Every Saturday morning Brian Weaver got together with his father Ken, brother Dan and brother-in-law Mathias Hauck to brew beer. He’d devoted the years since his 1996 graduation from Avon High School to building a career as a chef. The hobby provided some much-needed male bonding time.
“We were actually really good at it,” the 45-year-old Weaver says of the brewing.
In 2016, the trio opened the Avon Brewing Co., an establishment known as much for its comfort food, particularly its burgers, as its brews. Chef Weaver traces his passion for cooking to the meals his mother prepared on the budget dictated by his teacher-and-coach father’s salary. “She’d always take what she could and make something really amazing,” he says. His first formal training was a meat cutter apprenticeship his uncle got him at the East-Side Rini-Rego supermarket where he worked.
“I was making decent money,” he recalls. “But I didn’t want to just cut meat.”
A cashier’s introduction to a sous chef at the now-defunct Acacia Country Club in Beachwood led to Weaver’s completing the club’s certified chef’s apprenticeship program and landing a sous chef position there. A desire to work closer to Little Italy, where he lived at the time, subsequently lured him to successive jobs at the now-shuttered Filomena’s and Gusto! He left the latter in 2013 to help open Luca at its original Superior Viaduct location.
In July 2020, Weaver, his father and brother-in-law expanded operations by opening the Medina Brewing Co. just off the town square and reopening ZZ’s Big Top, an old bar at 35015 Detroit Road in Avon that they’ve rehabilitated. Their next unveiling: Avon Brewing Co.’s new home at 36383 Detroit Road, expected to be completed next spring or summer.
Dish to try: Truffle Burger
Fresh charbroiled Angus beef topped with Havarti cheese, sauteed wild mushrooms, caramelized onion and truffle bacon butter on baby arugula and a toasted brioche bun
