Lyla's Family Restaurant
 Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio       Date of Visit  02/13/16        http://www.lylasfamilyrestaurant.com

Running between commencement and another errand we decided to try the family restaurant recently moved into the defunct French Coffee House Restaurant in the Falls. Lyla’s looks a little less sidewalk bistro and the service is improved as well, much less French. Our server was enthusiastic and active, seemed happy to see us and also appeared to having a good time herself.
 

The menu is enormous and ranges all over the place, Mediterranean traditional diner, a few oddities, etc. We were told the fire house chili was really good, but really hot so we started with a bowl and some fried zucchini.

The chili was fine…not so much a stew as a broken meatloaf with beans, seriously…no liquid at all. It was also the complete opposite of hot, I don’t know if someone missed a step in the recipe, but there didn’t even seem to be a grind of black pepper in the bowl

The zucchini were more what was expected, fingers of veg in a dark brown crust and a bowl of marinara for a dip. Overall, pretty good.
 

Steph ordered a thick but average Reuben and I was curious about the Eddy’s stuffed potato pancakes. Since Steph was getting corned beef, I decided to try the regular roast beef on the Philly version with grilled onions, shrooms, mozzarella and eggs.

The whole thing was topped with onion and sour cream. It wasn’t amazing, it was solid, what you might expect from a diner. It was also huge…I can’t imagine who would possible finish three enormous tater pancakes stuffed with all sorts of innards. Literally, it took four sittings before it was almost completely gone and after four sittings…you start losing some enthusiasm for it.

At first glance Lyla’s churns out essentially standard diner fare…but you ain’t going home hungry.
 

Thick In Size But Less So In Flavor