Best of Cincinnati 2026 Staff Picks: Eats

As CityBeat’s resident foodie, it’s nice that I’ve been able to turn “going out to eat too much” into part of my job. Since my entire career has been me either writing about the service industry or working in it, I’m naturally a guy that everyone turns to when they wonder where they should go to eat. And, sure, I can rank the best fine-dining restaurants in Cincinnati until the cows come home, but nobody is eating haute cuisine every single day. (And if you are, please take me with you.) CityBeat is an alt-weekly, which means we’re allowed to get a little cheeky with it when it comes to our staff favorites. While my explanations for these five picks might be somewhat unserious, the food at all five spots is no laughing matter. 

Best place to step back in time: Dunlap Cafe

While it retains its title as the oldest bar in Over-the-Rhine (it opened in 1936), the Dunlap Cafe is more of a breakfast spot these days. Six days a week, 9 a.m. to 3 p.m., the cozy dive bar serves up some of the cheapest, greasiest, tastiest food you’ll have in the entire neighborhood just as it has done for generations. History lines the walls across the joint, like a signed Boomer Esiason jersey or a massive wall of beer cans that all look old enough to be our grandfathers. While there’s plenty of cheap items you can order from the grill that seem to have teleported from a bygone era to your plate both in taste and in price—a $3 coney, $4 chili, a $5 grilled cheese, a $7 burger—look to the corner of the menu for their calling card, the double decker french toast sandwich, a monstrous concoction packed full of meat and dusted with powdered sugar. Just like grandma made, right?

1926 Dunlap St., OTR; dunlapcafe.com 

Best place to be overloaded by neon while you eat: The Turf Club

The Turf Club has only been around for 20 years, but it already feels like a Cincinnati institution. Guy Fieri took note of this funky burger joint on “Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives,” and it isn’t hard to see why. The entire place is lathered from top to bottom with neon signs of all sorts—mostly beer advertisements—that give it a unique character and feeling you’ll not likely find anywhere else in the Queen City other than the American Sign Museum. Helps that the food is good, too. There are plenty of fun appetizers like shrimp deviled eggs or foie gras, and all the burgers at Turf Club are completely customizable with all sorts of bizarre options; in theory, you could order a burger comprised of pimento cheese, halloumi, lump crab, lobster cake, a fried egg, a giant portobello mushroom, crème fraiche, chorizo, garlic, bearnaise, mango tequila jalapenos and truffle oil. (Please do not actually do this.) Delectable duck fat fries and tempura-battered onion rings are available if you need a side item. And if you’re feeling thirsty, the cocktail menu sports a whopping 10 different martinis.

4618 Eastern Ave., Linwood; turfclubcincy.com 

Best place to brag about eating at on social media: Roji

You’re not like the other girls. You like to go places your friends haven’t even heard of and post mouthwatering, jealousy-inducing pictures to your story immediately. Jeff Ruby’s? So passé. Taste of Belgium? No thanks. The Eagle? Don’t even think about it. Then you heard about Roji. Only eight seats in the whole restaurant. Located in a literal back alley downtown. Limited, hotly-contested reservations that only open at 6 a.m. the day of. Sushi made out of the freshest fish you’ll find in the Cincinnati area prepared literally 3 feet from your face. This was perfect! All your followers are going to hate you for getting here first. Jokes aside, Roji is a one-of-a-kind experience: it’s an omakase-style sushi restaurant, a Japanese word which roughly translates to “I’ll leave it up to you.” Chefs prepare a different menu every day based on whatever they feel like doing, which means no two trips are the same. ‘Phone eats first’ shouldn’t apply here.

31 E Court St., Downtown; @roji_sushi on Instagram

Best place to eat when the party’s over: Lucky Dog

This should almost read as the ‘only’ place in the city to eat when the party’s over, as COVID destroyed most of Cincinnati’s famed late-night spots. Lucky Dog is one of the last men standing, and is basically exactly what you’d want when it’s almost 3 a.m. and you need to eat something. The ‘dogs’ in the name are on hand as either Cincy-style coneys or just plain wieners, sure, but there’s also wraps, tater tots, macaroni and cheese, club sandwiches, individual slices of bacon, walking tacos, double deckers, marshmallow chocolate chip peanut butter cheesecakes, slushies, milkshakes, and—the most inexplicable item on the menu—salads. Whatever you’ve got a hankering for after all the bars have closed, Lucky Dog probably has it. On top of that, the food is good enough that you’ll probably remember eating it the next day.

1210 Main St., OTR; facebook.com/LuckyDogOTR

Best place to recover the next day: Eckerlin(s) Meats

This old-fashioned, family-owned butcher shop has been serving up all kinds of meat since 1852. (Much like how many Cincinnatians add an ‘S’ to the end of Kroger, talk to any longtime Over-the-Rhine resident and you’ll find the same thing happens to Eckerlin.) You probably already know them for their famous goetta, their fresh sausage, or their ability to pull out ridiculously good ribeyes and filets from their deli cases. What you might not know them for is their from-scratch kitchen inside their Findlay Market storefront, which has several items on their morning menu that feel like manna from heaven anytime you partied a little too hard the night prior. Off the top of my head, I’ve had beef stew, a meatball sub, french onion soup, a pastrami melt, chicken tacos, steak stir fry, several burgers, and hundreds of bacon, egg and cheeses paired with a chocolate chip cookie. It’s never expensive, either; the aforementioned BEC is $5. 

116 W Elder St., OTR; eckerlinmeats.com

This article appears in Best of Cincinnati 2026.