25 years ago, Phil Davis made a big splash in the Cleveland food community when he launched his chicken-and-waffle concept, Phil the Fire, from the basement of The Civic in Cleveland Heights. Davis went on to open multiple Phil the Fire restaurants before getting out of the retail restaurant space.
“It was a wild ride, and I wouldn’t trade it for the world,” he says. “All these years later, people still refer to me as Phil the Fire.”
Now, Davis wants to be known as the tres leches guy. It’s a niche he stumbled upon five years ago when his daughter asked him to make her one after seeing them on TikTok…