Jaja restaurant reopens in Ohio City after 15-month closure

Pistachio tres leches cake from Jaja.

CLEVELAND, Ohio — When a car accidentally slammed into the elevator shaft at 2050 Gehring Ave. in Ohio City on Halloween 2024, no one could have expected it to lead to a 15-month closure of Jaja restaurant on the second floor.

The jungle-inspired bar at Jaja.

Jaja is finally reopening on Tuesday, Feb. 3 after the months of repair on the building. However, the team behind the restaurant is introducing a refined version with an entirely new chef and menu — like a Jaja 2.0.

“Our hope is that anybody that comes back who had been there before feels like this is the best version of Jaja that they’ve experienced,” Jonathan Gans, the culinary/marketing head of JJJ Hospitality, said.

Minneapolis-based JJJ Hospitality, also led by Josh Hoyt and John Gross, joined Harbor Bay Hospitality at the start of 2025 to help determine the future of both Jaja and the former Pioneer space. Pioneer became Le Burger, an upscale smash burger restaurant with its flagship in Minneapolis, which opened last December.

Spanish octopus and Iberia secreto pork from Jaja.

As for Jaja, the team opted to keep the name and vibe of the restaurant while embracing its new executive chef Logan Abbe and his vision for the menu.

Additionally, the team had to spend six months reconfiguring the huge wood-fired grill that fueled both Pioneer and Jaja into gas cooking mechanisms because Le Burger needed a gas kitchen with the appropriate HVAC mechanisms to execute its menu.

Jaja in Ohio City has finally reopened after damage from a car crash left it closed for more than a year.

Subsequently, that meant Jaja’s identity as a restaurant couldn’t be centered around live-fire cooking as it was when it initially opened in 2022, Gans explained.

While it was a tedious process, removing the wood-fire grill was not to blame for the months of repair work. Rather, it was the damage to the elevator from the car accident.

“Whether we had the wood fire grill or not, just the building and elevator repair took most of the time,” Gans said.

“If it would have just gone through the window at pioneer or something, it would have been so much easier,” he acknowledged.

The team took stock and got to work on redefining the next iteration of Jaja. Abbe had been hired just before the accident, so the team knew that his style of cooking would be the identity of the new menu.

Gans described the menu as “Med West,” or an expression of Western Mediterranean flavors through Midwest sensibilities. The menu is divided by dishes “to snack,” “to share” and “to feast,” with every dish crafted for sharing. Chips and salmon roe “caviar,” scallop yuzu crudo, grilled Spanish octopus and basque mushrooms are a few of the smaller dishes.

Large-format sharables include crowd-pleasing dishes and showstopping entrees. Campanelle with Moroccan lamb bolognese is listed alongside a Pig Head Chicharron, which is literally a massive fried pig head. The Iberico pork secreto is a tender, rich piece of pork that could be easily mistaken for a steak.

Desserts like Tarte Tatin and pistachio tres leches cake also fit the cohesive theme.

Jaja’s vision is for customers to come in with a group and order a variety of dishes to share. From there, the servers take care of the rest, curating a dining experience based on what you selected from the menu.

““The service is going to feel really refined and seamless but it’s also not going to feel stuffy,” Gans said. He added that the space lends itself to celebratory, shared dining experiences and the new menu reflects that.

The bar program also got a revamp with a small, but mighty craft cocktail list and a growing wine program. Alongside its bottle program, Jaja’s wine list also boasts what it calls a “Soignée selection” where premium wines typically only sold by-the-bottle are available by the glass.

“We love to be able to open bottles of wine that aren’t typically opened by the glass,” Gans said. “People can try it and not have to pay for a whole bottle.”

While the menu is completely different (no items from the former Jaja menu survived the revamp), renaming it was out of the question. Jaja’s distinct atmosphere as a jungle oasis in the sky, with panoramic views of downtown and the West Side Market, were representative of the restaurant’s original identity. If they were to rename the restaurant, JJJ Hospitality felt a full remodel would be in order, Gans said.

“We knew that the space inside was going to stay relatively the same and the name was going to stay the same,” he said. “We just wanted to focus it through Logan’s eyes.”

After ascending the infamous elevator, stepping into Jaja feels familiar, but with a few new touches. The team added updated seating by the bar, removed the fake vines from the trellis and got rid of nearly 20 taxidermy birds from the décor, although plenty still remain.

“It still has the essence of Jaja, it’s maybe just a little less over the top,” Gans said, describing it as a more refined version of its former self.

Gans and the rest of the Jaja team is hopeful that Clevelanders are ready to welcome Jaja back into town while embracing the new changes, particularly, Abbe’s distinct culinary style.

“Let us take care of you,” Gans said. “That’s all we want to do in that space is have people come in and be guided through this really fun, beautiful dinner.”

Jaja will be open from 5 p.m. to 9 p.m., Tuesday through Thursday and 5 p.m. to 10 p.m., Friday and Saturday. The restaurant is not immediately planning on bringing back its brunch program but is open to adding it in the future. For now, brunch is offered at Le Burger downstairs.

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