What’s more universal to the human experience than food?
We share food together, we make food for each other, we even spend hours arguing about our favorite foods. (Don’t believe me? Just go take a look at CityBeat’s Facebook comments.)
If you don’t know me, I’m our Arts & Culture reporter, which means I cover everything from theater to music to visual arts. But my real passion—and my favorite thing to write about—is food. Over the course of my career as a journalist, I’ve covered everything you can think of: vibrant openings, unique pop-ups, crazy cocktails, delicious desserts, elaborate sandwiches, restaurant labor investigations and more.
One time, I even had to review over 20 different breakfast restaurants in a two-week span. My stomach hurt almost as much as my wallet.
Having now joined CityBeat, I looked at our most popular pages over the past year and every single one is about food—specifically, the BEST food. It doesn’t matter if the article is a week old or 10 years old: people want to know what to eat!
I’ve enlisted Noah Jones, our Community Vibrancy reporter, to discuss our individual picks for the top five restaurants in the Cincinnati area. While my picks skew toward fine dining and his picks lean more toward fast-casual, all 10 are worth the trip. Let’s get to it.
Noah’s #5:The Echo, Hyde Park
The Echo is the kind of place that makes you feel like a regular customer from the minute you sit in a booth or the swivel seats at the bar. From young adults picking up a quick meal to the older diners slugging back coffee and conversation, this joint has a magical way of bringing eaters back to when diners were America’s peak food destination. The food is perfect for breakfast or brunch, with seasonal specials—crabby benedict, anyone?—and staple foods like hearty omelets.
Kane’s #5: Nolia, Over-the-Rhine
It’s a common misconception that Nolia is strictly a Cajun or Creole restaurant. Sure, owner Jeff Harris is from New Orleans, and yes, the ever-changing menu regularly sports cornbread, crab and crawfish. But Nolia is really a showcase for the flavors of the South and the entire world, with plenty of Indian and West African-inspired dishes adorning its menu across the years. Really, all you need to know is that Nolia is the best Southern restaurant in the Cincinnati area, and nothing soothes the soul like good Southern cooking.
Noah’s #4: Heyday, East Walnut Hills
This joint has a place in the heart of any Cincinnati burger lover. Heyday makes fantastic bar food, whether you’re enjoying a quiet summer day on their patio or carrying over a burger to the Growler House to watch an FC Cincinnati game. Plus, who doesn’t love the option of tater tots on the side?
Kane’s #4: Kiki, Clifton
I would pay a ridiculous amount of money to know what Kiki puts in their broth. Try as I might (and I have tried), I’ve never been able to replicate anything close to the savory-smooth chicken flavor in the broth of their Shio ramen, which also sports pork belly, rayu, nori, green onions, and a tea-marinated egg. And when it comes to their excellent nigiri, there’s no fresher fish to be had in the Cincinnati area—except at Kiki’s sister omakase joint Roji, located downtown. One day, maybe I’ll be able to make ramen that’s even half as good as this. But for now, I’ll just keep giving them my money.
Noah’s #3: Café Mochiko, Walnut Hills
There’s something exciting about waiting in a line out the door for food when you already know the wait is worth it. Mornings at Mochiko are always the start of a great day, thanks to their Beard-nominated pastries (like an ube halaya croissant) and weekly baked specials. At night, they serve udon, karaage and other entrees in spectacular fashion, with standout weekly specials like their Cincinnati chili ramen. This beloved Asian-American eatery always serves up perfection and is a must-try when you’ve got out-of-town visitors.
Kane’s #3: Abigail Street, Over-the-Rhine
It’s fun to share food, but it’s even more fun to be surprised. Abigail Street’s Mediterranean-inspired menu is filled with incredible renditions of falafel, dates, scallops, short rib, octopus, and more. So it’s really fun when I get to take someone new there and I watch their face scrunch up as I tell them we’re ordering the broccoli. ‘All this amazing food and we’re getting broccoli?’ their facial expression reads. Then they take a bite and the look of surprise on their face makes me think they’ve seen the face of God.
The restaurant’s Moroccan-spiced broccoli—fried extra-crispy and served with berbere, sesame seeds, miso and tahini—is my favorite appetizer in the city. It’s got such a legendary reputation among my friends that I recently took a photo of it and sent it to someone as a playful attempt at making him jealous. His response? “I’ve been dreaming about that broccoli for months.” Which begs the question: if even the broccoli is this good, what’s the rest of the food taste like?
Noah’s #2: Your Mom’s Pizzeria, Mount Adams
This literal mom-and-pop pizzeria excels at making fantastic pies. Take my favorite: the Shiesty, a pie with excellent tomato sauce and a damn good crust, topped with pepperoni, ricotta cheese, peppadews, and one of the greatest inventions of all time in hot honey. Excuse me while I go wipe my chin.
Kane’s #2: Mita’s, downtown
Mita’s is probably the most critically lauded restaurant in the city: among countless other awards, chef/owner Jose Salazar has been nominated as the best chef in the region by the James Beard Foundation a whopping six times. One visit makes it obvious why.
The Latin-focused cuisine at the restaurant, named as an homage to Salazar’s Colombian grandmother (his “mita”), has something that’s missing from a lot of fine dining: it’s fun. That might sound cliche, but each item on the menu—like the chicken skewers or the blistered shishito peppers—invites friendly conversation in a way that too many restaurants lack, making it my top pick anytime I’m dining out with a big group. Everything at Mita’s is always so ridiculously well-executed that I regularly order their shrimp ceviche as a side even though I’m allergic. Food this great is worth a fuzzy tongue.
Noah’s #1: Ambar India, Clifton
Indian food is in abundance in Cincinnati, but Ambar India stands out. Their unusually large portions, even for Indian spots, have left me with meals for days. The chicken saag slaps. The lamb curry slaps too. It’s hard to go wrong here. In fact, the only wrong decision you could make at Ambar is not placing an order for garlic naan.
Kane’s #1: Wildweed, Over-the-Rhine
At first glance, with the punk rock blasting over the speakers and plating so fancy it’s just begging to go on your Instagram story, you’d be forgiven for thinking that Wildweed is the kind of place they’d skewer on FX’s The Bear. But Wildweed’s ethos isn’t one of fine-dining snobbery. If anything, the place exhibits a freedom to experiment that you’d only see in Michelin-starred restaurants.
Here’s an example from my favorite dining experience ever: as their current location was being built, chefs David and Lydia Jackman hosted several pop-ups. During a winter 2023 edition, I ravenously consumed several dishes that would later become mainstays at the full restaurant, like quark-stuffed culurgiones and Dungeness crab risotto—the latter of which is probably the last meal I’d request if I was ever on Death Row.
As we finished the meal, Chef Jackman walked over and said he had a surprise for us while handing me a mysterious bowl of ice cream. I took a bite and gasped as he explained it was made from melted-down pine needles from his Christmas tree, then sat in stunned silence, wondering how he even came up with something that bizarre. If you’re looking for food that will challenge your taste buds, Wildweed is your first stop. And if you’re averse to fine-dining, Wildweed will make you a believer.