Vinnie Cimino of Cleveland's Cordelia Gives the Cannibal Sandwich a Refresh

rom relish trays to fish fries, classic Midwestern food tends to skew retro. At Cordelia, which opened in Cleveland in July 2022, Chef Vinnie Cimino and his business partner Andrew Watts, who met while working at seminal Cleveland restaurant The Greenhouse Tavern, offer what they call “modern Grandma” cuisine. “The menu leans into familiar flavors reimagined,” Cimino says. The relish tray includes pimento cheese with smoked chile and carrot muhammara with hazelnut dukkah. The fried chicken comes with “schmaltzy za’atar” and Cimino encases his signature burger in crispy smoked Cheddar. 

But perhaps no dish was as due for a fresh look as the cannibal sandwich, an old-school item most likely based on the German dish hackepeter, which is made with raw pork spread on bread and dressed with salt, pepper, and onions and likely came to the Midwest in the 19th century via German immigrants. The cannibal sandwich, served around the upper Midwest during the holidays, uses raw beef. At Cordelia, Cimino serves his take with Cheddar frico and pickled onions (recipe).

“My grandfather was from a little town in South Dakota and when I was growing up, he would eat what they would call a tiger meat or cannibal sandwich, with raw ground beef on stale white bread with yellow mustard and raw onions,” Cimino, an Akron native, recalls. “I remember thinking I never wanted to eat that.”

But still, the dish came to mind when Cimino conceived the menu for Cordelia. “We thought about those little tidbits we remembered from our pasts,” he says. “They were not all necessarily positive experiences, like eating a bunch of raw ground beef on stale white bread, but how do we take those experiences and transform them for now?”

Cannibal sandwich at CordeliaPHOTO: PETER LARSON

To update the cannibal sandwich, Cimino started by breaking it down into its basic components—beef, onions, mustard, and bread. He starts by small dicing dry-aged Certified Angus Beef from nearby Wooster, Ohio, then mixing it with mustard and mayonnaise to make a tartare. “We are huge proponents of Duke’s mayo; it has more flavor than raw eggs,” Cimino says. He skipped bright yellow mustard to highlight a local favorite: “In Cleveland, we have Stadium Mustard, the semi-spicy brown mustard that’s in everybody’s fridge.” He adds malt vinegar-pickled onions to cut through the fatty meat and pull the sandwich together, and serves it on pillowy housemade milk bread.

Cimino takes the sandwich further, adding smoked Cheddar frico for texture. He spears the finished sandwich with Kool-Aid pickles. “When I would visit my grandmother in Alabama, they would have Kool-Aid pickles in the refrigerator,” he says. “They’re basically sweet and spicy bread and butter pickles, spiked with different flavors of Kool-Aid.” To make his version, Cimino uses Kirby cucumbers from the farm and slices and brines them. “I couldn’t find the right lemon-lime Kool-Aid mix so I’m making our own with ascorbic acid, citric acid, and the proper green dye,” he says.

The cannibal sandwich is only on the menu at Cordelia from Thanksgiving to New Year’s Day, since that’s when Cimino’s grandfather would eat it. He says: “My grandfather passed away right before we opened, so this is a full-circle moment to put this on the menu.”

Amy Cavanaugh is a Chicago-based food and drinks writer.