Review: Walnut Hills' New Restaurant The Aperture is a First-Rate Addition to Cincinnati's Dining Scene

This story is featured in CityBeat's Feb. 21 print edition.

The Aperture is the real deal — a first-rate addition to our city’s dining firmament. Not downtown or in Over-the-Rhine, The Aperture is located in the center of Walnut Hills in a refurbished building on the corner of Gilbert Avenue and McMillan Street. The Aperture enriches an up-and-coming neighborhood with a palate-thrilling splash. In fact, dinner at this new restaurant delivered my most memorable and satisfying Cincinnati dining experience in recent memory.

The place took years to come to fruition, slowed by the pandemic and the inevitable delays that can happen while renovating historic buildings. Chef-owner Jordan Anthony-Brown leased space in the Paramount Building — constructed in 1931 — way back in 2019. The intervening years were challenging for Anthony-Brown and his backers, but the time must have been well spent, judging by the excellent food and beverage service at The Aperture from day one.

Although the dining room isn’t particularly large, the layout allows a comfortable space between the tables, most of which give diners a view of the busy kitchen. That generous spacing helps keep the noise level manageable, and, for most of the evening, we were able to converse comfortably among the four of us. A smallish bar occupies its own nook in the L-shaped space and a back dining room can be reserved for private events. On a very rainy evening, the main dining room stayed mostly full of a young, diverse clientele. As far as I could tell, everyone seemed to be having a grand old time.

The fare is described as Mediterranean, although it probably won’t remind you of many other Mediterranean restaurants around town. The menu isn’t lengthy, and you are likely to appreciate an item-by-item menu tour like the one our server provided. We kind of thought of it as a translation of a plethora of ingredients and preparations that were unfamiliar to us. At the very least, be sure you have Google handy.

Excluding dessert, you’ll find only a dozen dishes on a menu that’s not divided into appetizer/salad/entrée sections but presented on one side of a sheet of heavy paper. It flows from lighter to more substantial dishes, beginning with a couple of items that go well with cocktails and proceeding through interesting vegetable preps to pastas and seafood. At least for now, there are no hunks of meat, such as steaks or chops. I don’t think you’ll miss them. Our foursome sampled more than half the dishes and left absolutely satisfied. While the house might adjust the list of offerings going forward, it’s a safe bet that most of what we enjoyed will be available at least until the season changes.

Vegetables shine here, and that hits my foodie sweet spot: many if not most restaurants give short shrift to plant ingredients, an oversight that can be glaringly annoying. If you’re not with me on that, withhold judgment until you try Aperture’s charred carrot, oyster mushroom or Kennebec potato plates. The first two are sensational, and I’d bet the ranch that they’ll stay on the menu for quite some time to come.

Try not to miss the charred carrot, cooked to toothsome perfection and artfully presented. It’s one of the dishes with ingredients that might be unfamiliar, including the North African spice mix ras el hanout and the Egyptian spice-and-nut blend dukka. The recipe also includes merguez, a lamb sausage from that same part of the world, although the meaty flavor isn’t prominent. Also outstanding is the oyster mushroom, a hearty fungus with a texture almost like chicken, enriched with hazelnut pesto, Manchego cheese, brown butter and tahini.

I almost could have made a meal out of those two plates but since we were sharing everything, I had plenty of room to keep going. My companions and I loved the salad of Napa cabbage, and a plate of warm focaccia went beautifully with our cocktails.

Speaking of which, I must give a shout-out to Will Velarde, the restaurant’s general manager and beverage director, whose cocktail menu is genius. His elevated take on a Manhattan, dubbed I’m Her, adds a little pomegranate and a special vermouth from the Piedmont region of Italy. The rum-based drink called The Prophet included splashes of a couple of liqueurs, lime and orange juices to create a wonderful balance of flavors.

We tried one of the three pasta dishes, lumache Amatriciana. The portion of shell-shaped, ridged noodles was just right, enough for each of us to sample while not piling on too many carbs. Its tomato-based sauce was spiced with pickled fresno chilies and the dish enhanced with creamy pecorino and guanciale, a salty Italian ham.

The Aperture’s take on branzino, one of my favorite restaurant fish entrees, did not disappoint. The tender filet came atop a brothy sauce in which swam a few littleneck clams and oishii shrimp. Lamb shoulder was a hearty preparation served in a bowl; slices of tender lamb piled in one-third of the bowl, the remainder filled with spiced rice and sauteed greens. One of the few unsuccessful dishes was a house version of falafel, new on the menu that evening. Bland and too crumbly, it fell apart on the fork.

I expected more than two dessert choices, considering that the restaurant’s advance publicity touted its “pastry program.” Neither the key lime tart nor the almond cake lit up my taste buds, although my companions disagreed, especially about the tart. I thought the filling/crust ratio was too heavy on the latter, but I was in the minority on that one. The almond cake struck me as too dry and dense and would have benefitted from a lot more of the cream topping than graced our portion.

But overall, it was an excellent meal. For the past month, whenever someone asks me where they should eat next, I haven’t hesitated to recommend this restaurant. “Aperture” means “opening;” more specifically, it’s a term from photography describing a “space through which light passes.” Somehow, those images are a great fit for an ambitious but approachable fine-dining establishment in a developing city neighborhood. Let there be light!

The Aperture, 900 E. McMillan St., Walnut Hills. Info: theaperturecinci.com.

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Photos: Inside Walnut Hills' Newest Restaurant, The Aperture

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