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Community Corner

Bites Nearby: The Olde Harbor Inn

Key West on the Portage Lakes.

They call it “Akron’s Key West,” and for good reason. The Olde Harbor Inn looks and feels like it should be planted on the Southern-most tip of the Sunshine State—or at least sequestered on the banks of a well-traveled harbor town tourist trap. And on those summer days when all you want is good food, great people watching and a cold beer with a lime slice, this is a great place to be.

In business over the past 140 years, The Inn sets the Rubber City’s Portage Lakes region alight during the summertime and offers fine and casual dining in an All-American collision with fresh seafood specials, great pub grub, summery cocktail hours and beautiful waterfront views. But with a few unique dining zones, people wishing to dodge the Jimmy Buffett contingent can skirt the much-traveled Lighthouse Bar and Grill for a far quieter (and more formal) Seafood Restaurant table inside.

Executive Chef Michael Ferris—known by most Akron-area diners as the former head at Vaccaro’s Trattoria—took over for longtime chef Clayton Cundiff recently and has elevated the Inn’s menu (and accompanying dockside dining options) into something truly special.

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Depending on where you light during an afternoon or evening, you can score buttery lobster crepes, fragrantly smoked chicken taquitos or a jumbo lump crab cake that will blow your mind.

The Seafood Restaurant offers the most gourmet options, with coconut-crusted calamari, Thursday night surf-and-turf specials and something they call “Harbor Chicken”— a pan-roasted chicken breast graced with lump crab meat and Hollandaise and paired with grilled asparagus.

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As for the oft-traveled Lighthouse Bar? Well, let’s just say you can have your “Cheeseburger in Paradise” and eat it, too. Literally. “I like mine with lettuce and tomato, Heinz 57 and French-fried potato.”

562 Portage Lakes Dr., Akron, 330-644-1664, www.theoldeharborinn.com. $6-$13 for lunches, $14 to $25 for entrees

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