There are plenty of reasons to visit O’Bryonville’s The BonBonerie bakery and café — owners Mary Pat Pace and Sharon Butler have been creating artful, delicious pastries and treating customers, staff and community like family for 33 years. The resulting excellence is evident both inside the bakery’s glistening glass cases and in the aroma emanating from one of BonBonerie’s pink carry-out boxes filled with homemade pastries, chocolates and torts. Such a box, once opened, will fill your kitchen and probably your dining room with the smells of a time when grocery stores didn’t mass-produce birthday cakes and people had time to bake things for themselves. Over three-plus decades, Pace and Butler have consistently refined and reworked their recipes, trying new things and booting the rare concepts that go out of taste. Visit their website for seasonal menus including the likes of chocolate eclairs, black bottom banana toffee torts, French macarons, honey vanilla pound cake, etc. The café also offers coffee and breakfast sandwiches, and you can always order the wedding cake or cupcake spread to show everyone that your union will never be threatened by weak pastry consumption. The BonBonerie, 2030 Madison Road, O’Bryonville, 513-321-3399, bonbonerie.com.
We write these words not to encourage the fine proprietors of Over-the-Rhine staple Senate to raise their prices but to acknowledge that without such a deal many of us would not often indulge in such fare. The “$25 wood-grilled, dry-aged ribeye” — which costs just $24 — with marrow butter and truffle fries is kind of like getting half-off a badass fancy meal. You can spend the other 20 bucks on the restaurant’s excellent beer, wine and cocktail lists. Or, if you’re one of those people who uses a budget app to make yourself feel guilty about how often you eat out, go with the $17 seared scallops or slum it with a $10 award-winning street dog until you’re deserving of the full steak treatment. Senate, 1212 Vine St., Over-the-Rhine, 513-421-2020, senatepub.com.
Some might argue that any good restaurant on the West Side is a hidden gem, but Sakura truly takes the cake. Located off I-74, this Japanese steakhouse is really hard to find from the street and must be accessed from Old Rybolt Road past the BP gas station or via Rybolt Road past the Holiday Inn, near the closed (we hope) Imperial House Hotel. The adventure continues inside, where patrons can choose from a seat at a Teppanyaki grill table or a spot at the sushi bar for classic rolls and rice dishes. If the music and lights emanating from the adjacent Hillside Gastropub tempt you, just head next door for drinks, jams and dad dancing. Sakura Steakhouse, 5510 Rybolt Road, Dent, 513-574-9666, searchable on Facebook.
Very few things beat waking up in the morning as a kid and sliding twin Pop-Tarts into the toaster for a morning jolt of sugar. Benjamin Arington, owner, creator and chef of Fat Ben’s Bakery, has taken that childhood nostalgia and updated it for 2017 (and for grown-ups) with the creation of his pastry pockets. The pockets are rectangular crusty pastries filled with classy flavor combos like strawberry cheesecake, blackberry thyme and pineapple rosemary. And if you don’t feel like adulting quite yet, Arington also offers flavors like milk and cereal, chocolate PB fudge and Girl Scout Cookie. While you can only order the addictive pastry pockets online for now, a Fat Ben’s storefront is coming soon. Fat Ben’s Bakery, 917-628-8202, fatbensbakery.com.
