The Italian Bakery on Ivanhoe Road: Three Generations in Collinwood

First, the thing Google keeps getting wrong: we are open. Six days a week, ovens lit before sunrise, same corner of Ivanhoe Road since 1990.

Collinwood was built by people who worked hard and ate well. Italian and Slovenian families settled here when the railroad shops were humming, and they brought their food with them. Most of the old places are gone now. We are still here, and this is who we are.

From Messina, Sicily, to E. 152nd and Ivanhoe

Our family name is Mirabile. Three generations of us have been in Cleveland's food business since the 1930s, and the recipes trace straight back to Messina, the Sicilian city our bakery is named for. In 1990 we opened the doors at 1071 Ivanhoe Road and started doing what we still do: bread at six in the morning, pizza through lunch, trays and cakes for whatever your family is celebrating.

Walk in and you will see terrazzo floors and handmade wood cabinetry that were built to outlast all of us. The bench by the window is a pew from the old Holy Redeemer parish. In 2020, the city honored Messina as a Cleveland Italian American Heritage Month business. We hung the certificate near the register and went back to work.

What comes out of the ovens

• Bread, every morning. Italian loaves at $4.00, twists, rounds, French bread, and fifty-cent rolls. The neighborhood sets its clock by the smell.
• Pizza the Sicilian way. Rounds from $7.50, slices at $2.75, calzones, and sheet pizzas cut to order from 16 to 60 pieces.
• Subs on our own rolls. The Messina Sub is nine dollars and built on bread we baked hours earlier.
• The sweet side. Cassata cakes, cookie trays, pizzelle, fruit braids, and Old World Easter Bread when the season comes.

The full list with every price is on our menu board.

Why neighborhoods still need bakeries

A bakery is a strange business. The margins are thin, the hours are brutal, and everything we sell can be bought cheaper in a plastic bag at a supermarket. We keep doing it because a neighborhood with a bakery has a place where the food is made by people whose names you know. Charlotte and Nancy Mirabile were in the newspaper years ago holding a loaf of Easter bread. Come in on a Saturday and that same care is behind the counter.

If you are in Collinwood, Euclid, South Euclid, Bratenahl or anywhere off I-90 east, you are ten minutes from bread that came out of the oven today.