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Confession: We’ve lived on the Westside our entire adult lives… and somehow had never eaten at Strip.

So on Saturday night, we made amends.

We grabbed two seats at the bar and promptly befriended Carl, a jolly, and bearded bartender who became our unofficial meat-shaman for the evening. Without notes, he delivered all 11 specials off the top of his head like he was reciting poetry. Beef poetry.

We drooled over the menu and placed our order. Then he told us how this place came to be.

Owner Ron Larson (historian, entrepreneur, restaurateur) built Olde Avon Village by rescuing historic barns from across Ohio and reassembling them here. The timber structure that Strip sits in? It was picked up from southern Ohio and rebuilt where it currently stands.

The Ewers and Blackwell Barns, in a nutshell:

• Built in 1851
• Hardwood lumber harvested in Central Ohio
• German-Dutch architecture
• Used to raise horses for the military during the Civil War
• Ohio actually has a program to incentivize barn reclamation projects

After some fascinating Ohio trivia, our food came.

The Caesar salad you ask? I’m not exaggerating when I say it may have been the best salad I’ve ever had. Crisp, perfectly dressed, zero sad lettuce.

We split a tomahawk steak served ruggedly on a butcher’s block — the kind of presentation that felt like The Red Wedding… minus the bloodshed.

I apologize to any vegetarians out there, but each bite was a mini religious experience.

Between the steak, the history lesson, and Carl’s performance art, it ended up being one of the best meals we’ve had in a long time.

Check out the menu. Safe to say we’ll be back.

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