As we're in the holiday spirit and heading to 2025, it’s an apropos time to embrace what’s new and consider new restaurants to try. Here’s an eclectic roundup of three restaurants to consider: a breakfast bastion, a retro-styled, dinner-only eatery, and another entry into Cincinnati’s strong milieu of sushi establishments.
Biscuit Love
Two Cincinnati restaurant phenomena are baffling: the dearth of quality, deep-dish
pizza, given Cincinnati’s proximity to Chicago, and the challenge to find a good biscuit considering I-75 puts our region at the South’s doorstep. The first could possibly be the subject for a future rant. Focusing on the latter, Boomtown Biscuits & Whisky’s departure from OTR was lamentable, but thankfully a boutique Southern breakfast chain opted to establish a toehold north of the Ohio River.
Biscuit Love, which was founded in Franklin, Tenn., operates two Franklin locations, two more in downtown Nashville, and another in suburban Birmingham (Vestavia Hills – shout out to Jason Isbell’s namesake song). Cincinnati resident Ashley Harris, who formerly served as a manager at a Nashville location, opened the Cincinnati restaurant on October 25.
“We love the vibe and the revitalization going on in OTR, and 3CDC has been a great partner in getting established,” she said. “We’ve been able to hire staff who live just blocks away from the restaurant, and we’re excited to find opportunities to get involved in the community.”
Biscuit Love offers Music City-tinged biscuit-sandwich staples, such as East Nasty, with fried chicken cheese and sausage gravy, and the Princess, with hot chicken, honey, pickles, and mustard, as well as grits bowls (including chili grits) and waffles, plus an expansive coffee menu and familiar brunch cocktails such as mimosas and bloody marys.
Nestled on Pleasant Street at the nexus of Washington Park and Findlay Market, Biscuit Love sits amid a series of colorful murals that serve as a catalyst to a vibrant
neighborhood.
Biscuit Love’s well-lit, cheerful ambiance reflects and enhances this neighborhood vibe. Its creative director, Becca Wildsmith, partnered with INDIO, a Cincinnati-based architecture and design firm, to develop décor that integrates the restaurant’s Nashville roots and adopted Queen City environs. For Southern-inspired eateries, a warm welcome is as important as tasty, hearty food, and Biscuit Love delivers.
Green Line
Named after the streetcar line that once traversed Fort Thomas,
Green Line Kitchen & Cocktails on North Fort Thomas Avenue was unveiled in February by Cafeo Restaurant Group, which launched Somm Wine Bar + Kitchen in Price Hill and Newport’s Press Coffee. Down the block, Fort Thomas Coffee provides a morning and afternoon hangout, and Green Line delivers an inviting evening complement.
The logo and its typography fairly evoke the Mad Men era of the three-martini lunch, and the Green Line menu leans into both traditional staples (prime rib, pastas Bolognese and Puttanesca, fish and chips, filet mignon) and popular contemporary dishes like poutines, charcuterie boards, and mussels in white wine. In Cafeo’s press release announcing The Green Line, Tony Cafeo extolled it as “a dining experience that is both refreshingly original and deeply satisfying, featuring a commitment to quality and innovation in every dish.”
The drink menu provides imaginative spins on traditional classics, such as
chocolate, espresso, and caramel martinis, a Kentucky Mule (bourbon, ginger beer, and lime juice, a sweet twist on its Kentucky roots), and a feisty Angry Bird Margarita with hot cherry peppers. Dessert provides comfort calories: carrot cake, chocolate layer cake, rotating cheesecake offerings, and lemon ricotta doughnuts.
Stopping in for a Sunday brunch plate of shakshuka (a Middle Eastern/North African dish with veggies, poached egg, and harissa) and a biscuit was a very enjoyable meal.
Okini
A generation ago, sushi joints were scarce in Cincinnati. To those familiar with the
excellent nigiri available on the West Coast, that era’s offerings were seen as substandard. Since then, sushi purveyors have stepped up their game by orders of magnitude, to the degree that its proliferation citywide has made Cincinnati’s denizens discerning in the California and avocado rolls they consumed.
The space at 3501 Erie Ave. on the eastern edge of Hyde Park has housed several
purveyors of sushi and East Asian cuisine, having previously been Sushinati and 3501 Seoul. The latest incarnation,
Okini (an expression of gratitude in Japanese), sports a playful brand that leans into Japanese culture. It opened in October with a smiling anime tiger as its marketing focal point (according to lore, tigers are a harbinger of good luck).
However, cute characters don’t translate to returning customers if dishes don’t dazzle. Okini’s menu provides both the security-blanket standards for those new to sushi or with more conservative tastes: California rolls, spicy tuna rolls, and avocado rolls are there for you. But for those who want to explore new gastronomic ground, Okini offers such tantalizing options as sushi and sashimi sea urchins, mackerel, smelt with roe and sea eel. Yakitori (skewers) selections include chicken, duck breast, pork belly, and enoki (tendril-stalked mushroom).
Troy Pan, Okini’s manager with a decade of food service experience, noted that yakitori has been a popular menu staple, and, with the onset of cold weather, ramen dishes have gained in popularity.
Vegetarians will feel welcome thanks to such options as Hawaii maki rolls, with mango, pineapple, cucumber, fried banana and coconut cream sauce, and a vegetable combo that includes seaweed and avocado gunkan sushi, inari sushi and a vegetable roll.