CITY GUIDES | OHIO
The Cincinnati Michelin Guide First Draft
The city spent years making the case for recognition. Now that inspectors are here, these are the restaurants that deserve a place in the Michelin Guide.
By Jamie Dutton
Updated Oct. 29, 2026
Bar Rosso
AUTHOR BIO: Jamie Dutton's job has her in airports regularly, as does a family spread out across the Midwest. She’s partial to BPTs and Bell’s.
I've spent enough time eating my way around Cincinnati to know the city has never needed anyone's permission to take its cooking seriously. But for years, the one permission it couldn't get was Michelin's.
The inspectors simply didn't come here, and a city full of serious kitchens learned to live without the guide's attention. That changed this summer, when Michelin announced it will add Cincinnati to its American Great Lakes Edition. The anonymous inspectors are reportedly already in the field, and the first selections are due at a ceremony in 2027.
While we wait for the official announcement, I did a deep dive into my favorite Cincinnati restaurants, considered and cross-analyzed, ate my way through multi-course meals, and decided on this first draft of the Cincinnati Michelin Guide. Here are the restaurants inspectors shouldn’t miss.
Bar Rosso
$$$ | MAP | WEBSITE | INSTAGRAM
Crown Restaurant Group's Over-the-Rhine steak friterie keeps the decision-making to a minimum, and that's the point. For $50, dinner runs sourdough focaccia, a chrysanthemum salad, and a prime tenderloin with frites, with chocolate mousse as the optional finish. The bar is built on vermouth, with Negroni and Martini service for anyone who wants to linger over the second half of the evening. Chef and co-owner Anthony Sitek runs a small, confident room that knows exactly what it is.
What it deserves: Michelin Recommended
Boca
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Chef and owner David Falk has run Boca since 2001, at its downtown location since 2013, now in the old Maisonette space, and it still sets the standard for European-leaning French cooking in the city. The diver scallops come with a brown butter truffle vinaigrette, and the truffle pasta to order now is the Tajarin con Tartufo with beurre monté, black truffle, and parmigiano. It's also known for Pommes Soufflés and Beef Wellington. It's precise without being fussy, the kind of place that makes a regular occasion feel like an event.
What it deserves: Two Michelin Stars (prediction, retained from the guide)
Bouquet
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Across the river in Covington's Mainstrasse district, chef Stephen Williams cooks a seasonal menu built on relationships with more than fifty local farmers, and the farms are named dish by dish on the menu. The move is the build-your-own four-course tasting menu for $70, with wine pairings for $40 more, and the room still feels like an extension of someone's home rather than a stage set.
What it deserves: Michelin Star
Brown Bear Bakery
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Owner Blair Fornshell runs this tiny Over-the-Rhine bakery on a simple formula: a seasonal pastry case, hours that end at sellout, and a line out the door most mornings. The menu turns with the seasons, so the smart move is to go early, order what's on the board, and not over-plan it.
What it deserves: Bib Gourmand
Cafe Mochiko
$$ | MAP | WEBSITE | INSTAGRAM
This East Walnut Hills café from Elaine Uykimpang Bentz and chef Erik Bentz works both sides of the counter: a bakery turning out pastries like the ube halaya croissant and the everything cream cheese bao, and a kitchen whose Cincinnati chili ramen — a tantanmen-inspired bowl with a Mediterranean-spiced chili broth — returns as a recurring special, not a standing item. Bon Appétit named the restaurant one of America's 50 best in 2022, and the room has worn the attention lightly ever since.
What it deserves: Bib Gourmand
Gwynne
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The Fidelity Hotel's dining room, inside the restored 1913 Gwynne Building at 6th and Main, is the city's most consequential new opening of the year. The kitchen cooks American regional food with Ohio River Valley ingredients: fried green tomatoes with native Appalachian sassafras cream, pork belly with sweet corn and maque choux, and lobster agnolotti, with a prime rib and a baked Alaska anchoring the occasion end of the menu.
What it deserves: Michelin Star
Losanti
$$$$ | MAP | WEBSITE | INSTAGRAM
Chef Anthony Sitek's Over-the-Rhine room splits the difference between a steakhouse and a pasta joint and doesn't apologize for either half. The pastas are rolled daily in-house, the prime ribeye is priced by the ounce, and the Steak and Frites — prime terres with golden raisin chimichurri and parmesan fries — is the order if you can't decide between the two sides of the menu.
What it deserves: Michelin Recommended
Mita's
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Founder and owner-chef José Salazar's downtown restaurant, named for his Colombian grandmother, serves Spanish and Latin flavors as tapas and ceviche in a room that stays lively late. The menu runs from lamb fritters with mint chimichurri to tres leches for dessert, and it holds up as well for a couple of small plates as for a full table of them.
What it deserves: Michelin Recommended
Nicola's Ristorante
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Chef Cristian Pietoso's Italian dining room has spent 30 years on the same Sycamore Street corner — a planned move to the old Pigall's space was announced, then called off, and the restaurant stayed put. It's still the room for birthdays and anniversaries, built on housemade pastas and slow-braised meats, including braised lamb spaghetti alla chitarra and a Monday tagliatelle Bolognese.
What it deserves: Michelin Star
Pepp & Dolores
$$$ | MAP | WEBSITE | INSTAGRAM
Thunderdome's Over-the-Rhine trattoria makes all of its pasta in-house, and the menu reads like a greatest-hits list: the Sunday Sauce with spaghetti, Nonna's red sauce, a veal and pork meatball, and braised pork shoulder; Limone with Meyer lemon and ricotta; Spicy Vodka with Calabrian chili; and a lobster creste di gallo with saffron cream. Portions are made for sharing, which is the right way to approach a table here.
What it deserves: Michelin Recommended
Sotto
$$$$ | MAP | WEBSITE | INSTAGRAM
David Falk's subterranean downtown Italian restaurant is as moody as it is satisfying, and the kitchen, led by executive chef Jacob 'Woody' Wood, keeps it that way. The tonnarelli cacio e pepe is the classic to order, and the Short Rib Cappellacci has been a staple since the day Sotto opened. Dim light, brick walls, close tables — the whole thing still feels like you've been let in on a secret.
What it deserves: Michelin Star
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