Chef Rocco Whalen

More About Chef Rocco

Cleveland native Whalen has been at this cooking business ever since, at age 19, he graduated from Pennsylvania Culinary and headed west where he worked for five years in the kitchens of restaurants owned by Wolfgang Puck, often toiling side-by-side with Puck at Spago, Obachin, Granita and Chinois.

In 2001, Whalen returned to his hometown and landed a job as a sous chef at Blue Point Grille, a well respected seafood restaurant in Cleveland's warehouse district. With recipe spins from Spago and variations on what he felt would work for a seafood restaurant in a city with a reputation for meat and potatoes, Rocco revised and refined the menu with such items as tuna sashimi, whole catfish stuffed with ginger and served with coconut and citrus ponzu, and chicken spring rolls. After 18 months of great success at Blue Point, Chef Whalen decided it was time to move on.

A friend mentioned to Whalen that there was a space for sale in Cleveland's trendy urban neighborhood of Tremont, just five minutes from Downtown Cleveland. Rocco bought the space without any fanfare and kept the purchase quiet, inviting only select friends and family in for some tastings. Soon enough Chef Rocco had everything in place the way he wanted it and opened the doors to Fahrenheit in October of 2002. Less than a year later, Rocco saw his top line dollars come in at double what he projected.