Abundance Culinary in Cleveland Heights is teaming up with Lakewood restaurant Rood for a harvest wine dinner honoring the Mid-Autumn Festival, with tickets set at $150 for a six-course menu and a lineup of French wines making their Ohio debut. The dinner is scheduled for September 27 at 6 p.m. at Abundance Culinary, 1975 Lee Road in Cleveland Heights.
According to Cleveland.com, the event will pour wines from Domaine de la Grosse Pierre, made in Chiroubles, one of the official cru Beaujolais regions of France, marking the first time the label has been available in Ohio. The outlet reports that Chef Liu Fang of Abundance Culinary and Chef Josh Erickson of Rood, located at 17001 Madison Avenue in Lakewood, will collaborate on the six-course menu, which is expected to blend Fang's modern Chinese cooking with Erickson's contemporary, sustainable approach to food. Both chefs are noted for emphasizing seasonality in their menus, and Abundance Culinary plans to post the full menu ahead of the dinner, per the same report.
A Holiday Rooted in Reunion
The dinner lands just two days after the Mid-Autumn Festival itself, which falls on the 15th day of the eighth lunar month and is also known as the Moon Festival, according to the Cleveland.com report. In 2026, that places the official festival date on Friday, September 25, meaning the September 27 dinner effectively caps the holiday weekend, as detailed by PublicHolidays.cn. The festival celebrates the harvest season for many East and Southeast Asian cultures and carries more than 3,000 years of history centered on family reunion and completeness, or tuányuán, expressed through moon-gazing and the sharing of round mooncakes, according to La Levain. The full moon and the round pastries traditionally symbolize an unbroken family circle, the outlet notes.
Two Chefs, Two Winding Paths to the Table
Fang's road to the kitchen has been anything but conventional. Before entering the culinary industry, she worked as a compliance officer in China's coal mining industry, traveling extensively across the country and encountering regional flavor profiles that would later shape Abundance's menu, according to Cleveland Magazine. She and her husband, Carl Setzer, went on to co-found Great Leap Brewing, described as Beijing's first craft brewery, in 2010, eventually growing it to five locations in China before the couple relocated to Northeast Ohio in 2020.
Abundance Culinary itself began as a nomadic pop-up, running residencies at Larder Delicatessen and Rising Star Coffee before opening its permanent restaurant in May 2023 inside a former 1940s diner car at 1975 Lee Road, the same Cleveland Heights address hosting the September dinner. The restaurant expanded to full-service dining with a liquor license in early 2025, as reported by Cleveland Magazine.
Erickson brings his own pop-up pedigree to the pairing. He joined Rood as executive chef in August 2023 after several years leading the kitchen at Downtown Cleveland's Blue Point Grille and running his own pop-up concept, Mobius, succeeding founding chef Rachelle Murphy when she departed later that year. Rood, which opened in Lakewood in 2018 as Rood Food & Pie, was acquired in August 2024 by Cory Hajde's Vessel Hospitality group, which also runs Cloak & Dagger, Mahall's, and The Writer's Room. The Lakewood restaurant has a track record of hosting guest culinary collaborations, including chef Josh Harmon's nostalgia-driven Homesick pop-up earlier in August.
An Organic Beaujolais Makes Its Ohio Debut
The wines pouring at the dinner come from Domaine de la Grosse Pierre, where third-generation winemaker Pauline Passot returned to her family's estate in 2018 after working as a sommelier at Michelin-starred restaurants, according to background from Weygandt-Metzler Importing. Passot began producing micro-cuvées in 2016 from 80-year-old vines planted by her grandfather, Claudius, and the estate achieved official organic farming certification in 2024 across its granite-slope vineyards in Chiroubles.
Abundance Culinary and Rood have not yet released the full six-course lineup, though the restaurant plans to publish the menu ahead of the September 27 date. Tickets for the dinner are $150.
