The Top 100 Places to Eat Near Starlight Doughnut Lab
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- The New York Times 22 of the Best Bakeries Across the U.S. Right Now
- James Beard Awards 2023 · Nominee · Outstanding Pastry Chef or Baker · Elaine Uykimpang Bentz
- Bon Appétit America's Best New Restaurants
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Rank 2. Starlight Doughnut Lab
Dessert
A doughnut shop in Norwood where pimento cheese, hot honey, Parmesan, and crushed red pepper can all end up on the same pastry. The vegan brioche dough is the constant, chewy and sturdy enough to hold whatever combination the team feels like trying next. Regulars like Butter & Salt anchor the case, while a rotating monthly menu swings further out. The savory side is where things get genuinely strange, in the best possible sense.
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Rank 3. The Aperture
Live-Fire Middle Eastern
- USA Today Restaurants of the Year
- The New York Times The Restaurant List
- James Beard Awards 2025 · Semifinalist · Emerging Chef · Jordan Anthony-Brown
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Rank 4. Wildweed
Italian
Pasta anchors the menu, but the chef insists Wildweed isn't an Italian restaurant, and a rib eye with umeboshi, seaweed jelly, and fermented crab makes a reasonable case. This Over-the-Rhine dinner spot grew out of years of pop-ups, and the bar counter lets you watch the kitchen work through every strange, precise move. Named to the New York Times Restaurant List and a James Beard nominee, it earns the attention without seeming to chase it.
- Midwest Living 2025 · Best of the Midwest
- 50 Best One To Watch Award 2026 · North America's 50 Best Restaurants
- James Beard Awards 2025 · Nominee · Best Chef: Great Lakes · David Jackman
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Rank 5. Mita's
Spanish
Chef Jose Salazar's tapas bar runs on small plates and a staff that functions more as a personal concierge than a waitstaff, pacing courses, pairing wines, and gently talking you into things you didn't know you wanted. The Spanish and Latin American menu moves through blistered peppers and embutidos before landing on a paella that's the exception to the small-plates rule. A James Beard nominee, and the kind of room that feels like the party started without you but will absolutely let you in.
- James Beard Awards 2023 · Nominee · Outstanding Restaurant
- USA Today Restaurants of the Year
- James Beard Awards 2024 · Nominee · Best Chef: Great Lakes · Jose Salazar
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Rank 6. Sudova
Eastern European
Stained-glass windows were the starting point for the entire bar design, which tells you something about how deliberately this Eastern European restaurant was built. The menu pulls from the chef's grandmother's recipes, pierogi and pelmeni and khachapuri landing hot, and the medovik changes flavors every few months just to keep you coming back. A James Beard nominee, and Cincinnati Magazine's number-five restaurant.
- James Beard Awards 2026 · Nominee · Best Chef: Great Lakes · Sarah Dworak
- Cincinnati Magazine #5 · Best Restaurants
- Cincinnati Magazine 2025 · Martini: Axe of Perun · Best of the City
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- James Beard Awards 2023 · Nominee · Best New Restaurant
- James Beard Awards 2026 · Nominee · Best Chef: Great Lakes · Jeffrey Harris
- Esquire The Best New Restaurants in America
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Rank 9. Boca
French-influenced New American
The famed red door on Sixth Street opens into one of Cincinnati's most serious fine dining rooms, the kind where comfort food quietly arrives in formalwear. The kitchen has been around forever, occupying the old Maisonette address, and the pommes soufflées remain a knowing nod to that lineage. The menu moves between reliable classics and sharper seasonal swings, and dessert gets the same attention as everything before it.
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Rank 10. Nicola's Restaurant
Italian
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Custom Rookwood pottery displayed above the open kitchen pass sets the tone at Jose Salazar's namesake restaurant, a mid-sized dining room where servers stand with hands clasped, quietly hunting for glasses to refill. The format is tapas in spirit: order everything at once, and the team paces it out. Dishes lean seasonal and arrive with an almost theatrical commitment to color, the kind of cooking that makes you notice it before you taste it.
- Cincinnati Magazine #10 · Best Restaurants
- James Beard Awards 2022 · Semifinalist · Best Chef: Great Lakes · Jose Salazar
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- James Beard Awards 2026 · Nominee · Best Chef: Southeast · David Willocks
- Eater The Best New Restaurants in America
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Rank 14. Nolia Kitchen
Southern
The kitchen is literally front and center here, open to the room so the whole team works in full view, moving like they own the place, which they kind of do. Nolia is a casual dinner spot where servers wear branded sweatshirts and the skillet cornbread arrives with a scoop of cane-syrup butter melting dramatically on top. Southern ease, exposed brick, and a menu that quietly runs gluten-free without making a cause of it. The house hot sauces are made from scratch, and one will have you fanning yourself.
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Rank 15. Abigail Street
Mediterranean
The door on Vine Street is easy to walk past, which is a shame because the tapas inside are hard to forget. This Mediterranean small-plates spot in Over-the-Rhine keeps things playful, from wood-fired octopus to a hummus plate that changes daily and pulls regulars in on its own. The pistachio baklava arrives as a thick slab of filling with pastry almost as an afterthought, and the servers watch you react like they've seen it before and still enjoy it.
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Rank 16. Colette
French
Secondhand china covers the walls and lands on the table at this mostly French restaurant in Over-the-Rhine, which leans firmly away from the stiff Euro-bistro formula. The room is bright and a little grandmotherly, the service moves fast, and the pastry program is treated with the seriousness it deserves. Pain maison and mille-feuille are the arguments for arriving hungry and leaving slower than you planned.
- Cincinnati Magazine #8 · Best Restaurants
- Cincinnati Magazine 2024 · Ravioli Sheet · Best of the City
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Rank 17. Sotto
Italian
The entrance is easy to miss: a staircase beside Boca's red door, leading well below street level. Sotto is a pasta-forward Italian speakeasy downtown, where the team makes things by hand and pours a lot of table wine, and the antipasti menu will quietly destroy your willpower before the main event arrives. Truffle season turns the tajarin into something quietly serious. The descent sets the mood, and there are enough steps that ordering a second pasta feels almost responsible.
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Rank 18. Annie Oakley’s
Cocktail Bar
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- Bon Appétit America's Best New Restaurants
- James Beard Awards 2023 · Semifinalist · Best Chef: Great Lakes · Francisco Alfaro
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Rank 20. King Pigeon
Cocktail Bar
A medical-grade centrifuge sits behind the bar at this East Walnut Hills cocktail spot, which tells you something about the ambition level before you've ordered. The menu changes twice a year and follows the adventures of a small pigeon, which sounds precious until you're drinking something clarified by milk-wash or cryo-concentrated into a flavor you can't quite name. The kind of place where the science is real and the whimsy is, somehow, also real.
- Cincinnati Magazine 2024 · Bar Mascot · Best of the City
- Cincinnati Magazine 2025 · Mad Scientist Cocktails · Best of the City
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Rank 23. Tiki Tiki Bang Bang
Tiki Cocktail Bar
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A coffee shop in Over-the-Rhine that roasts its own beans on-site, sourcing from family farms across South America and Africa. The decaf goes through a water-bath process that pulls the caffeine without gutting the flavor, which is a harder trick than it sounds. Good place to sit with a book and feel quietly virtuous about your afternoon cup.
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Rank 34. Annata Wine Bar
Wine Bar
Warm booth seating, a patio with live music some nights, and servers who can actually talk you through the list make this Evanston wine bar feel more like a neighborhood living room than a tasting room. Whites, reds, rosés, and cocktails share menu space with charcuterie and flatbread pizzas, so a glass rarely stays lonely. The kind of place where a quick drink tends to turn into a longer evening without anyone minding.
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Rank 40. Iris Read
Natural Wine Bar
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Rank 41. Vinology
Wine Bar
A wine and bottle shop in Mt. Lookout where the charcuterie board quietly steals the show. You pick your meats and cheeses, and what arrives is a full spread of crackers, dried fruits, fig jam, nuts, and mustard, arranged like someone cared. Tinned seafood and a baguette with imported French butter round things out for anyone who showed up hungrier than planned.
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The Crystalary is a fine mineral gallery in Mt. Lookout where smoky quartz from Switzerland shares shelf space with vintage Cordey China figurines. The team behind it has spent decades sourcing high-quality crystals and minerals for serious collectors, and the curation shows. It's the kind of shop that makes you realize you've been underestimating rocks your entire life.
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Rank 44. Cincy Café
Yemeni Middle Eastern
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Rank 46. The Green Door
Cocktail Bar
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Rank 55. Tickle Pickle
Dessert
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Rank 57. Harmony Plant Fare
Vegetarian
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Rank 60. Ché
Argentinian Peruvian
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Rank 62. Lang Thang Coffee
Vietnamese
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Rank 63. Onolicious Hawaii
Hawaiian
Glazed, caramelized Spam wrapped in nori is on the menu, and at Onolicious it is a completely reasonable lunch. This casual Hawaiian spot grew from a food hall stall into its own brick-and-mortar, serving shoyu chicken and musubi to a city that has taken the whole thing rather seriously. The team brings a laid-back luau spirit to downtown Cincinnati, which is a sentence that works out better than you'd expect.
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Fabric lovers, Silk Road Textiles in College Hill is your answer to the great JoAnn's void. This independent fabric shop carries an impressive range of ethically sourced textiles from around the world, whether you're sewing a garment or reupholstering a sad armchair. The staff actually knows their stuff, and regular in-store classes cover sewing, quilting, crocheting, and more, so beginners have no excuse to stay stuck on YouTube tutorials.
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A matcha café that sources its tea directly from a family farm in Shizuoka, which means the starting point is better than most. Little Matcha landed in Covington after starting as a pop-up, and the menu rotates every two weeks so the seasonal lattes, strawberry one week, ube the next, stay worth revisiting. Hojicha and genmaicha lattes fill out the board, but the matcha is clearly the main event here.
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Rank 73. Rekas Butchery & Delicatessen
Steakhouse
The glass case runs long and cold, stocked with Ohio-raised Wagyu and whole-animal cuts that make you reconsider your dinner plans on the spot. Rekas is a butcher shop and deli in the old Cincinnati tradition, where you can take home a porterhouse or just let someone else do the work and order a Wagyu roast beef sandwich. The team behind Wyoming Meat Market built this one, and it shows in the quality of what's in the case.
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A passage hidden behind a wardrobe connects the two sides of this Ft. Thomas bookstore and café, which is either charming or a mild fire-code concern, depending on your disposition. The shelves lean heavily into fiction, especially romantasy, fantasy, mystery, and horror. There's a coffee counter on one side and a small bourbon bar on the other, which covers the full spectrum of how a reading session can go.
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Rank 75. Carmelo’s Mozzarella
Italian
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Rank 78. Sebastian Bakehouse
Bakery
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The taxidermied animals have names, and some of them are not for sale because the owners simply like them too much to let go. Hail is a record shop and curiosity store in Covington where vintage vinyl shares floor space with mounted creatures sourced from antique dealers. Berry the Bear and friends are permanent residents; the records turn over. A useful stop if your living room needs both a new album and a peacock.
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Rank 83. Phoenician Taverna
Lebanese
Complimentary housemade pita arrives warm at this Lebanese restaurant in Mason, and it sets the tone for everything that follows. The mezza menus run long enough that most tables over-order on appetizers before the kebabs and shawarma ever arrive, which is its own kind of problem to have. The owner has been known to stop at every table with pairing advice, then greet returning guests by name. Come without a hard stop time.
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A pizzeria in a small town outside Modena where the menu lists four distinct doughs, crispy, high-hydration, fried, and pan, and the staff politely declines modifications on certain pies to protect the tradition behind them. A tasting menu called "Leavened and Doughs" runs six courses for anyone who wants to commit fully. The wine, beer, and spirits list runs deep. Named among Italy's excellent pizzerias by 50 Top Pizza.
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Terracotta details nod to Naples in an otherwise contemporary dining room, which sets the tone for a Neapolitan-leaning pizza shop that takes its craft seriously without taking itself too seriously. The dough is airy and well-cooked, the toppings paired with real intention, and the fried montanarine are quietly worth the detour on their own. Listed among 50 Top Pizza Italy's Excellent Pizzerias, this is Carpi's most convincing argument for staying local.
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Rank 89. Chili Miso Udon, Café Mochiko
Japanese Noodles
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A vegan cheese shop born out of one founder's frustration that everything else about going plant-based was fine, but the cheese was terrible. She started making her own, and now the Madisonville shop carries nearly thirty varieties, built on cashew, almond, and pea protein bases and ranging from Gouda to ranch dressing. Products also turn up at Findlay Market and Nosh if you're not heading to Bramble Ave.
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Rank 99. Makers Bakers Co.
Bakery
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Rank 100. Cherbourg Cyprus
Gluten-free Bakery