Columbus Monthly / October 2010 / World-class cuisine

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World-class cuisine

These food establishments are not only the best the city has to offer, but they also can compete at the highest level.

A few decades ago, Columbus was playing minor league ball as a food town. Oh, sure, there were a few places where you could get a good meal, but the offerings were pretty much white bread and unmemorable. Progress came in fits and starts, usually in conjunction with the health of the economy, but progress did come.

In the last 20 years particularly, we’ve come very far. Too bad the guys on the Travel Channel’s “No Reservations” didn’t spend more time in Columbus sampling the food scene before dumping on the city in a July episode as little more than a haven for Applebee’s. If they had, they would have found a broad, deep, diverse and strong culinary happening.

In fact, we hereby declare that when it comes to eating experiences, Columbus is finally a major league town. Our average is damn good, with scores of satisfying restaurants and great shops offering essentially anything you could wish for. Our claim today is that we can field a truly big league team, with players that could compete anywhere, and at least three that we’re convinced would make any region’s all-star team.

So, now introducing our very best lineup. . . .

Jeni’s Splendid Ice Creams

No one matches the balance and purity of flavor

There are ice cream places all over the world in which such nontraditional ingredients as herbs or cheese or wine find their way into the sweet confection. There are many, too, where the ingredients used are top-notch and the flavors bold and exciting. Heck, Denise’s Homemade Ice Cream in Clintonville does a very good job.

In the rapidly expanding world of artisan ice cream, however, no one quite gets the balance and the purity of flavor that Jeni’s extracts from its superior (and mostly local) ingredients. Take the simple backyard mint. Even really good mint ice cream can have a bit of that medicinal/cough drop flavor. Jeni’s version is a simple vanilla base and just enough fresh mint oil to taste and smell like a summer evening walk in a patch of mint. Heavenly. This is not to say the flavors are necessarily restrained; where intensity is called for—the dark chocolate, for instance—it is flavor in force.

Jeni Britton Bauer and her husband, Charly Bauer, are the brains and palates behind this place with a growing number of locations, and if you visit regularly, as you should, you will find that those palates have quite a range: from a lovely honey vanilla to a soft and pleasing strawberry buttermilk to wildberry lavender to roasted cherry and goat cheese. Here are two you simply can’t miss: the Riesling poached pear sorbet, which resounds with the flavor of wine and fruit, and the salty caramel, a perfect example of the balance that makes these ice creams so special.

Kihachi

The city’s best restaurant

The Travel Channel’s Anthony Bourdain did find more than the numerous Applebee’s in Columbus. He also stopped by Kihachi near Dublin and described his experience as one of the “best meals of my life.” He wasn’t engaging in hyperbole.

This gem, opened some 14 years ago by chef Mike Kimura and his wife, Toshiko, would be a star in any city, Tokyo included. The food is hard to describe. It is authentic Japanese, but still highly inventive. It is elegantly simple, yet layered with tastes and textures. It is always beautiful to look at and words really can’t do it justice. We have eaten a broth made of sea eel served in a small teapot with roasted ginkgo nuts, fragrant matsutake (pine) mushrooms, poached shrimp and a tiny wedge of a lime of unknown provenance—the addition of which made the already stunning soup soar. We’ve had sashimi like no other served with freshly grated wasabi: neck of bluefin tuna, like cool oceanic butter, and whole Japanese horse mackerel expertly carved before your eyes to little briny, sweet slices.

I cannot get out of my head one fall’s offering of perfectly grilled seafood—fish, crab, shrimp, clams—seasoned or marinated to amplify the simple goodness of the thing itself. Then it was fried tempura style and presented atop a shallow bowl of hot pebbles scattered with pine needles and accompanied by two fall-red maple leaves. The rising scent was the essence of the ocean and the season. How can you beat that?

The regular menu is enticing, with the freshest sashimi and such beauties as sake-marinated duck breast. But know that this is not a sushi bar; California rolls aren’t done here. And realize that it will be a leisurely meal as virtually everything is done to order and perfection takes time. The best thing to do is make reservations some days ahead and ask for the Chef’s Choice dinner, specifying the number of courses. Six is fine, nine is better; servings are modestly sized.

We’ve called Kihachi the city’s best restaurant for several years, and it is finally getting the widespread acclaim it deserves.

Pistacia Vera

Treats so delicious you just might cry with joy

Stepping into Pistacia Vera in German Village is like walking into Tiffany’s in Manhattan, but the beautiful jewels are for eating, not wearing. And to describe Pistacia Vera as a pastry shop is like calling Van Gogh a painter—true, but hardly sufficient.

Everything we’ve eaten here (and that’s just about all they make) has been perfect or nearly so. (We’ve sampled pastries from New York to Paris to Rome to Vienna to Budapest; our pastry creds are solid.) The croissants are divinely flaky and buttery, the cookies will make you rethink what a cookie should be, the cubes of fruit pâte explode with bright flavors and the little orange/dark chocolate tart might make you cry it’s so delicious.

Now, desserts and pastries are a very personal thing, and so if we say we crave the whole wheat crust apple tart or perhaps the slightly cardamom-scented crisp palmier, you might reasonably disagree. But unless your diet prohibits it, no reasonable person could fail to find something (or several things) they just love.

All this goodness is the result of serious dedication to the craft by chef Spencer Budros and his team, and the hard work and insight of his sister, Anne Fletcher, who runs the front of the house. By the way, the coffee is excellent.

Alana’s

Verve, creativity and risk-taking

Chef-owner Alana Shock already is a legend. The food and wine experience offered at Alana’s on High Street just north of Ohio State would receive applause anywhere—it made Food & Wine magazine’s list of “America’s 50 Most Amazing Wine Experiences” in 2006.

Sure, the menu posts the price of excessive whining ($35 when last we looked), but no one whines about the food. Or the wine, presided over by her husband, Kevin Bertschi. There are, we acknowledge, occasional slips pardonable as a byproduct of that wild imagination and an incredibly small kitchen. But we treasure her verve, creativity, willingness to take chances and relentless attention to what is currently fresh, local and interesting.

Curds and Whey

A cheese shop supreme

Mike “The Cheese Guy” Kast, proprietor of Curds and Whey at the North Market, sure knows his stuff. His cheese selection is wide and deep (not to mention top-flight olive oils, vinegars and other condiments, along with crackers, olives, caviar, truffles, sea salts and many other goodies).

It’s only by dint of archaic health codes and, of course, the vagaries of the market (how much cheese will sell and when?) that the wonderful offerings are kept refrigerated and in plastic wrap. Cheese is a living, breathing thing and should not be so imprisoned. Nonetheless, this cheese shop is as good as you’ll find in most major cities.

Requests for tastes are honored here, but be careful—you’ll end up with twice as much cheese as you came for.

New Asian Supermarket

An abundance of goodness

The atmosphere at New Asian Supermarket on Rt. 161 near Dublin is perhaps a little dingy. But it is one of the most accomplished Asian, particularly Chinese, food markets we have seen, complete with enter/exit signs in Chinese.

There is an astonishing array of stuff to tempt you into unknown territory. The case for frozen foods takes up a whole wall and includes every kind of dumpling you’ve ever heard of, as well as leek-filled pancakes, milkfish balls and goodness-knows-what-else. There are rice bowls, tea cups, steamers and woks, as well as 50-pound sacks of jasmine rice (and every other sort you’d want). The meat section is where you need to go for pig bones and pork belly, and all manner of meats used in Chinese, Japanese and Thai cooking. There are tanks of live fish, crab and lobster. Vegetables fill a small room all for themselves, including a zillion kinds of Asian cabbagey greens, with a number of exotic-looking items we’ve never seen, some of them quite lovely.

This market could be anywhere on the planet and be popular.

Omega Artisan Baking

Knowing what to do with European butter

Proprietor Amy Lozier told us all we needed to know about Omega, the wonderful bakery in the North Market: “I use only European butter in the croissants.”

European butters taste better, in part because of lower water content. But lower water content makes a good croissant distinctly harder to make, because it’s the steam rising in between the layers of flour that make it flaky. Amy, we approve.

And we surely approve, and love to eat, everything else here, including the distinctive rustic baguette (one of the most delicious, chewiest breads on the planet), wonderful focaccia, earthy whole wheat breads, puffy challah—not to mention the divine cinnamon rolls, scones, muffins and more. There are very tempting desserts, too, all made with the same care and high-quality ingredients as the breads and pastries.

The Refectory

Combining the best of old and new French cooking

The days of French high cooking, with its precise rules and demanding recipes, are largely gone. The strictures of haute cuisine have been replaced by a myriad of methods and styles and a focus on the quality of ingredients, their provenance and the season.

The Refectory, entering its 35th year on the northwest side, many with stylish owner Kamal Boulos and chef Richard Blondin at the helm, is an amalgam of the French cooking of old and serious concern for the season and ingredients. Service and presentation are superb and plates are lovely, down to the smallest details: tiny cubes of peeled and seeded tomato just for a spot of color, a leaf of chervil rather than parsley, a perfectly cooked hard-boiled egg quarter.

The old sauces such as béarnaise or choron (hollandaise pinked with tomato) are here, done to perfection, and so are the new flavorings—infused oils, herb purées, flavorful broths. The selection of wines is first-rate by any standard; we wish we could have sampled some of the $1,000 and more bottles, but were struck by the excellence of the inexpensive selections.

Dinner at the Refectory is like listening to a Hoagy Carmichael standard: It is as comforting as an old friend and as exciting as a new one, all at the same time.

Rigsby’s Kitchen

Consistently excellent

If you live in Columbus and have not eaten at Rigsby’s, what’s wrong with you? The place in the Short North owned by Kent Rigsby, perhaps the best chef in the city, save for Kimura of Kihachi, is invariably excellent, and the bar is for our money the best in town. (Check out the tasting menu with your martini.) The atmosphere, meanwhile, is elegant and stylish without feeling pretentious.

Some dishes change with the seasons and others have earned a hard-won place as perennials, such as the amazing salad of endive, watercress, apple, walnut and gorgonzola (ubiquitous these days elsewhere, but served here 20 years ago) or pasta Natasha (capellini in vodka cream with smoked salmon, onions and capers).

Rigsby’s is not an Italian restaurant per se. But when we’re asked to name the best Italian restaurant in town, we often tell people to go to Rigsby’s and order Italian.

John Champlin and John Marshall are restaurant reviewers for Columbus Monthly.

• ON THE BENCH •

Not only can Columbus field a great team, there are a bunch of fine players in the dugout.

• Chef Tom Smith at the Worthington Inn turns out terrific meals, as does chef Brian Pawlak at DeepWood in the Short North.

• The Short North also is home to L’Antibes, where chef Matthew Litzinger does excellent contemporary French cuisine with great style.

• The North Market is a great place for all kinds of major league food, including two standouts: North Market Poultry and Game, which even has foie gras and wild boar sausage, and Hania’s Olde World Cuisine, an authentic Polish food stand where the stuffed cabbage or pirogues will make you smile.

• Katzinger’s in German Village is an institution and can be counted on for great overstuffed sandwiches, but we really love the prepared foods, along with the top-line gourmet products.

• Lávash Café in Clintonville has Middle Eastern food as good as any we’ve had anywhere.

• In the far north end on Rt. 161 is the unassuming Udipi Cafe, where southern Indian vegetarian cooking is beautifully done.

• Third and Hollywood (the Northstar Café folks’ fine dining establishment in Grandview) easily won four stars in its first months of opening, and it has only gotten better.

• City Barbeque serves smoked meats as good as any barbecue joint in the country, as well as wonderful side dishes.