Located in Avon's Olde Avon Village, Henry's is constructed from an 1830's stone-and-wood barn that was moved to the site last spring. The eminently comfortable restaurant features a cozy barroom with fireplace, a 60-seat dining room that shares the same see-through fireplace, and a cocktail lounge tucked into an upstairs loft. 

Driftwood that Paul Jagielski, a Charleston-trained chef, plucked from the Lake Erie shore now serves as the bar and foot rails. Rather than the ubiquitous bar-top nut or pretzel bowls, Henry's offers pimiento cheese and crackers. 

"If I were to welcome you into my home," says Jagielski, "I'd offer you pimiento cheese." 

Hospitality doesn't stop there. A pile of blankets sits by the back door for folks who care to snuggle up to the outdoor fire pit. The menu features lowcountry classics like Charleston she-crab soup, shrimp and grits, and chilled seafood. Oysters on the half shell are served with cocktail sauce and shaved iced malt vinegar. Skillet-fried oysters are presented in wax paper and could not have been more crisp. They are served with hot sauce, blue cheese dressing and celery. It was an order of shrimp and grits that made me swoon, Southern-style; shrimp and andouille sausage in a cayenne-spiked cream sauce served atop creamy stone-ground grits. 

The "Henry," by the way, was Paul and wife Tracey's faithful golden retriever...

~ Bites, Free Times, December 2006