone.

Yelp this week released its annual list of the top 100 U.S. restaurants and the Sleepy Rooster found its way to No. 41 in the rankings as the lone Northeast Ohio inclusion and just one of four in the state. (The methodology here: "To create Yelp’s Top 100 US Restaurants list, we first reached out to Yelpers for their favorite dining spots. Then, we ranked each by total number of submissions, ratings, reviews, and geographic representation, among other factors.")

Here's the Sleepy Rooster's entry:

Fine dining meets brunch at this unique restaurant, which focuses on breakfast specialties served into the afternoon. Everything is made from scratch, including biscuits that would make your grandmother jealous. A graduate of Le Cordon Bleu Institute of Culinary Arts, Chef Craig Fitzgerald sources as many ingredients locally as he can, and uses them to build his own takes on eggs Benedict, pancakes, fritattas, and hash, along with fun lunch items such as a fried-bologna sandwich with onions and mustard.

Cuisine: American (New), Breakfast & Brunch

What they’re known for: The Goetta, a German breakfast sausage made with beef, pork, oats, and spices, is made in-house and served with eggs.

Yelpers say: “This has only happened twice in my life: The [biscuits and gravy] at The Sleepy Rooster made me cry…. Everything else is good there, too.” —Casey S.