When award-winning Mediterranean restaurant The Aperture closed its doors in Walnut Hills at the end of last year—and then reopened as a lunch-only barbecue spot earlier this month—foodies across the Queen City were surprised. But for chef/owner Jordan Anthony-Brown, cooking barbecue feels like getting back to his roots.
“I grew up in a family where we did backyard barbecues, whether it’s in Cleveland, or down here in Cincinnati, or traveling to Texas,” Anthony-Brown said. “In the wake of The Aperture closing, I’ve been going back to what led me into cooking in the first place. And for me, that’s watching my dad and my grandpa at six in the morning with a cup of coffee in the backyard. It’s revisiting that tradition and ritual of cooking that I think I may have gotten away from a little bit.”
The new menu at The Aperture is a meld of several different styles. Anthony-Brown will be pulling from his Midwestern roots for the barbecue, of course, but also from his trips to Texas and his collegiate experience in North Carolina.
The restaurant hasn’t forgotten its Mediterranean roots, either: for example, their collard greens are made with nduja, a spicy, spreadable Calabrian sausage, instead of the traditional pork.
Highlights on the menu include their best-selling brisket, smoked pork ribs, lemon-pepper chicken wings, a fried chicken sandwich, and their crispy pork belly, which gets braised, smoked, and dropped in a fryer, making it “kinda like the nicest piece of bacon you’ve ever had,” Anthony-Brown said.
Yet every truly great barbecue spot is known for its sides (“I’ve always judged barbecue places for them,” Anthony-Brown said), and it’s no different here. The list features plenty of appetizing options like brown butter cornbread, potato salad, coleslaw, a rotating-flavor banana pudding and the aforementioned nduja collards. But the real show-stopper is their pimento cheese, which even Anthony-Brown admits he’s eaten “way too much of” since the restaurant’s reopening.
The shift to more casual fare has paid off for the restaurant so far. As Anthony-Brown tells it, a guest wandered in last week, grabbed his take-out order, and came back for seconds in less than two hours.
While lunch barbecue is only a temporary plan for the restaurant—as The Aperture’s building is also currently occupied by Basque steakhouse Etxe in the evenings—the experience lines up with their philosophy for the restaurant’s future.
“I think as we continue to lay down the framework for The Aperture 2.0, we keep coming back to the words of consistency and craveability, and barbecue is just that,” said General Manager Kyla Mains. “Guests want something they can come back and enjoy time and time again.”
Her favorite part of the experience, however, is the new lunch hours, making it feel like they’re a true part of the neighborhood since they can now actually meet the people and business owners who reside around them.
“It’s not an opportunity we’ve had in the past outside of running and grabbing a quick coffee before your 12-hour day inside of the restaurant, and you’re not leaving the restaurant once you’ve entered,” she said. “We’ve already gotten to see and talk to a lot of people within the community that have stopped by for lunch. And to me, that’s what’s most exciting is being able to really feel like we are a part of Walnut Hills in its truest sense.”
Anthony-Brown is having fun with the switch away from formal dining, but “at the end of the day, the barbecue is a bridge to a broader path,” and reflects what they want The Aperture to look like even after they “inevitably” transition back to evening dinner service.
“When Kyla says craveability, we’re looking at ‘what do you want to eat, right now?’… When you’re searching for food, you’re not looking at a menu. You’re saying ‘I want pasta’ or ‘I want steak’ or ‘I want barbecue.’ And we’re like, okay, let’s fill that gap,” Anthony-Brown said. “We feel good about what we’re doing, but we also know we want to get back in the water that we want to figuratively swim in.”
As the restaurant closed its doors, Anthony-Brown and crew were “deeply proud of everything that happened in the first couple years here,” but had to make some “pragmatic decisions.”
“It’s a changing restaurant market, not just locally, but nationally. ‘What do people want?’ Predictability. While changing the menu as much as we did was exciting, it didn’t necessarily yield repeatable results,” Anthony-Brown said. “We just had to face some hard truths, and it’s nothing to be ashamed of, as I think every restaurant goes through it … It’s kind of us getting back to finding the balance between what the guest wants and what we want.”
For now, though, the team is happy to just have their guests wander in off the street while enjoying the quality of service The Aperture is known for.
“That’s what we want out of the next three to five months. Have the doors open, have the sign out, grab a bite, sit at the counter, maybe even put a couple tables out back. High level hospitality doesn’t always have to be white tablecloth … and you’re going to get the best hospitality from Kyla no matter if it’s got perfect plating or if it’s on a plastic tray,” Anthony-Brown said. “It’s something we want to reestablish for the neighborhood, but also selfishly for ourselves. We really just like to take care of people.”
The Aperture is now open for lunch Wednesday through Friday from 11 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. During the next two Saturdays, it will also be open from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. For more information, visit their website.