The Best Places in Central Business District & around

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.

1. James Beard Awards 2023 · Nominee · Outstanding Restaurant
2. AAA Three Diamonds
3. USA Today Restaurants of the Year

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.

1. Midwest Living 2025 · Best of the Midwest
2. The 50 One To Watch Award 2026 · North America's 50 Best Restaurants
3. James Beard Awards 2025 · Nominee · Best Chef: Great Lakes · David Jackman

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.

1. James Beard Awards 2023 · Nominee · Best New Restaurant
2. James Beard Awards 2026 · Nominee · Best Chef: Great Lakes · Jeffrey Harris
3. Esquire The Best New Restaurants in America

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.

1. AAA Four Diamonds
2. Cincinnati Magazine #1 · Best Restaurants

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.

1. James Beard Awards 2026 · Nominee · Best Chef: Great Lakes · Sarah Dworak
2. Cincinnati Magazine #5 · Best Restaurants
3. Cincinnati Magazine 2025 · Martini: Axe of Perun · Best of the City

1. Time Out The best bakeries in America

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.

1. AAA Three Diamonds
2. Cincinnati Magazine #3 · Best Restaurants

An Italian restaurant on Sycamore where the bread basket arrives housemade, breadsticks and focaccia folded in together, and the menu moves through antipasti, pasta, and secondi at a pace that discourages rushing. The crispy potato gnocchi has a following, and the malfatti comes cacio e pepe style, which is either a provocation or a compliment depending on your Roman loyalties. Tiramisu closes things out.

1. AAA Four Diamonds
2. Cincinnati Magazine 2025 · Gnocchi · Best of the City

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.

1. Cincinnati Magazine #10 · Best Restaurants
2. James Beard Awards 2022 · Semifinalist · Best Chef: Great Lakes · Jose Salazar

1. AAA Three Diamonds

Housemade pasta is the whole point here, pulled from family recipes that the team takes seriously enough to name the restaurant after the grandparents who inspired them. It's a warm, mid-range Italian dining room where the menu stays short on purpose. The Sunday sauce, built around rich braised meats over spaghetti, is the kind of dish that explains why some recipes get handed down. Soft-serve gelato, taken as an affogato, closes things out properly.

1. AAA Three Diamonds

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.

1. Cincinnati Magazine #6 · Best Restaurants

1. AAA Approved

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.

1. Cincinnati Magazine #8 · Best Restaurants
2. Cincinnati Magazine 2024 · Ravioli Sheet · Best of the City

1. AAA Approved

1. AAA Approved

The Argentine parrilla, a communal spread of grilled meats built for two or four, anchors this Latin American and Italian-influenced restaurant on Race Street. Small plates dominate the menu, which pushes sharing over soloing, and the short rib gnocchi has a way of making people forget they ordered it to split. Locally sourced ingredients throughout, with a crowd that seems to have read the room before arriving.

1. AAA Approved

1. Bon Appétit America's Best New Restaurants
2. James Beard Awards 2023 · Semifinalist · Best Chef: Great Lakes · Francisco Alfaro

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.

1. Cincinnati Magazine 2025 · Decaf Coffee · Best of the City

1. Cincinnati Magazine 2025 · Festive Coffee: Eggnog Cappuccino · Best of the City

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1. Cincinnati Magazine 2024 · Coffee Cart · Best of the City

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.

1. Cincinnati Magazine 2025 · Hawaiian Restaurant · Best of the City

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Nearly 3,000 plants grow out of the walls at this American kitchen and bar in Over-the-Rhine, which is either the most calming dining room in Cincinnati or proof that someone really committed to a concept. The living wall runs over 300 square feet of ferns, monstera, and ficus, maintained by a local specialist. It's the kind of room that makes you feel vaguely healthy regardless of what you order.

1. Cincinnati Magazine 2024 · Living Wall · Best of the City

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1. Cincinnati Magazine 2024 · Move · Best of the City