Best Chicken Parm in Cleveland, OH

Chicken parm in Cleveland, OH: our top picks

Cleveland’s Little Italy sits where Mayfield and Murray Hill roads meet, roughly East 119th to 125th streets, tucked between University Circle and Lake View Cemetery, where the neighborhood’s early Italian stonemasons carved monuments. Holy Rosary Church has anchored it since the 1890s, and each August the Feast of the Assumption fills Mayfield Road with a procession, nightly Mass and a long run of food booths. It was never the city’s only Italian neighborhood, though: the oldest colony, Big Italy, ran along Woodland and Orange avenues near the markets, and others took root in Collinwood and on the West Side around Clark and Fulton avenues.

That spread still shows in where the parm is. On Mayfield, Angelo’s Nido Italia (the name means "Italian nest") started as Angelo Sidari’s private club before opening to the public in 1996. Trattoria Roman Garden, also listed as Trattoria on the Hill, says it has been serving the street since 1984, at an address once known simply as Roman Gardens. Farther up the road, Guarino’s, dating to 1918 and often called the city’s oldest restaurant, is the move if someone in your party is a lasagna loyalist.

Cross the Cuyahoga and the red sauce keeps going. Bruno’s Ristorante & Catering sits on West 41st Street, a side street off Clark Avenue, where chef-owner Bruno DiSiena landed after running the kitchen at the Browns’ training facility in Berea; his homemade lasagna has a following of its own. Aldo’s Restaurant is just over the line in suburban Brooklyn, a small family-run room the Daily Meal once named Cleveland’s best Italian restaurant. Chicken, veal or eggplant, the real decision here is east side or west.

1. Aldo's Restaurant (Brooklyn) — Parm Score 86. Chicken parm comes up in 2 of the recent Google reviews we sampled, and the tone is positive. It is on the menu, too. 4.5 on Google across 581 reviews.
2. Trattoria Roman Garden (Cleveland) — Parm Score 70. Chicken parm is on the restaurant’s own menu (checked November 2026). 4.5 on Google across 2,213 reviews.
3. La Dolce Vita (Cleveland) — Parm Score 70. Chicken parm is on the restaurant’s own menu (checked November 2026). 4.5 on Google across 1,297 reviews.

We ranked 14 restaurants within 10 miles of Cleveland, OH. 7 of them have the parm confirmed, by reviewers or on their own menu, and Parm Scores run from 52 to 86. Confirmed places rank first; the rest are well-reviewed Italian spots where the parm is not yet confirmed, and pizzerias and steakhouses need a mention to appear at all. How Parm Score works.

More rankings: Veal parm in Cleveland, OH · Eggplant parm in Cleveland, OH · Columbus, OH · Youngstown, OH · Toledo, OH · Best chicken parm in Ohio