2023 was a year well-eaten for Columbus foodies. Here are my favorites
I didn’t start covering the Columbus dining scene until September, but my iPhone has plenty of evidence of a year well-eaten.
I’m one of those people — the kind who takes pictures of food that is beautiful or delicious or delightfully weird. Even before it became my job, I'd take cellphone snaps for no one in particular. And even after beginning my latest weight-loss journey in April (doing OK but, you know, the holidays...), it seems I didn’t deprive myself of the occasional not-low-fat or not-low-carb treat.
Putting together my list of favorites makes me realize a few things.
First, my tastes are pretty middlebrow. I’ve enjoyed dinners at some of the really good restaurants in central Ohio, but I also worry that the folks at the McDonald’s drive-thru on North Hamilton Road think I eat too many Egg McMuffins. I think it’s awesome that ballparks and sports arenas serve sushi and prime rib these days, but most of the time (see an exception below) I’ll get a hot dog.
Second, I eat a lot of Asian and Italian food. Restaurants that specialize in Vietnamese, Thai, Filipino, Chinese, Korean, Japanese — did I miss any? — cook way better than I can. Italian chefs, too, but I always want to see if they can cook better than my mother used to.
Third, my New Year’s resolution is to try more new dishes at new places, both for my own benefit and to let you know about them. So, I welcome suggestions. My email is at the bottom; let me know about new restaurants and new dishes to check out in 2024.
Here are my 10 favorite dishes of 2023:
Lumache Neri at Bar Cicchetti
Bar Cicchetti probably gets overlooked with all the high-end Italian restaurants that have opened recently, but its food doesn’t take a back seat to anyone’s. Celebrity chef Fabio Viviani opened the restaurant in 2022 at the Westin Great Southern Columbus hotel, 310 S. High St., Downtown.
Lumache is the Italian word for snail, and lumache pasta are shaped like a snail shell. Bar Cicchetti’s version is made black with squid ink, which just deepens the seafood flavor of its Lumache Neri dish. Of course, shrimp, clams, mussels and lobster roe butter help, too. Blistered heirloom tomatoes add some zip.
Bucatini With Green Olives and Crispy Capers at Speck Italian Eatery
This was a special in November, so I fear it’s no longer on the menu. The dish was salty in a good way, not just from the olives and fried capers but also from a bit of an Italian fish sauce called colatura. It’s sold at Quinci Emporium in the Short North, so I’m going to try to recreate this dish at home.
Speck, 89 N. High St., made the move from Delaware to Downtown early in 2023.
Review: Team behind Veritas excels with stellar menu at Speck Italian Eatery
Fried Pickles and Peppers at Boston’s
They soothed me after more than one Blue Jackets game this fall. I’m not the greatest fan of fried pickles — the breading is often way too thick — but the addition of fried pepperoncini rings and a thinner batter make this work.
Boston’s, at 191 W. Nationwide Blvd., is one of the few places south of Nationwide Arena that stays open after games and doesn’t make you feel like they were about to turn out the lights when you had the nerve to walk through the door.
Stuffed Crab Claws at Ty Ginger Asian Bistro
Their dim sum isn’t served from carts, which takes a tiny bit away from the experience, but the food more than makes up for it.
Many of the dim sum dishes at Ty Ginger Asian Bistro, 5689 Woerner Temple Road in Dublin, are worth ordering — we usually get the siu mai, steamed bean curd rolls, gai bao (chicken buns) and stuffed eggplant — but the Stuffed Crab Claw is the best.
It’s actually a big ball of ground shrimp wrapped around a crab claw and fried. A close second: Clams in Black Bean Sauce.
Rock Shrimp Tempura at Stories on High
It's the sauce that does it. Well, the sweet, lightly battered rock shrimp are great, too, but the thin, spicy gochujang bloody mary sauce is totally different than the sticky, sweet chili glazes served often with such dishes.
And the views from the 28th-floor bar at the top of the Hilton Columbus Downtown make everything more enjoyable.
Ube Soft-Serve at Meshikou Chikin
Ube, a purple yam from the Philippines, became a popular flavor this year because of its sweet, earthy flavor and lavender to deep-purple color.
Meshikou Chikin, 1504 Bethel Road on the Northwest Side, added soft-serve ice cream to its fried chicken menu over the summer, and its ube flavor proved to be the most popular. It’s also a more authentic ube flavor than the purple but indistinguishably sweet taste in some other places’ treats.
Sadly, Meshikou Chikin is closing its doors on Dec. 31, although its sister restaurant, Meshikou, will stay open next door. We were told that the soft-serve machine is shutting down as well.
Charcuterie Board at Nationwide Arena
Baseball and hot dogs (and Bertman’s mustard in Cleveland) will always go together, but I have a new concession stand favorite for hockey games.
Nationwide Arena’s (200 W. Nationwide Blvd.) charcuterie board — charcuterie plastic clamshell, actually — has all the requirements: meats and cheeses, crackers, nuts and dried fruits. But the thick slices of prosciutto and chunks of hot capicola give those two charcuterie mainstays an entirely new dimension.
Costillas at Barcelona
We shot my introductory video at Barcelona, 263 E. Whittier St. in German Village, back in September because it has long been my place to celebrate special occasions and take guests from out of town.
More: Veteran reporter Bob Vitale is excited to tackle the Columbus dining scene
My partner and I had dinner there that day, and two things happened. First, I dropped the first bite of food on my shirt since becoming the dining reporter. Second, we ordered Costillas for the first time and found a new go-to dish at our go-to restaurant.
It’s a rich one: braised beef short ribs served with a blue-cheese cream sauce, mushrooms, chimichurri and cilantro.
Roasted Pork Sandwich at Wario’s
I get it. It’s hard to pass up shaved rib-eye, grilled onions and house-made cheese whiz. But if Wario’s Beef and Pork has always had you at beef, keep reading.
Wario’s, 111 W. Nationwide Blvd., with a Clintonville expansion coming as soon as mid-January, serves pork sandwiches, too. The roasted pork uses shoulder that’s cured and roasted with rosemary and fennel, and includes broccoli rabe and picante provolone. It’s served with pork jus.
More: Wario's Beef and Pork will open a second sandwich restaurant in Clintonville
PBJ Buckeye at The Buckeye Lady
Dessert!
Alicia Hindman’s mother deserves thanks for telling her daughter to toss a few M&Ms in the batter for the peanut-butter buckeyes she began selling during the pandemic to raise money for friends who had lost their jobs.
She has since expanded that idea into 80 different types of stuffed buckeyes that she sells throughout the year at The Buckeye Lady, 4493 N. High St. in Clintonville.
I’ve tried a few and like them all, including the bourbon, salted caramel pretzel and the one that launched the whole business, M&M. But the best, for me, is the most obvious addition for a peanut-butter candy: jelly.
More: Columbus author dips into the history of Ohio's famous buckeye candy with new book
This article originally appeared on The Columbus Dispatch: My favorite foods of 2023 in Columbus
