Made With Love: How Immigrants are Shaping Cincinnati’s Food Culture

On a Friday night in the middle of October, a chill settles in the air and a city center comes to life, with one street in particular brimming with tents, crowds, lights and sounds. Smoke and steam pour from grills at these tents as the scent of meat and Asian spices greet customers and revelers, with offerings like Vietnamese pho, Nepali momos and Indian curries advertised on boards that guests crowd near to get a better look. Overhead are rows of lanterns as children and adults alike play glow-in-the-dark games. Artisans and crafters with tables full of beautiful goods beckon browsers and soon, a traditional lion dance will enchant all nearby.

While this scene may draw visions of places like the Temple Street Night Market in Hong Kong or the Night Bazaar of Chiang Mai, Thailand, this market could be found in downtown Cincinnati last October as BLINK 2024 took over the city.

“In the past, BLINK was a light show, but we wanted an Asian American element too,” Lam Dang with Asianati, the organization that put on the Night Market, told CityBeat. “So we had this [thought], ‘What better representation of lights, smells, sounds, night than an Asian night market?’ Asian night markets throughout the world are just known for their food, but also known for how amazing, how vibrant it is, how beautiful it is … so Asianati Night Market is important to us because during this major event, we have an element of Asian American [representation].”

And that kind of representation matters, says Dang. The Asianati Night Market was a returning, fan-favorite activation, having drawn around 540,000 visitors in 2022. In 2024, that number rose nearly 50% to 800,000 visitors, according to organizers.

Food unites. It’s a bridge between people and cultures, and it’s one of the most accessible ways to learn more about another country or culture. Looking at the Night Market, 14 different types of Asian and Pacific Islander cuisines were represented that weekend, with several local immigrant-owned restaurants, bakeries and bubble tea shops, including Tea ‘n’ Bowl, Bridges Nepali Cuisine, Queens Bakery and Boba Cha, filling out the roster and introducing thousands of visitors to their home country’s food culture right in the heart of the Queen City.

While food is one of the biggest expressions of a culture, it’s also perhaps the most loving. Making food and serving meals is an act of love; after all, we all need food to survive and thrive. It’s an act of love that restaurateurs, chefs and servers all across Greater Cincinnati participate in daily, chopping at counters, stirring at stovetops, plating and arranging dishes to be carried out to tables so we can fuel our bodies, relax and reconnect with family and friends over a meal we didn’t have to make.

While all restaurateurs and food entrepreneurs have a love for their chosen industry and know it’s not an easy one to break into, for an immigrant, there are often challenges U.S.-born citizens won’t face that make the usually thin margins of a restaurant seem even more daunting, whether it’s having to adapt to a new culture, navigate language barriers or figure out how to source ingredients for a cuisine that’s underrepresented in their new home. Immigrants’ restaurants and food businesses have to be born out of a kind of love that bears the brunt of these particular challenges — one that fully encompasses their love for their families, for their home countries, for their food traditions and for their new communities with whom they want to share these traditions and recipes with.

This love makes Cincinnati’s food and restaurant scene much more rich and diverse, giving us the opportunity to try dishes we may never would otherwise. And these dishes have an incredible power: to build communities and influence and shift Cincinnati’s food culture.

In fact, Cincinnati’s food culture has been influenced by immigrants as far back as the mid-1800s.

A history lesson in Cincinnati cuisine

Cincinnatians take pride in their hometown dishes — Cincinnati-style chili, goetta, Graeter’s ice cream. They’ve been a part of the city’s food landscape for so long that many probably see them as 100% Cincinnati, and, therefore, 100% American. But we wouldn’t have these dishes had it not been for the immigrants that brought recipes from their home country to our little pocket of the Ohio River Valley, adapted them and shared them with the community.

The storied history of Cincinnati chili can be traced back to brothers and Empress Chili founders Athanas (Tom) and Ivan (John) Kiradjieff, immigrants from a village called Hrupishta, Macedonia, which is now part of present-day Greece. In 1922, the brothers set up a small shop right next to the Empress Theatre in downtown Cincinnati to serve patrons hot dogs and spaghetti topped with a ground beef-based stew flavored with traditional Mediterranean spices like cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves and chili powder.

The brothers called this “chili con carne,” or “chili with meat,” but the dish itself isn’t related to the chili con carne of Mexican origin that the rest of the country is familiar with. Rather, it’s believed to be adapted from saltsa kima, a Greek meat sauce.

And when it comes to Cincinnati’s beloved breakfast meat goetta, that’s a type of grain sausage, or gruetzwurst, from a region in northwestern Germany food historian Dann Woellert calls “the Cradle of Goetta” in his book Cincinnati Goetta: A Delectable History. Traditionally, gruetzwursts were peasant dishes made from a mix of leftover pork and beef scraps and grains like oats and barley, meant to stretch out servings.

Many immigrants from the Cradle — a geographic parallelogram between Oldenburg and Hamburg to the north and Münster and Hanover to the south — arrived in Cincinnati and Covington in the mid-to-late 19th century with the knowledge of how to create this kind of meat-grain dish that could sustain them through the winter. Family goetta recipes varied when it came to spices and additions like onions — Woellert says this is due to different regions in Germany having different ingredients readily available — but the main ingredients of pork and beef scraps and pinhead oats (which Woellert thinks may have been an American adaptation to possibly pearl barley) remain its faithful hallmarks.

Immigrants have also gifted Cincinnati with some of its favorite sweet treats. Most notably, Graeter’s and its unique and innovative French pot ice cream was developed by German immigrant Louis Charles Graeter in the 1870s. Likewise, beloved ice cream parlor and chocolate shop Aglamesis Bro’s was founded in the early 20th century by Greek immigrants, brothers Thomas and Nicholas Aglamesis.

“A collective through stories”

Tracy Liu will open Afterlife Bar at 44 E. Court St. in downtown Cincinnati in 2025. Photo: Provided by 3CDC

Tracy Liu is a newly minted entrepreneur driving growth in Cincinnati’s nightlife industry with her upcoming bar, Afterlife, which she hopes to open on Court Street downtown this summer. Liu immigrated to the U.S. from China for college and graduated from the University of Cincinnati in 2014 with a degree in accounting. But after several years of working as an accountant in the corporate world, she felt herself slowly burning out.

“I think a lot of immigrants would agree the No. 1 career path when they’re in America always has to be the safest bet, right?” Liu said. “It has to be steady; we have to have a stable job, climbing the corporate ladders … I came from a very strict background; it’s very Asian and very Chinese where traditional career paths are always kind of emphasized that way.”

Liu said she struggled and felt lost as she tried to figure out if accounting was what she wanted to continue doing. In 2017, though, she started going to raves and festivals, where she found a new sense of freedom and empowerment.

“It was such a liberating experience, just seeing how people could fully embrace themselves and be free,” said Liu. “So that was my initial thought. If I ever wanted to open a space, I wanted to bring that sense of belonging and freedom to people. Because that made me free. It was very contrasting in a way with my corporate world.”

Liu quit her job in 2024 to finally pursue her dream of opening a bar with a focus on community and making connections with others. Afterlife, at its core, will be a neighborhood bar, says Liu, but she’s weaving Chinese culture into its fabric.

“So, in Chinese drinking culture, drinking is always about connections. It’s never really about alcohol; it’s always about [being] social, bonding … It basically makes drinking a shared experience. It’s lively; it’s sharing just more than consumption [of alcohol],” she said. “Afterlife is more about: How can we be more interactive with other people so that, when we bring new people in, we feel like they’re heard, they’re seen, they’re accepted for the way that they are?”

Liu’s ideas on how to connect her patrons include activities like decorating a blank wall with notes written by customers sharing their experiences, with monthly prompts like, “Share something you’ve never told anyone” and “Share your unrequited love stories.” At the end of the month, those submissions will be turned into a book.

“So people can see, hey, maybe your experience is no different than mine. I mean, in the end, we’re just human. We’re a collective through the stories,” said Liu.

Ibtisam Masto is also a foreign-born entrepreneur in Cincinnati. The owner of Olive Tree Catering, Masto can often be found at Findlay Market on the weekends selling authentic Syrian and Mediterranean food made from her family’s recipes. You may even know her as “the Baklava Lady,” she jokes, but if you ask her what her favorite dish to make is, she’ll tell you it’s 100% kibbeh — croquet-like balls usually featuring spiced lean ground meat, bulgur wheat and onion. Masto, however, is the master of adapting the recipe to make more inclusive varieties for those who are vegetarian or have allergies.

Ibtisam Masto, owner of Olive Tree Catering Photo: Emma Stiefel

Masto and her family came to Cincinnati as refugees in 2016 after having fled war in Syria and spending several years in Lebanon waiting to be approved for asylum. Like all girls in her culture, Masto learned to cook from her mother when she was 12, and she developed a love for it. While in Lebanon, she joined a cooking program for female Syrian refugees created by Lebanese restaurateur Kamal Mouzawak, called Atayab Zaman, or “The Delicious Past.”

“I thought they were going to teach me something new. I teach them what we have in our culture for all the holidays, what we cooked,” Masto said.

Through the program, Masto worked in a small kitchenette where she cooked for the United Nations refugee agency’s staff. The agency would later help her apply for asylum after a newspaper doing a story on the cooking program reported her words criticizing former Syrian president Bashar al-Assad, putting her in danger.

“I was very mad about this story; I was crying and very scared,” Masto told CityBeat. “And they said, ‘Don’t worry; we can help you to make something good for you and your family. So don’t be scared; we are here to help you.”

Masto and her family were accepted as refugees to the United States and moved to Cincinnati in June of 2016. She didn’t speak English and had a difficult time adjusting to life in the U.S., but she held onto her dream to continue the business she had launched during her time in Lebanon. Called “Kan Yaman Kan,” which means “Once Upon a Time,” it was the initial concept that would later become Olive Tree in Cincinnati.

“The manager I was [working for] as a chef, he said, ‘You’re going to have a very beautiful future in America; they [are] going to love you, love your food and just keep going. Once you make it there, just keep going. And I brought with me the menus, the logo and all the stuff, the recipes, everything,” she said.

Everything changed for Masto in 2018 when she joined the FreshLo Chef Fellowship Program through the Center for Great Neighborhoods in Covington. At the time, the program helped those who wanted to start businesses that would add culturally diverse, healthy and affordable food options to the community. Chef Renee Schuler of Eat Well Celebrations and Feasts helped mentor Masto as she went through the program.

“She come and sit with me, and she said, with bright eyes, ‘I’m going to help you, to make your dream happen.’ I tell her, ‘Are you sure?’ She said, ‘Yes! I’m sure!’” Masto said.

Masto says Schuler taught her a lot about catering and helped her gain experience through helping with jobs. Masto watched and learned how to do things like arranging tables, serving large amounts of food and organizing groups.

The FreshLo program also helped Masto rebrand her business from Lebanon with a more English-friendly name — Olive Tree — and create a logo to match, along with menus and marketing.

Olive Tree now hosts its catering operations from Findlay Kitchen, and you can find Masto in the Findlay Market Farm Shed on Saturdays and Sundays during the market season, selling kibbeh, hummus, baklava — of course — and more. She’s currently working on getting a wholesale license so she can sell her culinary creations in stores year-round.

But as much as owning her own food business was Masto’s dream, it’s the “why” that keeps driving her.

“When [a client] called me, he [said he could] feel the love [in my food]. So, I touch his heart. When a newspaper from London, a lady, she came and she also wrote my story, and I tell her, ‘I want the people to love me for my food.’ And she said, ‘They will. They will love you, because your food is very amazing. We feel, with the taste, the love. We ate the love. And we ate the peace you tuck in it. We feel that.’”

Growing communities

Like Cincinnati of the 19th century, much of modern-day Cincinnati’s population growth is being driven by immigrants. According to research from New American Economy, between 2014 and 2017, 98% of Cincinnati’s population growth could be attributed to immigration, and data from the United States Census Bureau shows foreign-born residents made up just over 7% of Cincinnati’s population between 2019 and 2023.

While the links between population growth and economic growth are complex, past research has shown that immigrants are crucial in keeping big cities vibrant and growing, as well as aiding smaller, rural regions, as U.S. birth rates decline and large portions of the population age. One way immigrants do this is through entrepreneurship. Creating new businesses creates new jobs.

“We know that job growth happens with new businesses, and we know that after the pandemic recovery, with new business growth, it was largely driven by immigrant entrepreneurs,” said Bryan Wright.

Wright is the executive director of Cincinnati Compass, a collaboration of organizations and community partners dedicated to the economic and social inclusion of immigrants and refugees in the city. He says data shows foreign-born Ohio residents are punching above their weight class when it comes to starting new businesses. While just above 5% of Ohio’s population is foreign-born, according to the American Immigration Council, more than 8% of Ohio’s entrepreneurs are immigrants or refugees — around 38,000 total. Their endeavors bring in an estimated $1 billion in business income.

This isn’t a new phenomenon, either. Years of data show immigrants have long owned businesses at higher rates than U.S.-born citizens. A recent American Community Survey shows immigrants made up 21.5% of self-employed workers between 2016 and 2020. And the Annual Business Surveys 2014-2019 found that 24.2% of new business owners were immigrants.

“If there are barriers to mainstream employment, [people] turn to entrepreneurship,” said Wright.

Immigrant restaurant owners are also more likely to pass down their businesses to their children, says Lam Dang of Asianati. This brings the benefit of both economic stability in keeping dollars local, but also in keeping the community connected.

“You’ll see bigger businesses come in here and once there’s an inkling of lower sales, they leave. They don’t care about Cincinnati; they don’t care about the food scene. All they care about is profits,” Dang said. “Immigrant-owned family businesses care about the community because they want to build that community. They also care about their families, so they want to create an everlasting business that they can pass down from generation to generation.”

Wright agrees.

“It keeps the dollars local rather than a business shutting down or being bought out by someone outside of the region,” he told CityBeat. “But it also keeps that knowledge local so that it builds community. … So I can go into a restaurant and not only speak to the owner, but now know that their kids are graduating high school and celebrate that. … It also keeps relationships here and opportunities for people to build those deeper ties in the community.”

We also can’t ignore or discount the power of immigrant dollars. Locally, immigrants have a total household income of $4.1 billion and contribute almost $400 million in state and local taxes, says Wright. They also have a spending power of almost $3 million — money that gets reinvested in Cincinnati’s communities.

A bridge across cultures

As much as there’s a positive economic impact that immigrant restaurant owners bring to Cincinnati, their businesses also create opportunities for community building that make Cincinnati a more dynamic, vibrant city. Food is a major part of any culture, a thread that connects all of us, despite what spices we reach for. In her book, Eating Together, Chatham University professor Alice Julier makes the case that sharing a meal with non-kin can radically shift people’s perceptions when it comes to inequality, writing, “…diners tend to view those of different races, genders, and socioeconomic backgrounds as more equal than they would in other social scenarios.”

“Conversations happen over food,” said Wright. “People can come together and build community by sharing food and sharing a meal.”

Someone sharing their family’s or culture’s dishes not only allows their neighbors to get to know them better, but it has the power to shift customs and traditions. As we saw throughout Cincinnati’s history, immigrants have always brought their food and recipes with them to their new homes; they introduce these dishes to the community, and those dishes become part of the city’s wider culture.

Asianati’s purpose is to uplift and increase representation for Asian Americans in Cincinnati, and one way it does that is through programming, like the BLINK Asianati Night Market. But the organization hosts other events throughout the year, including Asian Food Fest at the end of April. And, as Dang explained, Asian Food Fest is a strong showcase of how the shared experience of a good meal can connect us.

“How I always see Asian Food Fest is, when you want to get to know somebody better, you bring them into your home, you cook them a meal and then you talk and get to know them better. It’s just Food Fest is that home to us, and we’re bringing everybody into our home, cooking them a lot of amazing meals. And just through the food, through the entertainment, through some of the cultural activations, that’s how they get to know Asian Americans better,” he said.

And with attacks on words like diversity, equity and inclusion from the Trump administration, as well as the abandonment of DEI initiatives from large companies like Target and Walmart, food-focused events like Asian Food Fest and Hispanic Chamber Cincinnati’s Cincy Cinco highlight why diversity in the city’s restaurant scene is so important. Without a multicultural food and entertainment scene, Cincinnati can’t compete as easily against places like New York, San Francisco and Chicago for top job talent; it would also stifle tourism and alienate recent college graduates who may be looking to move somewhere more diverse.

“When we’re trying to attract talent to the region, we think about young professionals, college graduates. People want diverse experiences. So, if they may not have traveled outside the U.S. or traveled abroad, then they want to have a diverse experience of food and entertainment here. And in order to have those experiences, we have to have entrepreneurs to provide those opportunities,” Wright said. “People want to be able to see themselves reflected in the cultural offerings.”

“Moving to Cincinnati, I moved away from home for the first time and I just didn’t have that connection when it came to food,” Dang said. “I had nowhere to eat when I wanted some of my home-cooked dishes. So, when Pho Lang Thang (a Vietnamese restaurant in Over-the-Rhine) opened, I was able to find that community, because when you go into a place and see other people that look like you, you feel more welcome to a city and it makes you want to stay.”

Liu says she believes her bar, Afterlife, will add to the diversity of Cincinnati and provide a place where people can feel accepted and free.

“I want the bar to be a sanctuary for people, just like how festivals were to me. And people can just come in and just be who they are,” she said. “I think that’s what diversity is about, right? It’s about bringing new perspectives … It’s about getting people out of their comfort zone for new things and, at the same time, they feel like they’re being introduced with a more open-minded mindset. I do think things like [Afterlife] keep things more refreshing and exciting, especially when you have people from different cultural backgrounds. It brings its own flavor, traditions and experience. It just makes the city better and more welcoming.”

Both Liu and Masto also offer Cincinnatians a glimpse of what the wide culinary world has to offer. The average person will probably never get to travel to China or Syria, but these entrepreneurs allow us all a chance to experience their culture without leaving Cincinnati. Liu’s bar will offer drinks incorporating Asian ingredients, including Chinese tea-infused cocktails and Chinese-style soft drinks for mocktails. She’s also planning theme nights, including for Asian holidays and taking holidays like Halloween and celebrating it in both Western and Eastern styles.

And Masto prides herself on using authentic Syrian ingredients that allow customers to truly taste Syrian cuisine.

“When I open my restaurant, I get ingredients — olive oil, tahini, a lot of seasonings, all this stuff — I get it from Syria. It’s very expensive, but I don’t care. I give people very real taste of what we have in my country, because they can’t go to Syria, but they always love [the] food. So I’m going to give them here what we have.”

How you can support immigrant-owned restaurants

On Jan. 20, President Donald Trump was sworn in for his second term in office, with a plan to turn a hammer to immigration policy. That day, Trump signed a barrage of executive orders, with 10 aimed at immigrants and their families, including one that would end birthright citizenship — which was immediately challenged in several lawsuits — and one that declared an emergency at the southern border, virtually erasing the right to seek asylum for now. Orders also now allowed ICE to go into vulnerable places like schools, hospitals and churches for arrests.

Trump has repeatedly stated ICE would be focusing on weeding out undocumented immigrants who had committed crimes, but reports indicate this isn’t entirely truthful. While Trump’s press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, has said the administration views all undocumented immigrants as criminals, most undocumented immigrants come to the U.S. legally and then overstay their visas, which is a civil violation, not a criminal one. And according to a recent report from TRAC, which tracks immigration data, ICE detention has now increased to the highest level since November 2019, and of their detainees, 52.1% do not have criminal records, and many more only have minor offenses, which include traffic violations.

The arrests go further than undocumented immigrants, however. On March 9, ICE arrested Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil, a former Columbia University graduate student who helped lead protests at the school. Despite being a lawful resident of the U.S., Khalil was threatened with deportation in a new Trump administration effort to punish and deport students who protested against the war in Gaza, saying, by participating, protestors supported Hamas and forfeited their right to stay in the country. A judge blocked the deportation order pending a legal fight over Khalil’s detention.

A few days prior to Khalil’s arrest, Jensy Machado, a naturalized citizen living in Virginia, said he was briefly detained by ICE as he was driving to work. In January, ICE agents raided a New Jersey seafood store, arresting three people, including a Puerto Rican U.S. military veteran. This immigration pushback has also landed here in the Greater Cincinnati area, with the Butler County Jail now able to hold ICE detainees, and the overall anti-immigrant sentiment is creating a chilling effect, with people afraid to leave their homes.

“There are people who are scared to leave their homes, who are scared to go to their jobs because of that. I know people who are American citizens who carry around their passports because they’re scared of being approached by an ICE agent as well,” Dang said. “People are fearing more hate toward them — like this whole aspect of diversity is bad and culture is bad. And if you have somebody saying that, repeating that so much, then everybody is saying that and repeating that so much and it creates lots of backlash; it creates lots of hatred toward the more diverse groups.”

This fear also has an adverse effect on businesses, says Wright.

“Rumors are shared of ICE presence or actual deportations, which hurts the businesses because they need customers; it also happens where people do not go out if they hear of a potential activity,” he said.

However, that immediate fear and pullback often comes with a push of support for immigrant-owned businesses by other community members, both Dang and Wright say.

Organizations like Immigrant and Refugee Law Center, Legal Aid and Catholic Charities have put together “Know Your Rights” workshops for business owners and the community. Wright says these workshops, along with initiatives to share stories highlighting how immigrant-owned businesses are part of the fabric of our neighborhoods, help build knowledge and trust, allowing people to come back out. You’ll also see more people being intentional about where and how they spend their dollars to show support and solidarity.

“Businesses have been hurt, but then through that, we see a great gathering of the community to be kind of more supportive of each other and more supportive of businesses as well,” Dang said.

And if you’re interested in showing support to immigrant-owned restaurants and businesses, spending your money there is the obvious first and best way, but there are also other things that you can do. One is to use social media and review platforms like Yelp and Google Reviews to share positive experiences. Facebook offers local food groups like Chowdown Cincinnati and Cincinnati Foodies to share restaurants you enjoyed. Be sure to like and follow the restaurant’s social media pages and engage with their content. Classic word-of-mouth is also still a solid option in uplifting restaurants.

“Whether it’s talking to their friends or [saying], ‘Hey, I ate at this great new restaurant’ or, ‘This restaurant has been here for 15 years; I’ve never gone. I went; it was fantastic.’ So that kind of storytelling and sharing of information, I think that is really helpful,” Wright said.

Wright also cautions against drawing too much unwanted attention to businesses or their customers, so it’s important to be mindful about what you’re sharing and where.

If you’re being intentional about trying more immigrant-owned or ethnic-food restaurants, there are also several resources and directories that can help. Asianati offers a directory of AAPI-owned restaurants, bakeries and more on its website, and you can filter the results based on what type of cuisine you’re looking for. Hispanic Chamber Cincinnati offers a similar directory, Somos Cincy Sabroso, with a list of Latin American restaurants and food trucks. Voice of Black Cincinnati also has a list of Black-owned restaurants, featuring immigrant-owned spots like Darou Salam and Teranga.

Above all else, though: Do your best to be a good neighbor to those who make our food with so much love for their found communities.

“There’s a need for more knowledge around immigration as a policy, but often in those conversations, what’s hidden, intentionally or not, is we’re talking about humans. We’re talking about people. And, I think … these kinds of stories are necessary to remind us of our own humanity and our goodwill to others,” said Wright. “Yes, the economic impact is important. … [We want] to build a stronger regional economy, but the more important piece is that people want to feel a sense of connection and belonging.”

This story is featured in CityBeat’s March 19 print edition.