Food & Wine just released a list of the 100 best bakeries in America and one Cincinnati spot is included: Allez OTR. And, conveniently, baker Tom McKenna's shop tops the list, thanks to alphabetical order.
The magazine write-up praises Allez as such: "Casually capturing the energy of a modern French boulangerie with a studied (but not too closely) simplicity, quality workmanship, and daily inventory that can disappear quite quickly, this curiously magnetic sliver of Over-The-Rhine storefront deserves to be one of your first stops in Cincinnati."
McKenna took the Allez Instagram to says thanks for the recognition:
In the article, the Food & Wine article says, "While life for many has been put on pause, bakers have baked on — most of the places on this list are open for business and need your support," and writer David Landsel discusses the influx of home bakers during quarantine in the intro and the importance of bread in feeding America.
And in compiling the list of 100 best bakeries, Landsel says "a great deal of attention was paid to the newer bakeries, typically the ones that have had the benefit of a few years on the job, during which they had hopefully been able to make themselves indispensable." He also noted there was no automatic bias against larger operations and "for this list to be worthwhile, it had to accurately reflect America, rather than one, relatively small segment of our baking culture."
