Cincinnati Magazine - June 2020 Edition

DOES TQL SHIP TIL THEY DROP?

by Jim DeBrosse

VICTORIA WULSIN’S KENYA CONNECTION

by Bob Driehaus

OVER THE RAINBOW Ginger LeSnapps and Alex Cameron, photographed at Smale Riverfront Park on April 21, 2020.

FIVE YEARS SINCE MARRIAGE EQUALIT Y:

What’s next for our LGBTQ community?

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A Message From Jim Downton Executive Director, Sharonville Convention Center

Due to the continued health risks associated with COVID-19, the Sharonville Convention Center, in partnership with the City of Sharonville and Hamilton County Public Health, has postponed events until further notice.

We are committed to prioritizing the health and safety of our clients, attendees and staff, and partners in the community. We will continue to monitor the developments of the Coronavirus Disease and follow the recommended guidelines from the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and Governor Mike DeWine.

We understand the devastating impact the Coronavirus pandemic is having on the meetings and events industry and the sacrifices our customers are making to keep everyone safe. Due to the forced cancellations and postponements of our events, we recognize there is a lot of uncertainty. However, we want to assure you that we are here for you and our community partners during this trying time.

The Sharonville Convention Center is here to help. We are dedicated to assisting you as you look to select new dates and reschedule or book your event. We’re flexible and will work with you to navigate the next steps.

When the time comes, the Sharonville Convention Center will be ready to welcome you back. We are looking forward to reopening and to the expansion of the Center next year.

We look forward to being a strong and reliable destination partner during your future meetings and events in Sharonville.

And, most of all, we look forward to seeing you return. To stay up to date, visit www.sharonvilleconventioncenter.com.

Contact Lisa Hodge to reserve your date 513.326.6465 • lhodge@cityofsharonville.com 11355 Chester Road • Cincinnati, OH 45246 www.sharonvilleconventioncenter.com

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FORCES OF CHANGE Five years after Obergefell v. Hodges, there’s still work to be done in the field of LGBTQ rights. We introduce Jim Obergefell to the next generation of change-makers and profile 20 locals whose work advances their community.

ALL OF US TOGETHER P. 48

After a fellowship year at the University of Nairobi, Victoria Wulsin fell in love with Kenya. She spent years working in public health in the U.S. and Africa, and founded SOTENI, an organization devoted to fighting HIV/ AIDS. She’s succeeded by empowering Kenyans to help themselves.

BY BOB DRIEHAUS

WORKING TO LIVE OR LIVING TO WORK? P. 52

Total Quality Logistics is a behemoth in the logistics industry. The company had more than $3 billion in revenue in 2018, and it’s doubling the size of its Clermont County headquarters. But thousands of former employees in a class action lawsuit claim the company owes them millions in overtime pay for their contributions.

BY JIM DEBROSSE

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Meet the two new women on Cincinnati City Council Darnell Benjamin on what makes a good Cincy Fringe Festival show

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24 / REAL ESTATE An Indian Hill estate

26 / STOREFRONT Puzzle Pieces supports people with autism

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28 / PERSON OF INTEREST How Rayshun Holt grew up and found his purpose

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96 / CINCY OBSCURA An almost-lost Norwood fire engine and its station

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LISTEN TO LEARN MORE On this month’s episode, we dive behind the scenes of our Pride package, plus other stories and events we’re excited to share. Subscribe and listen on iTunes, Spotify, and Stitcher.

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T H E R E ’ S B E E N A R U S H T O C E L E B R AT E “ H E R O E S ” D U R I N G T H I S PA N D E M I C period, and to honor their roles in trying to keep us all healthy, safe, and sane.

Our admiration for those on the response’s front line—doctors, nurses, police, teachers—remains strong, but we’ve also found new targets of affection. Grocery store clerks, bus drivers, mail carriers, and restaurant kitchen staff were deemed “essential workers” by the powers that be and called “heroes” by the rest of us.

I doubt that many of them really felt like heroes showing up each day to work.

Real heroes never admit to being heroes. They just do what needs to be done, crisis or not, while usually downplaying or ignoring the consequences.

A lot of people consider Jim Obergefell a hero. His name graced a lawsuit that made its way to the U.S. Supreme Court, and the decision in his favor five years ago in essence legalized same-sex marriage across the U.S. Those of us who aren’t attorneys or history majors can name just a few key Supreme Court rulings that really mattered: Plessy v. Ferguson, Brown v.

Board of Education of Topeka, Roe v. Wade. Future generations will likely include Obergefell v. Hodges in the same conversation.

And yet Homer Plessy, Oliver Brown, Norma McCorvey (“Jane Roe” in court documents), and Jim Obergefell were ordinary Americans seeking equal opportunities and equal treatment. Like our current cast of heroes, they were real people dealing with a problem they refused to avoid.

As we planned to celebrate Pride in this month’s issue (see page 34), I reached out to Obergefell to participate in a roundtable discussion with local high school LGBTQ activists. I was interested to hear their reactions to his Supreme Court experience, and his thoughts on the challenges young people are trying to overcome today. Obergefell was open, curious, and humble in our conversation. The very premise of his lawsuit—seeking the legal right to be named spouse on his husband’s death certificate—was and remains bittersweet. He regrets only the necessity of the fight, not the effort or sacrifice to see it through. Much like our front-line heroes today.

J O H N F OX

EDITOR-IN-CHIEF

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Longtime Cincinnati Magazine writer and New York Times contributor Bob Driehaus had never tackled a story as ambitious as the HIV/AIDS crisis in Africa. But in “All of Us Together” (page 48), he embraced the opportunity to highlight the work of nonprofit SOTENI International to combat the disease and the stigma surrounding it. “I gained a new appreciation for the culture of Kenya,” he says, “and the many wonderful people dedicated to helping less fortunate folks.”

JACLYN YOUHANA GARVER “When I realized that Cincinnati had a store for kids with sensory sensitivities, I thought that was pretty awesome,” says Jaclyn Youhana Garver. She’s talking about Puzzle Pieces, created by Holly Young and shaped specifically to the needs of people on the autism spectrum and those with other sensory issues.

Like Young’s son, Garver’s younger brother is on the autism spectrum.

GLUEKIT Kathleen and Christopher Sleboda are the minds behind image-making team Gluekit. The duo specializes in photo illustration and collaging together photographs and graphic forms to create new compositions, with influences from Andy Warhol, Tandori Yokoo, and more. Asked about their approach to illustration, they say it “draws on both historic approaches to image-making and contemporary ways of creating texture and form.” Gluekit work has appeared in publications such as Rolling Stone, The New York Times, and Time.

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A NEW DAY Betsy Sundermann and Jan-Michele Kearney offer fresh perspectives—and cooperation—on Cincinnati City Council. L I S A M U R T H A A

LMOST LOST IN THE DAILY DELUGE

of coronavirus news is the fact that Cincinnati has two newly appointed councilmembers.

Republican Betsy Sundermann (right) was sworn in March 4 to replace Amy Murray, and Democrat Jan-Michele Kearney (left) was sworn in March 18 to replace Tamaya Dennard. Both were hand-picked by other councilmembers and both have law degrees, but they came to council via different career paths: Sundermann was a Hamilton County probate court magistrate; Kearney was cofounder of Sesh Communications and publisher of The Cincinnati Herald. The pandemic forced both to “hit the ground running,” says Kearney.

Sundermann has also worked for the Hamilton County Prosecutor’s office and Hamilton County Public Defender’s office, and is an Ursuline, DePauw University, and UC Law school grad. She didn’t even know Murray was leaving council to work for the Department of Defense when she started getting phone calls asking if she was taking her place. Sundermann was initially hesitant, but, after consulting with Republican party officials and her husband, David Laing—a registered Democrat and assistant city solicitor—she realized the job was a good CONTINUED ON P. 18

ILLUSTR ATIO N BY JA S O N FO R D

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DISPATCH

MUSIC

SUDAN ARCHIVES, INTERRUPTED

The violinist, singer, and beat-maker known as Sudan Archives—born Brittney Parks in Cincinnati—was on tour to support her debut album, Athena, just as COVID-19 put live music in suspended animation. It took out what would have been her big return to Cincinnati this spring, The National’s Homecoming festival, now pushed to 2021. “People always want to put me in an R&B or soul box,” she says. “I’m really a folk artist at heart.” — J A S O N C O H E N 1 8 C I N C I N N AT I M A G A Z I N E . C O M J U N E 2 0 2 0

SPEAK EASY

PLAYING ON THE FRINGES X This year’s Cincy Fringe Festival will be even more different than usual, with all performances and art installations streaming online from May 29 to June 13 at cincyfringe.com.

Festival producers again enlisted local actor, director, and teacher Darnell Benjamin as a juror, a role he’s served since 2010. Here’s what he looks for in a Fringe performance and the themes he’s already anticipating next year.

How do you rate Fringe applications? The application form is good about making sure that we’re not saying something is necessarily good or bad art, but instead it’s about, “Does it speak to you? Do you see this being unique and applicable to where we are in Cincinnati?”

I love those kinds of questions, because it keeps you from judging whether or not you approve of the content. I can’t tell you how many things I’ve seen where it’s like, If I read another play about President Trump, I’m gonna kill myself. I’m expecting, of course, that next year’s Fringe will have a ton of coronavirus plays and pieces about isolation.

What do you look for in an entry? I love the fun proposals—let’s say it’s a clown show, and they decide to write their proposal from that perspective. My favorite entries are the new ones, when it’s their first time applying to a Fringe festival. There’s nothing more inspiring than to have someone who’s taking a risk and trying something different.

In addition to attending Fringe online, how can people support local artists at this time? There are tons of artists, large and small scale, creating amazing work on social media.

Follow their work.

Venmo them. Reach out to individual artists whose work you enjoy.

Commission them for projects, if you can.

Before the stay-athome order, what were you working on? I was acting in Pride & Prejudice at the Cincinnati Shakespeare Company, and I was also getting ready to direct The Agitators at Falcon Theatre in Newport. I had a lot of things lined up, and one by one they all started dropping off. — J A C L Y N YOUHANA GARVER READ A LONGER INTERVIEW WITH DARNELL AT CINCINNATI MAGAZINE.COM

PH OTO G R A PHS BY J O N ATH A N W I LLI S

ILLUSTR ATIO N BY Z AC H A RY G H A D E RI / PH OTO G R A PH BY A LE X B L AC K

fit “and went for it,” she says. physician Luther Lemon.

Kearney is a Walnut Hills, Both plan on running for full counDartmouth, and Harvard Law grad who, cil terms in 2021. In a non-coronavirus unlike Sundermann, was warned about world, they’ll be focused on different being nominated for an open seat. (Denpriorities. Kearney wants to make sure nard, facing federal corruption charges, citywide development—which she says resigned March 2.) Even so, says Kearshe’s “all for”—includes ample affordney, “I have no political aspirations. I’m able housing and job opportunities. always behind the scenes, so I started Sundermann wants to focus on law and public safety, especially expanding police to say no.” But she heard a Joel Osteen use of ShotSpotter technology to locate podcast about discerning God’s will gunfire, and on advocating for Cincinin which Osteen asked, “When you’re called, are you listening? Are you ready?” nati’s west side (she’s the only current The following day, she read a councilmember living there).

But the vast majority passage in Stacey Abrams’s of both members’ work to Lead From the Outside, urging readers to “be daring” and “If Governing in a Pandemic date has centered on helping city residents through you feel called to serve, go do The city announced a state of emergency the pandemic. Even so, Sunit.” After consulting with her the day Kearney was dermann says she’s “excited family—including husband appointed, and to have another woman on Eric, a former state senaSundermann has only tor and current CEO of the experienced council in city council,” and Kearney Greater Cincinnati Northern the time of coronavirus. calls Sundermann “a great neighbor,” noting that SunKentucky African American Chamber of Commerce—she accepted. dermann’s staffers printed out council Both women have lived most of their meeting documents for her before she lives within city limits. Both have had was settled at her City Hall office.

Signs point to such collaboration extensive involvement with volunteer and civic organizations—Kearney with as not being a fluke: During the interplaces like Avondale Community Counview for this story, Kearney noted a cil, Mt. Auburn Housing Inc., and the goal, inspired by advice from husband Cincinnati Zoo, and Sundermann with Eric, “Whether I agree with you or not, I everything from the Citizens Police want to hear what you have to say.” And during Sundermann’s speech after her Academy to Price Hill Will and Fernswearing-in, she said, “I believe in a side. And both have prominent dads: politics of working together and makSundermann’s father is retired First ing people’s lives better and politics that District Court of Appeals Judge Hal shun division, gridlock, and anger.”

Sundermann; Kearney’s tenure on the Avondale Community Council came at Only time will tell, but to both new the urging of her late father, acclaimed councilmembers we say: Amen.

Dr. Know is Jay Gilbert, weekday afternoon deejay on 92.5 FM The Fox. Submit your questions about the city’s peculiarities at drknow@cincinnati magazine.com

DR. KNOW

could have guessed that.

Congregation Beth Adam built its Loveland synagogue in 2001 and prides itself on its diverse membership. It did not, however, expect dozens of local vultures to convert to Judaism last year and take up residence on the roof. Contrary to myth, certain vultures feed on more than just dead animals and will sometimes attack. These new Beth Adam members are inflicting serious damage by mistaking parts of the building’s roof as prey.

Professional wildlife removers first tried placing effigies of seemingly dead vultures up there, because sometimes that will creep out the living ones. Didn’t work.

So they introduced the orange flappingarms balloon guy. Success! Jewish vultures apparently have zero interest in used cars.

Who knew? Drive carefully.

Q+ A

I was among many motorists on I-275 near Forest Park on the morning of June 23, 2000. Out of nowhere, a traffic helicopter crashed down onto the berm. Miraculously, nobody was hurt!

It’s been 20 years, and I was wondering what that charmed pilot and traffic reporter are up to now. —DECENT DESCENT DEAR DECENT:

I was driving past a synagogue in Loveland and couldn’t believe this: On the roof is one of those flappy wavingarm balloons, the kind you see at used car dealers. I actually turned around and looked again to make sure. Why in God’s name (pardon the expression) is that thing up there?

—HE DOESN’T LOOK JEWISH

DEAR DOESN’T:

The Doctor is always grateful to receive a question whose answer is so easy to explain. Obviously, the only reason there’s an orange flappingarms balloon on the roof of a synagogue is because it replaced the fake dead vultures, who just weren’t getting the job done. See? Anyone

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That pilot was as skillful as he was charmed, and could easily have won the season finale of So You Think You Can Crash Land Onto a Crowded Highway. Rodney Newsome was clearly ahead of his time, as this was social distancing practiced long before it was a thing. After that morning, Newsome picked himself up, dusted himself off, and to this day continues to pilot helicopters. He’s flown air care rescue for several medical organizations, and recently joined the new helicopter service at The Christ Hospital.

As for the traffic reporter, Dave Armbruster also climbed back on the horse shortly after the incident, continuing as the sub for WLW’s John Phillips, who had been vacationing that fateful week. “Yiddy,” as most people call him, still wears ILLUSTR ATIO N S BY L A R S LEE TA RU

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In the 1980s, the city named a shabby downtown alley “in honorâ€? of broadcaster Ruth Lyons. What an insult. She was a true Cincinnati treasure and deserved better. How about we just trade Ruth Lyons’s street signs with the ones on Pete Rose Way? Seriously, has there been any effort to ďŹ x this disgrace?

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every hat imaginable for the radio station, mostly as producer for Reds broadcasts. The near-tragedy didn’t leave him with a fear of helicopters, but Armbruster has found himself white-knuckling during bumpy airplane rides. “You don’t have time to be scared in a falling helicopter,� he says. “But in a plane, yeah.�

A Double Dose of Lin-Manuel Miranda

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by B O A N K Lis U L L L a M TE O ur R H Y D tha O US E

?

by Gil Kaufman

A PRODIGAL TAFT RETURNS HOME

by John Stowell

DOWNTOWN SIGNS UP TO GET GREENER

by Kevin Schultz

FC CINCINNATI’S RISE, BY THE NUMBERS

DEAR RUTHLESS:

Younger readers may be unaware of Ruth Lyons. She basically invented the daytime talk show, ďŹ rst on Cincinnati radio in the 1930s and then on TV. Her other accomplishments are vast; look her up. You will then understand the angry bafflement as to why, in 1983, City Council threw her name onto a scruffy alley between Sixth and Seventh Streets near Vine.

Council said back then that a committee was still developing a policy about naming streets for celebrities, that this conversation had already delayed renaming streets for others, and that Lyons’s declining health demanded quick action. An attempt was made in 1991 to rename a different street, and in 1993 to improve the existing one. Neither idea saw fruition.

The Committee on Names, when it ďŹ nished in 1985, decreed that no street should be renamed for a living Cincinnatian. The policy has been ignored numerous times, most famously for Pete Rose, whose Way runs by the stadium from which he is banned for life. Unofficial proposals include renaming it to Pete Rose Was or perhaps Pete Rose Why.

Ma rce lla ’s

PLUS

page 22

—RUTHLESS

TO START GETTING YOUR COPIES VISIT CINCINNATIMAGAZINE.COM J U N E 2 0 2 0 C I N C I N N AT I M A G A Z I N E . C O M 2 1

STYLE COUNSEL

Alexander Cameron OCCUPATION: Logistics manager and part-time Drag King STYLE: All his own

When did you get into drag? December 2012. I had been friends with a lot of drag queens since college, so I made a habit of going to shows. A couple of performers asked why I didn’t do it, and I was like, Well, I never really thought about it; I’ve never been on stage in any capacity like that. I already wore menswear and really liked to dance, so it kind of all went hand-in-hand. I did an open stage [at the Diamond Palace] and won. It hasn’t really stopped since. What inspires your drag style? You see a lot of suits on stage; I wear suits in real life. So it’s just my own style but embellished to fit the stage.

What’s your day-to-day style like? I tend to dress in menswear almost exclusively. It fits my body type better than any women’s clothing I’ve ever worn, but I also like the aesthetic of menswear more than ladies wear. So it translated pretty easily going into drag. How do you express yourself through drag? If you know me personally, you know that I’m painfully introverted. When I first got on stage, a lot of my friends were like, Where did this come from? It allows me to express my extroverted side.... It’s almost like a release of energy that I don’t typically express. Could the exposure for drag kings be improved? Kings are getting more recognition, but we’re still behind the eight ball. Essentially, we’re all playing with gender and even outside of the binary. [I’m] an androgynous king and into male illusion, but I know folks who identify as drag kings but are blurring the line of what is masculine and feminine.

I think as that becomes more prevalent and those folks start getting booked in shows that are traditionally just queens, people will come to an understanding of what drag can be, not just what people have said it is. — K A T I E C O B U R N

2 2 C I N C I N N AT I M A G A Z I N E . C O M J U N E 2 0 2 0

P H O T O G R A P H BY A A R O N M . CO N WAY

Character isn’t made by machine.

Every bottle of Maker’s Mark® Bourbon is still hand-dipped in our signature red wax.

Learn more at makersmark.com.

WE MAKE OUR BOURBON CAREFULLY. PLEASE ENJOY IT THAT WAY. Maker’s Mark® Kentucky Straight Bourbon Whisky, 45% Alc./Vol. ©2020 Maker’s Mark Distillery, Inc. Loretto, KY

ON THE MARKET

ADDRESS: 8325 GIVEN RD., INDIAN HILL LISTING PRICE: $3,980,000

GREEN ACRES I

N THE 1850S, BEFORE THE CIVIL WAR CARVED UP THE OHIO

River Valley, The Village of Indian Hill was the domain of gentleman farmers. This 13.7-acre property, which includes its original carriage house and hand-hewn wooden barn, is a throwback to those earlier agrarian days and its original use as an orchard. In its earliest and largest iterations, the farm extended across more than 210 acres between Given and Loveland Madeira roads to the east and west, and Keller and Camargo roads to the north and south. The Indian Hill Historical Society now sits within the parcel’s original borders.

The home itself, constructed in 1850 in red brick, has seen many improvements and additions over the decades, including a major renovation in 1928 when then-owners Raymond and Lucille Betts built the white columns that now characterize the main entrance.

They also created an upstairs apartment in the carriage house so they could live there while adding two wings to the main house, beginning its transformation to the 22-room, 15,369-square-foot estate we see today. Cur2 4 C I N C I N N AT I M A G A Z I N E . C O M J U N E 2 0 2 0

rent owners Don and Marianne Klekamp lived in the home for nearly 50 years and made their own significant renovations in the early 2000s, taking care to preserve historic details.

The former farmhouse has five bedrooms, seven full and halfbathrooms, and picturesque features like a wall of windows that fills one downstairs hallway with natural light, giving it the feel of a conservatory. You’ll now find a very contemporary eight-space garage and outdoor pool among the vintage outbuildings, but unique original features—such as a whopping 10 wood-burning fireplaces—remind us that the home is in fact 170 years old.

The evolution of this property reflects the life cycle of Indian Hill itself. Throughout the late 19th and early 20th centuries, once-sprawling farms were subdivided and conveyed to new owners who began to build the residential Village we know today. But glimpses of that old life remain: Indian Hill’s locally famous “Little Red Schoolhouse” (formerly Washington Heights School), built in 1873, sits a mere five-minute walk away.

PHOTO G R A PHS CO URTE SY GREG TA SSONE /CO LDWELL BANKER WE ST SHELL

THIS INDIAN HILL SPREAD IS BUILT FOR EASY LIVING. — A M Y B R O W N L E E

SENSORY SPACE MORE THAN A STORE, PUZZLE PIECES PROVIDES A SAFE SPACE FOR THOSE WITH AUTISM AND OTHER FUNCTIONAL NEEDS. — J A C L Y N Y O U H A N A G A R V E R

When Holly Young’s 10-year-old son Roman was diagnosed with autism as a toddler, Cincinnati didn’t have a store where she could find supplies or toys geared for him. No gel tiles to piece together and squish beneath his toes. No bubble tubes to flicker and shimmer

with changing light.

No weighted blankets to cocoon and soothe.

Young could only find those items online, and at a huge markup.

“I thought, Surely, someone’s going to open a store to help parents like me,” she says. “I waited years and years, and it didn’t happen, so I opened that store.”

Puzzle Pieces, which Young opened in spring 2018, caters to people with sensory issues and other functional needs, including autism, spina bifida, and Alzheimer’s disease. Customers have driven as far as five hours to visit the store, where they can try items before they buy.

At Puzzle Pieces, customers also find reasonable prices and, Young says, hope. “I have parents walk in who immediately ask if I’m the owner, and they hug me,” she says.

In addition to the retail space, Puzzle Pieces has a sensory room that immerses people in a place meant to calm and soothe.

The lights are dim, save for some spot lighting like bubble tubes and a projector casting a lime green pattern on the

wall. A jellyfish canopy drapes around a beanbag chair, and LED lights dangle inside. Large furry rugs and pillows invite visitors to have a seat. And then there’s everyone’s favorite: the huggle pod. This pod, which looks like a tent, is suspended from the ceiling in the sensory room. People can bring a glow item inside and drop the flap, providing a secluded space to enjoy the muted lighting.

Stores like Puzzle Pieces cater to a population that finds the bright lights and loud sounds of traditional stores overwhelming.

They’re also a respite for parents who feel they can’t bring their children to stores.

“There are people who frown at you when your child takes something off the shelf or knocks something over.

It’s very intimidating and very stressful,” Young says. “To have a store that encourages your child to pick things off of the shelf, and it’s OK if they drop it. It’s OK if they pull it out of the bins and throw it.

We understand. That’s priceless as a parent.”

PUZZLE PIECES, 11912 MONTGOMERY RD., SYMMES TOWNSHIP, (513) 583-1874, PUZZLEPIECESOHIO.COM

Puzzle Pieces plans to expand into the space next door, which would add 2,100 square feet.

Owner Holly Young had a grand reopening scheduled for April 18, but put it on hold indefinitely due to the coronavirus pandemic.

GOOD TO KNOW

2 6 C I N C I N N AT I M A G A Z I N E . C O M J U N E 2 0 2 0

P H O T O G R A P H S ( T O P, L E F T ) B Y J O S E P H D A N Z E R / ( R I G H T ) C O U R T E S Y H O L L Y Y O U N G

STOREFRONT

PERSON OF INTEREST

BY LISA MURTHA

Finding a Purpose NEHEMIAH MANUFACTURING GAVE RAYSHUN HOLT A SECOND CHANCE.

I

“I WOULD VENTURE TO SAY MOST PEOPLE AREN’T THE SAME PERSON AT THE AGE OF 25 that they were when they were 15,” says Rayshun Holt, sitting in a glass-walled conference room at Nehemiah Manufacturing’s new 184,000-square-foot West End facility. At 40, he most definitely would know. Meet him now—jeans, black down vest, short-cropped hair— and you see a successful businessman working for a private manufacturer of cleaning and personal care products. You might assume you understand his path or know something about where he went to school or worked before this. Most likely you would be wrong.

Holt grew up in Evanston in “a nice, working-class household with a loving mother, a loving father, and one sibling, my sister,” he says. He attended both Seven Hills and Walnut Hills schools. But somewhere along the line, “I started to veer off the path,” and got involved 2 8 C I N C I N N AT I M A G A Z I N E . C O M J U N E 2 0 2 0

with gangs and drugs. He ended up in a juvenile home after a felony drug conviction.

And then, at age 15, Holt shot and killed a 14-year-old friend in what he describes today a “tragic” and “unfortunate” event. He wound up in prison: 18 years to life.

His story could have ended there, but it didn’t. During those years in prison, Holt grew up. He came to terms with his past and consciously decided to change his trajectory. He worked hard to help others change their paths, too. And he built a rock-solid foundation for an entirely different life, outside of prison, that would eventually lead to Nehemiah Manufacturing. Along the way, he taught countless others that change is always possible, and one bad decision does not remotely define who you can become.

P H O T O G R A P H BY A A R O N M . CO N WAY

PERSON OF INTEREST PRISON “WASN’T THE IDEAL PLACE” TO grow up, says Holt, “but you survive.”

About a decade into his sentence, though, “my character started to develop into who I was gonna be for the long haul.” Part of that, he notes, was realizing “exactly what me getting into that situation was putting [my family] through. And I knew I had to figure out how I was gonna make good of that. Like, that’s my mom, my daddy, my sister. I owe it to them to be the best person I can be.”

That realization, paired with unwavering family support and a rekindling of his faith, helped Holt understand there was still value to his life, “regardless of my situation.” He took skilled trades classes. He took college-level courses, and “amassed a nice quantity of credits.” But he didn’t stop there. “I learned early on that I had an ability to connect with people from all different corners of society,” says Holt; using that ability, he set out to help other inmates find the same value in life he’d found. Soon, he became an unofficial mentor, helping his peers rethink their own life choices and avoid the kinds of mistakes he’d made moving forward. Not through any formal program, mind you. “Just my program,” says Holt. “God’s program.”

Meanwhile, he went up for parole twice and received three-year continuances both times; the third time, though, “after having 21 years in, the parole board decided to give me a shot at it,” says Holt.

“Excited, scared,” and having “never been an adult in the world,” Holt was released in 2016 and returned home to live with his mother. “I was 36 years old, probably in the best shape of my life. I was ambitious, driven, anxious. I thought I was good. It wasn’t enough.”

Despite applying for dozens of jobs online and at “every storefront I walked in, I just kept striking out,” says Holt. “Jobs would get offered to me and then later rescinded, even after disclosing my past in an interview.” He could have lost hope, but “I stayed the course. I guess in my heart I just accepted the notion that nobody owed it to me to look at me the way I felt I should be looked at.”

Instead, he turned back to mentoring and volunteered with Cincinnati Works’s Phoenix Program, working to help elimi3 0 C I N C I N N AT I M A G A Z I N E . C O M J U N E 2 0 2 0

nate gun violence in Cincinnati. He found his own mentor—a relationship Holt says was important as he began to grow—and began speaking publicly about his life for criminal justice classes at UC and Xavier, and “to wayward youth at some of the high schools in Cincinnati.” When he finally landed paying jobs, first at Raising Cane’s in Clifton Heights, then for Cincinnati Parks and 3CDC, “I felt valued, and like I had a purpose,” he says. Still, he hadn’t quite found a career that fit, and his options moving forward were limited.

Eventually, though, Holt heard about Nehemiah, and how they hired people with felonies. Skeptical, he noted that lots of companies have people with criminal records on staff. But people kept telling him, This place is different.

TURNS OUT, NEHEMIAH MANUFACTURing—a $59.4 million company founded in 2010 by consumer product industry veterans Dan Meyer and Richard Palmer (and named for the Old Testament figure whose faithfulness led him back to Jerusalem, where he rebuilt the city’s walls and prayed for the restoration of the city’s faith)—is what’s known as a “second chance” company. Eighty percent of its almost 200 employees have criminal records. Seventy percent of them have been involved with drugs. But one of the company’s main goals is to give people with challenging backgrounds a second chance at work and life.

The company is so good at what it does, in fact, it has a substantially lower annual turnover rate than consumer products companies that don’t hire second chance workers (15 percent versus the 38.5 percent industry average, per The Wall Street Journal). The secret? A lengthy hiring and phase-in process, a raft of in-house support for employees (social services; legal aid; assistance with transportation, housing, credit restoration, and more), and the understanding that “there is no cookiecutter solution to all the world’s woes,” says Holt.

Intrigued, he arranged an interview for a job on the company’s production line. He met with the company’s social services team. They introduced him to the company’s CEO, COO, and president. The group was impressed; instead of a job on the pro-

duction line, they offered him “a leadership role as the second shift supervisor,” says Holt, with a $19-an-hour starting salary. “I came for silver and left with gold,” he says.

“And that’s when things really started to change in my life.”

Almost immediately, Holt realized the job was about so much more than just keeping production lines moving. Supervising dozens of employees on the floor taught him how the business operated, but working alongside people with backgrounds like his removed stigmas he might have encountered elsewhere and gave him the opportunity to work, mentor, and be mentored, all in one place.

“I thought I was strong,” says Holt. “And then I realized I’m nothing when I got a young lady on my shift—a single mother to five children under the age of 12—trying to figure out child care and still work 40-plus hours a week to make ends meet. That’s strength.” Ditto, he says, for coworkers who had nowhere to live when they were first released from prison but somehow made it through. Or the “young man working the line [who’s] in recovery from heroin,” and whose every moment “is literally a life and death struggle to stay clean. They [all] serve as my beacon of hope. Every opportunity I got, I made sure I reminded them of that.”

In spring 2019, Holt was promoted to his current position, commercialization coordinator, where he manages all of Nehemiah’s new product development. He has his own cubicle in the company’s business offices, but still stays in close contact with people on the production line floor. His life has changed in countless other ways, too. He’s engaged to be married, and lives in Hyde Park. Together, he and his fiancée have an 8-month-old daughter who’s “on the move fast,” says Holt. The day after this interview, all three of them flew to Boston, where he spoke to Harvard Business School students and faculty about his life’s journey thus far.

Nehemiah has played a huge role in his transformation, but so has Holt—through his attitude, his perseverance, and his personal strength. “I went away when I was 15 years old,” he says. “In essence, I was a child.

This is my first chance at having a legitimate shot at being successful.”

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20/21 SEASON

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March 2 - 28, 2021 THE LINCOLN CENTER THEATER PRODUCTION

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PHOTOGRAPHS BY (CLOCKWISE FROM BOTTOM RIGHT) MIKKI SCHAFFNER / BRENNAN SCHAEFER / COURTESY CHARMAINE McGUFFEY / P A U L N I X D O R F / ( T AY L O R & S P A R K L E ) A A R O N M . C O N W AY / C O U R T E S Y J I M O B E R G E F E L L / C O U R T E S Y J I L L I A N T E E T E R S

In recent years Cincinnati has become an unlikely beacon of hope for LGBTQ rights. Five years after our city’s unexpected role in federal marriage equality, we look at how far we’ve come, what still needs to be done, and local advocates leading the charge.

PHOTOGRAPHS BY (COUNTERCLOCKWISE FROM BOTTOM LEFT) MEGAN MITCHELL / COURTESY ISABELLA GUINIGUNDO / S A M A N T H A A V E R Y / D O U G S T R O N G / A A R O N M . C O N W AY / S T E F M U R A W S K Y / B S U L L I V A N / T E R R Y W A N G

By Amy Brownlee, Katie Coburn, Lauren Fisher, John Fox,

Kaileigh Peyton, and Amanda Boyd Walters page 35

Pride june 2020

page 36

The Right Side of History Cincinnati’s next generation of activists discusses the state of rights with Jim Obergefell, five years after his landmark Supreme Court victory.

F

IVE YEARS AGO THIS month, Over-the-Rhine resident Jim Obergefell and attorney Al Gerhardstein stood at the U.S. Supreme Court to hear the favorable ruling in Obergefell v. Hodges, which in essence legalized same-sex marriage. Obergefell and John Arthur, who had been together for 20 years, were married in Maryland as Arthur was dying from a long-term illness. Obergefell sued and won an order allowing him to be listed as spouse on Arthur’s death certificate, a decision the state of Ohio appealed. Eventually, the Supreme Court ruled that states must recognize all marriages lawfully performed in other states.

Cincinnati Magazine hosted a roundtable discussion April 3 via Zoom about how that landmark ruling impacted Cincinnati’s LGBTQ community, which legal issues should be resolved next, and what challenges lie ahead for the new generation of activists. Obergefell (now

living in Columbus) and Gerhardstein were joined by three local high school seniors who are active in their schools’ Gay/Straight Alliances (GSAs) and with the local chapter of the Gay, Lesbian & Straight Education Network (GLSEN).

Kathy Laufman, a 25-year GLSEN volunteer, rounded out the conversation.

A longer version of this roundtable discussion is available at cincinnatimagazine.com.

Tell us a little about yourself.

Isabella Guinigundo, 18, Bishop Fenwick High School: I’m president of Young Activists Coalition in Cincinnati, which does advocacy work around progressive issues like LGBTQ education and support.

Jillian Teeters, 18, Mariemont High School: I serve on the Young Activists Coalition and in GLSEN’s student leadership program called SHINE. I’ve been

BASED ON LOVE (Clockwise from lower right) Jim Obergefell, Kathy Laufman, Isabella Guinigundo, Soren Spitzig, Al Gerhardstein, and Jillian Teeters.

I L LU S T R AT I O N BY G LU E K I T

Pride june 2020

page 38

How has the ruling resonated with young LGBTQ people today?

Teeters: Five years ago, I was still in a state of denial. Seeing the Supreme Court uphold the rights of LGBTQ people brought me hope and brought me one step closer to coming out to myself and to the world.

Guinigundo: I was in a very different place in my life, too. I knew I was queer, but I was not out. In fact, the weekend of the Supreme Court ruling, I happened to be at a Christian Scouting conference. But that ruling helped give me hope that I had a path to growing up to become a real person and didn’t have to hide who I was.

Spitzig: I had no idea the case was going on until the ruling was announced co-president of my high school’s GSA, which we call Mariemont Pride+, for four years.

and everyone was talking about it. Even though I was 13, it was comforting to know that I had the right to get married like anyone else would. As I got older, my focus turned to fighting discrimination against LGBTQ people, especially trans people like myself.

Soren Spitzig, 18, Norwood High School: I help run our school’s GSA, and I also serve with the SHINE leadership program.

Kathy Laufman, 77: I volunteer with GLSEN, which works to ensure that LGBTQ students are able to learn and grow in a school environment free from bullying and harassment.

Jim Obergefell, 53: I sort of became shorthand for “marriage equality” thanks to Al’s amazing legal work and my love for my late husband. I now speak in a lot of higher education, corporate, and conference settings, and I’m on the board of SAGE, which advocates for LGBTQ older Americans.

Laufman: Today’s educators often bravely support their LGBTQ students, but I must speak up for parents. Before the Supreme Court ruling, I met some amazing “mama bears” fighting for their children’s rights, but they didn’t know each other and didn’t feel supported. Since then we’ve had an explosion of highly visible parents advocating for their children. This is particularly true of parents of trans youth, and I attribute a lot of that to the Transgender Health Clinic at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center, where they’ve found a place to come together and learn from each other.

What issues are young people focused on today?

Teeters: The importance of civil rights is definitely on the back burner of

Al Gerhardstein, 68: I have been working on

much of America’s mind. But people of color, the disabled community, immigrants and undocumented people, and LGBTQ people are still very much in the throes of fighting for civil rights. When we do talk about LGBTQ struggles in class, we often refer to them as “others” and the teacher will say, LGBTQ are fighting for this and that—but you’re talking about me, and I’m in the room.

gay rights issues since the late 1970s. We won very few of those legal cases until Jim’s case, but we worked hard. It was pretty lopsided against us for a long time.

PASSING THE TORCH Jim Obergefell (below left) and John Arthur on their wedding day in July 2013; Isabella Guinigundo (opposite page), Young Activists Coalition president, speaks at a climate protest.

How difficult was that journey to the Supreme Court?

Obergefell: To me the big challenge was losing John and continuing to fight this legal battle while I was going through a grieving process.

But it was simply the right thing to do. I just had to keep fighting for him and our marriage.

Gerhardstein: You don’t use the law for social change easily. The law is basically geared toward reaffirming the norms that oppressed people for years. I try to seize moments when we can assert our founding values and challenge the powers that be to see where they’ve gone wrong and use the law to push society in the correct direction. That usually means finding a crisis, which in this case was John’s failing health.

PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY JIM OBERGEFELL

Guinigundo: I go to a Catholic high school, which comes with challenges. We aren’t allowed to have a Gay/Straight Alliance, for instance.

I think a lot about how we’re protecting people of color, especially trans women of color. There’s unfortunately a high rate of murder, suicide, and health issues in that segment of the community, and the greater population doesn’t know as much about those issues as they do adoption, marriage, or gender identity. There’s no big moment in this struggle like we had with the Supreme Court ruling, so I often wonder how to better raise awareness.

Spitzig: The legal issues are important to me and my peers because a lot of us feel that if there isn’t legal protection, no matter how progressive your environment is or your school is, you’re not truly protected. The adults in our lives are supposed to keep us safe, so when they come up short we see where the laws are lacking.

IF THERE ISN’T LEGAL PROTECTION, NO MATTER HOW PROGRESSIVE YOUR ENVIRONMENT IS OR YOUR SCHOOL IS, YOU’RE NOT TRULY PROTECTED.

Obergefell: There’s no similarity whatsoever between my high school experience and these three. I was afraid of being gay then, because I had no role models. I didn’t know anyone who was gay, so for me being gay was shameful and bad. I’m so thankful and happy that high school kids today are experiencing something vastly different.

Is there a sense that the LGBTQ movement has relaxed since the Supreme Court ruling?

Obergefell: Back in 2015, there was certainly a feeling of victory. A state equality organization in New York closed down because they said, We won, there’s nothing else to do. I have to admit that that day at the Supreme Court was the first day I felt as an out gay man I was an equal American, but there was an asterisk with that feeling. I still knew I wasn’t fully equal. The backlash has been terrible. This whole religious refusal argument gives public businesses and healthcare professionals the ability to say, No, I refuse to serve you or help you, even though you’re dying, because my vague deeply held religious beliefs are more important than you. We should have a nationwide ban on conversion therapy. There’s much more to do.

Gerhardstein: One of the main problems we need to fix in the courts is this religious exception that Jim brings up. Some people are asserting opposition to treating people equally claiming a basis in religion, and that’s not what the First Amendment was designed to promote or what our antidiscrimination laws were designed to promote.

Why are you a leader in today’s LGBTQ movement?

Spitzig: One of the main reasons I became outspoken is because I didn’t see many other people doing it, especially around trans rights. So I felt that if I was going to see change I was going to have to push for it myself PHOTOGRAPH BY ALEX MADARAS

and get other people to show up with me.

Guinigundo: There’s a lot of talk in the LGBTQ community about the “chosen family,” the people you find who are like you and who feel like home.

Well, I had this group of people I loved and wanted to fight for, so I stepped up. Some days you turn on the news and hear a politician saying that you’re not human and you cry, because you have these young people who look up to you and you want to hug them and tell them it’s going to be OK. And there are moments when you have hope, maybe at a GLSEN event where you go and be yourself together.

Teeters: My family taught me there aren’t bad people, there are just bad decisions. So I’ve always thought that when people are being homophobic, racist, sexist, and generally disrespectful, it truly comes from a place of misinformation. A lot of times that attitude can be altered if you have a oneon-one conversation and create a relationship with them.

Obergefell: I never wanted to be someone who people recognized or a public person, but I’m OK with it because I think about what the world has gained by us taking this fight to the Supreme Court. I’ve never once regretted it. The gifts I’ve gotten by becoming this public person are so amazingly worthwhile. I feel so fortunate to have the life I have now, because it was all based on love.

Gerhardstein: I sense in these three young people a real love for community, friends, and family. Of course, with Jim and John they were also working from a strong loving relationship. I only got to know John for a few months, but I am so clear that he’s proud of Jim for how Jim carried on after his death.

This whole movement is and should be based on love, and that will carry us forward and will help us make everything right.

Pride june 2020

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MARCH OF TIME These moments shaped Cincinnati’s LGBTQ history, from the “most anti-gay” city in the country to a beacon of progress.

—KAILEIGH PEYTON

April 6–8, 1973

June 22, 1978

Nearly four years after New York’s pivotal Stonewall Inn riots, the activist-founded Cincinnati Gay Community (CGC) organizes the city’s first public Pride celebration, highlighted by a modest crowd marching from Washington Park to Fountain Square.

Mayor Jerry Springer signs a proclamation officially recognizing Lesbian/Gay Pride Day in Cincinnati. Mayor Bobbie Sterne made the same proclamation a year later, despite criticism.

P H O T O G R A P H B Y A A R O N M . C O N W AY

Sparkle Leigh (a.k.a. Dan Davidson) DAN DAVIDSON TALKS A LOT ABOUT “DYNAMIC CONVERSAtions,” where people can get past ideological disagreements and focus on understanding one another. Davidson has a little help creating these conversations—a character named Sparkle Leigh, who he describes as a cartoon trapped in the real world, “the love child of Roger and Jessica Rabbit.” StoryTime with Sparkle takes place on Saturdays through Facebook, and had been a monthly event at Know Theatre. It’s an opportunity to connect with kids on their level, to create a space where they can be goofy and curious and where they can learn about differences through connection.

Phebe (Karen) Beiser

When she started collecting bits and pieces of Cincinnati’s written LGBTQ history in the 1970s, Beiser never thought her hobby would turn into a career. But her persistence paid off, and for the past 30 years Beiser and Victoria Ramstetter have been curating the Ohio Lesbian Archives, one of the only collections of its kind in the country.

Lennox Bales

In 2018, the Diocese of Covington blocked the Holy Cross High School valedictorian from speaking at graduation because it claimed their speech was “political and inconsistent with the teachings of the Catholic Church.” That decision backfired when video of Bales delivering the speech over a megaphone following the ceremony went viral. In 2019, the Hugh M. Hefner Foundation recognized Bales, who’s now a student at the University of Louisville, with its First Amendment Award.

Key Beck

Beck fosters empathy for LGBTQ young people from the top, leading cultural competency training for youth-serving organizations through Safe and Supported at Lighthouse Youth & Family Services. “We build [organizations’] competency, learning vocabulary, values, culture— and we work with intersectionality, acknowledging that, yes, LGBTQ people exist, but they also exist in other ways, especially being women and people of color.”

I’M ABLE TO USE MY EXPERIENCE TO ADVOCATE. I DON’T HAVE TO BANG MY HEAD AGAINST A BRICK WALL POLITICALLY. I CAN GO TELL MY STORY, AND IT’S JUST AS POWERFUL .”

Bonnie Meyer

The founding director of Northern Kentucky University’s Office of LGBTQ Programs and Services says her work extends beyond the university. “We have to be doing our part daily to make this world better for LGBTQ folks, and all folks,” she says. She walks the talk with NKY Fairness, pushing local governments to enact fairness ordinances that prohibit discrimination.

Rev. Derek Terry

Pastor of St. Peter’s United Church of Christ in Pleasant Ridge, Rev. Terry came out to his family, his congregation, and the world on Iyanla: Fix My Life in 2015. “I couldn’t preach that there was nothing wrong with [being gay] but then be ashamed of that truth,” he says. “It was important to me to say, ‘I’m a black, gay, Christian pastor, and there’s nothing wrong with that.’ ”

1983

April 7, 1990

October 5, 1990

The Dock opens on Pete Rose Way below the Brent Spence Bridge. Cincinnati’s longest continuously operating LGBTQ bar closed in 2018 to make way for infrastructure upgrades.

Subversive photographer Robert Mapplethorpe’s posthumous retrospective debuts at the CAC to protests from conservative groups and grand jury indictments for the CAC and its director, Dennis Barrie, on misdemeanor obscenity charges.

In an overflowing Hamilton County courtroom, a jury acquits the CAC and Barrie on all charges, setting an unprecedented First Amendment standard.

P H O T O G R A P H S B Y ( F R O M L E F T T O R I G H T ) C O N N I E S P R I N G E R / B R E N N A N S C H A E F E R / K E Y B E C K / A LY S S A N I C K L E S / A N T H O N Y J A C K S O N P H O T O G R A P H Y

Pride june 2020

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Spencer Black

This Columbus native came to Cincinnati in 2018 as regional director for the Human Rights Campaign, planning community engagement and voter activation and assisting HRC-endorsed candidates. He has since become a deputy director with the Democratic National Committee, where he’ll travel the country to work within the national political infrastructure to support human rights.

IF PEOPLE WANT TO PUT ME IN A B OX , F I N E . B U T I’M NOT DEFINED B Y T H AT B OX . ”

Pastor Lesley E. Jones

Church has always been a safe haven for Jones, but she also knows firsthand the heavy burden of reconciling sexuality and spirituality. As founder and lead pastor of Truth & Destiny Covenant Ministries, she strives to foster a “radically inclusive” place of hope and safety where all can gather, regardless of sexual orientation, gender identity, or religious background.

Scott Knox

Attorney Knox happily describes himself as a “worker bee,” but his legal expertise often places him at the center of the action—particularly when it comes to representing victims of anti-LGBTQ discrimination. In 2004, as legal chair of Citizens to Restore Fairness, Knox helped to repeal Article XII, the infamous city charter amendment that blocked legal protections for gay citizens.

Evie Heflin

As the solo social worker in the Transgender Health Clinic at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center, Heflin equips transgender patients and their families with resources and support. She previously launched a behavioral and wellness program for trans adults at Central Clinic Behavioral Health, is a board member of the Transgender Advocacy Council of Greater Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky, and hosts professional gender-affirming trainings for local providers.

September 15, 1992

November 2, 1993

April 29, 2003

Procter & Gamble revises its equal employment opportunity (EEO) policy to include protections for LGBTQ employees following a persistent, years-long push from lab tech Michael Chanak Jr.

Voters support Article XII (Issue 3), a charter amendment preventing the city from providing legal protections for gays and lesbians under the Human Rights Ordinance it passed a year earlier. A federal appeals court subsequently debated its constitutionality but ultimately sided with voters.

Y’all means all! Covington unanimously passes its own Human Rights Ordinance, prohibiting discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity.

P H O T O G R A P H S B Y ( F R O M T O P T O B O T T O M ) R O N C L E M O N S / B S U L L I V A N P H O T O G R A P H Y / T E R R Y W A N G / S T E F M U R A W S K Y / ( R I G H T ) A A R O N M . C O N W AY

Chris Seelbach CINCINNATI’S FIRST OPENLY GAY COUNCILMEMBER HAS ALways drawn the ire of critics who think he prioritizes LGBTQ issues above others.

“My response is that I’ve probably spent 40 hours on those votes for LGBTQ issues in my eight years [on council]. Those were not hard votes.” But his presence on council keeps equality issues on the table. As a result, “[Cincinnati] is now a leader on LGBTQ equality,” Seelbach says. During his tenure, the city became second in the nation to ban conversion therapy for minors and was third to include transgender healthcare benefits. “I’m proud of the work we’ve done. If people want to put me in a box, fine. But I’m not defined by that box.”

Tristan Vaught What if gender reveal parties were reserved for transgender kids who were transitioning and needed new clothes? That was the question—or rather, the Facebook meme—Vaught shared last year, sparking the idea for Transform Cincy, a one-of-akind nonprofit that provides new clothing and makeovers to transgender youth.

November 2, 2004 Following a yearlong campaign by gay rights activists to place a repeal of Article XII on the ballot, voters support its rollback, allowing city council to pass laws protecting gays and lesbians from discrimination.

Charmaine McGuffey As a former major, McGuffey is the highest-ranking woman in the history of the Hamilton County Sheriff’s Office, and a November election victory would make her Ohio’s first LGBTQ sheriff. “I can’t tell you how wonderful it is,” she says, “to have felt like you had to hide your entire life, and then be able to just open up the doors and be yourself to the world.”

March 22, 2005 A federal appeals court upholds a district court ruling siding with Philecia Barnes, a transgender woman and 24-year Cincinnati Police veteran who sued the City of Cincinnati for discrimination after she was demoted for lacking “command presence.”

P H OTO G R A P H S C O U R T E SY ( F R O M L E F T TO R I G H T ) T R I S TA N VAU G H T / C H A R M A I N E M c G U F F E Y / M A R C E L H U G H E S

Marcel Hughes Hughes remembers pacing the blocks around pop-up HIV testing sites at Northern Kentucky coffeeshops and bars in college, dreading the possibility of a positive result.

Today, he shepherds clients through the fear and stigma surrounding HIV/AIDS as a case manager for Caracole, the Cincinnati-based HIV testing and prevention center that reduces barriers to care and housing.

March 15, 2006 Cincinnati City Council approves an amendment to the city’s Human Rights Ordinance, adding LGBTQ individuals to those included in employment and housing protections.

Pride june 2020

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HAVING THAT VISUAL OF I’M NOT ALONE IS ONE OF THE MOST IMPORTANT THINGS YOU CAN FEEL AS A HUMAN BEING.” —MEGAN MITCHELL

Steve Milloy

Richard Cooke

Taylor Carrasco

Artistic director of the Cincinnati Men’s Chorus since 2017, Milloy has been focused on keeping relationships intact among chorus members and with community supporters. “Choir singing is a group sport,” he says, bemoaning the pandemic’s social distancing orders. CMC’s spring concert was cancelled (it might be rescheduled), so Milloy’s focus now is planning the organization’s 30th season in 2021.

The Procter & Gamble communications manager founded Tea Dance Cincinnati on a whim in 2017 when he decided to host his own version of the event, which is a cultural institution in the LGBTQ community. Cooke’s monthly events have grown from a couple hundred attendees in a local bar to 1,400 at last year’s Pride Tea Dance in the Music Hall Ballroom.

“There are a lot of binaries in the ballet world,” says Carrasco, a Cincinnati Ballet corps de ballet dancer and choreographer. “But that’s not how people are.” He wants to use his work as a choreographer to tell human stories. “I’m surrounded by strong, beautiful, queer people, and why would I shy away from showing that in my work?”

Brooklyn Steele-Tate

Shatona Campbell Megan Mitchell (a.k.a. Planet Venus)

(a.k.a. Michael Cotrell) Cotrell wears many wigs as president of Cincinnati Pride, chair of the Out of the Darkness Walk, a longtime member of nonprofit ISQCCBE, and president of Greater Cincinnati Gay Chamber of Commerce—and did we mention he’s the fiercely funny hostess (as alter ego Brooklyn Steele-Tate) of weekly drag shows at Below Zero’s The Cabaret? “[Drag] has helped us pull issues like homelessness and mental illness to the forefront,” he says.

A self-proclaimed “medical musician” and popular DJ who’s dropped beats for major events like NKY Pride and Cincinnati Pride, Campbell uses music to unite people.

This year, on top of producing electronic dance music, Campbell plans to launch Kosmic Kats, a health and wellness organization that connects community members through music, yoga, conversation, and more.

The award-winning broadcast journalist, who joined WLWT Channel 5 as a weekend morning anchor and reporter in 2016, uses her strong social media following to be a visible role model for the LGBTQ community and stress the importance of self-acceptance.

She’s also an active member of the National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association and enjoys hosting LGBTQ events in the community.

HUMAN TOUCH (Clockwise from upper left) Taylor Carrasco, Richard Cooke, Steve Milloy, Brooklyn Steele-Tate, Megan Mitchell, and Shatona Campbell.

July 2010

December 1, 2011

December 28, 2014

Cincinnati Pride, organized by the Greater Cincinnati Gay Chamber of Commerce, returns festivities from Northside’s Hoffner Park to Fountain Square, making it more accessible.

Attendance skyrockets.

Cincinnati’s first openly gay city councilmember, Chris Seelbach, is sworn into office.

The suicide of transgender Kings Mills teen Leelah Alcorn draws worldwide attention to transgender rights and mobilizes conversion therapy bans after her self-published suicide note goes viral.

I L LU S T R AT I O N BY G LU E K I T

June 26, 2015

December 9, 2015

June 21, 2019

Cincinnatian Jim Obergefell wins a landmark Supreme Court case (Obergefell v. Hodges) that paves the way for federal marriage equality.

Inspired by Alcorn, Cincinnati City Council passes a ban on conversion therapy for minors, becoming the second U.S. city (after Washington, D.C.) to do so. Covington passed the same ban in March of this year.

Marking Pride weekend and the 50th anniversary of Stonewall, a rainbow Pride ag is raised for the ďŹ rst time at City Hall.

P H O T O G R A P H S ( C L O C K W I S E F R O M L E F T ) B Y A A R O N M . C O N W AY / C O U R T E S Y R I C H A R D C O O K E / B Y P A U L N I X D O R F / B Y D O U G S T R O N G / C O U R T E S Y M E G A N M I T C H E L L / C O U R T E S Y P L A N E T V E N U S

Pride june 2020

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A Humbling Turnaround To these LGBTQ-supportive companies, a perfect score is more than a grade. — G I L K A U F M A N

W

ALKING INTO THE TOWERING Procter & Gamble headquarters downtown can be daunting, whether you’re a first-time vendor or a rookie employee. Imagine being a 21-year-old newly out gay man trying to find your place at one of the largest employers in a city that once had a law on the books

(Article XII) prohibiting legal protection for its LGBTQ citizens.

“I was nervous coming in because I wasn’t sure what to expect in terms of the environment,” says Bret Senior, whose original plan was to use the job as a stepping stone to a bigger city like New York, where he imagined a more queer-friendly community. Now 24, he works on a project aimed at opening the doors of acceptance for transgender individuals at hair salons via P&G’s Pantene hair care brand.

Senior’s experience is a far cry from that of Michael Chanak Jr., who retired from P&G in 2003 after nearly two decades and who is considered by many to be the first openly gay P&G employee. He eventually took an early retirement from the company to escape what he calls his then “raving homophobe” boss.

What happened at P&G in the years since he left? If you ask Chanak, 70, a radical mind I L L U S T R A T I O N B Y T H E R E S A O ’ R E I L LY

By the Numbers

686 U.S. public and private companies and law firms earned a perfect 100 score in the 2020 Corporate Equality Index

5 Cincinnati-based companies scored 100: Fifth Third, Frost Brown Todd, Kroger, Macy’s, and Procter & Gamble

359 Fortune 500 companies submitted surveys to the 2020 Corporate Equality Index ratings, a record number

100% Fortune 500 CEI-rated companies offering sexual orientation protection in their U.S. nondiscrimination policies

shift born from the seeds he and others planted all those years ago. But in a city that long held a reputation as a stubbornly conservative outpost, this kind of hardto-pin-down “incremental change” is now manifest in quantifiable data, thanks to the Human Rights Campaign’s Corporate Equality Index. Rating the nation’s largest businesses on their commitment to LGBTQ equality and inclusion, the latest rankings found 686 U.S. companies earning a perfect 100 score, five of which were Cincinnati-based: Fifth Third, law firm Frost Brown Todd, Kroger, Macy’s, and Procter & Gamble. “I give P&G credit . . . and, more than anything, I’m humbled,” Chanak says of the changes he’s seen. “It might have taken them a while, but good on them for doing what’s right.”

The fact that Kroger has landed a

98% Fortune 500 CEI-rated companies offering gender identity protection in their U.S. nondiscrimination policies

5% Companies participating in the first CEI ratings in 2002 that offered gender identity nondiscrimination protections

SOURCE: The Human Rights Campaign Foundation

perfect score two years in a row (2019, 2020), according to Angel Colón, senior director of diversity and inclusion, is a reflection of the company’s core corporate values, which include diversity and inclusion. “We have to acknowledge that people have different opinions, different experiences, [and] therefore they’re going to have different ideas, and that’s where we get innovation from,” he says.

Those corporate values are taught in new hire classes, where Kroger newbies are also informed about the company’s Associate Resource Groups (ARGs), club-like employee gatherings that help create a sense of community. Colón says one of the most popular is the Pride group. “The ARGs are like a family, where people belong and can express themselves, share their concerns, and help the community,” he says.

LGBTQ employees were surprised and appreciative, Colón says, when CEO Rodney McMullen and other top executives marched with a Kroger float in Cincinnati’s 2019 Pride Parade.

It’s an example of what Colón terms “total company support and advocacy.”

Kim Amrine says the No. 1 reason she chose to join Frost Brown Todd was its inclusive culture. She’s been the law firm’s director of diversity and inclusion since 2006 and is proud that it’s scored 100 in the Corporate Equality Index six years running.

Managing Associate Ryan Goellner joined the firm in 2015 and jokes that it happened to coincide with Frost’s first top ranking. “Seeing out and proud LGBT people at the firm and getting to know Kim was important to me in deciding to start my career here,” says Goellner, who now serves as chair of the Cincinnati Bar Association’s LGBTQ Interest Committee.

Amrine notes that Frost clients such as Kroger, GE, Macy’s, Honda, and Procter & Gamble also achieved a 100 score on the Index.

“It’s great to get to celebrate together,” she says, “because you’ve put in place policies, practices, [and] action steps that take effort, documentation, planning, and intentionality.”

These corporate attitudes and actions have certainly changed the perception of Cincinnati.

“If you told someone 20 years ago that Cincinnati would now be on the leading edge of corporate equality, most people would definitely be surprised,” says Brent Miller, global LGBTQ+ equality program leader at P&G. “I walk in every day, and the best way to describe it is I feel full,” Senior says. “Everyone has tough days at work, but despite what is happening around me I feel I can stand tall, full, and accepted.”

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EYES ON THE PRIZE (CLOCKWISE FROM BELOW) VICTORIA WULSIN GREETS AN HIV/AIDS SUPPORT GROUP IN MBAKALO, KENYA; HENRY CHWALA, A SOTENI CLINIC LAB TECHNICIAN IN MBAKALO; PASSING THROUGH NAIROBI NATIONAL PARK; AND A COMMITTEE MEETING IN UGUNJA ENDS WITH A PRAYER.

Victoria Wulsin keeps her SOTENI International nonprofit organization focused on the longtime fight against HIV and AIDS in Kenya, while new viral pandemics and other causes grab the world’s attention.

BY

BOB DRIEHAUS

PHOTOGRAPHS BY

JENNY BRADY

49

HEY SQUIRM. THEY writhe. They cover their faces and laugh as the petite white lady in a flowing Kenyan dress reaches into her bag and pulls out a stout wooden penis. She sheathes it in a condom. And, to their mortification, she tells them to pass it around.

Her audience attends Mituntu Mixed Day Secondary School in central Kenya, about 200 miles from the capital of Nairobi. These 98 teenaged boys and girls sit elbow to elbow on sturdy wood chairs in a sparse one-room building. Chalkboards line the front and back walls as a warm breeze wafts through screenless doors and windows. Whatever stark differences exist between Americans and Kenyans, the students’ reactions look familiar—averted eyes and titters, a sweaty mix of curiosity and the wish to disappear.

The speaker is Victoria Wulsin, M.D., a Clifton resident far from Cincinnati but right at home. She founded SOTENI International as a nonprofit focused on preventing and treating HIV/AIDS by every means possible in Kenya. Her small team of Americans and Kenyans has helped thousands of impoverished people in Nairobi and four remote villages. Progress is slow, painstaking, and altogether inspirational.

I accompanied Wulsin and SOTENI Executive Director Jenny Brady to Kenya in January and learned that HIV/AIDS mani-

50

fested here differently and with more vigor than in the U.S. and Europe. In the West, gay men, intravenous drug users, and hepatitis patients who received infected transfusions suffered acutely. In Kenya, the disease struck a broader population through unprotected heterosexual intercourse and through mothers passing it to newborns.

While most of the world fights the COVID-19 pandemic, HIV still plagues the poorest outposts more than 30 years since it emerged to trigger Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS). Nearly one in 20 Kenyan adults is HIV-positive, among the world’s highest infection rates. Yet that’s half of what it was in the late 1990s, thanks to the work of organizations like SOTENI.

A

MONG THE SOTENI VILLAGES OF HOPE, AS THEY’RE CALLED, THE hardest hit is Ugunja in western Kenya. Its infection rate was a staggering 21 percent among adults—four times the national average—in 2018.

What does such a place look like? Beautiful. Situated near the equator, Ugunja is verdant and mild, tree-shaded and teeming. It’s a mix of paved and dusty dirt roads and walkways. In a labyrinthine open-air market, women sell baskets they make by hand from palm leaves they harvest. Men sell mounds of tiny silver fish, called omena, that are covered in flies. Others cook chicken in curry sauces in large woks or sell stone and wooden jewelry. I ask Wulsin if we need to be wary of pickpockets in a place like this. “Oh, yes,” she says flatly, and I kick myself for not leaving my laptopstuffed backpack in the van.

Poverty is evident everywhere. Ramshackle roadside “hotels” are tin-roofed shacks. We visit a woman who lives in a thatched-roof hut, subsisting on basketweaving and selling produce, including papayas she harvests from seedlings provided

by SOTENI. Yet people are invariably dressed sharply, men in button-down shortsleeved shirts and long cotton pants, women in long skirts and blouses. Signs of progress are evident, with multistory buildings rising among the shacks.

SOTENI provides sex and HIV education to prevent and destigmatize the disease.

Staff members work with villagers to generate income through entrepreneurship.

They train community health workers, called AIDS Barefoot Doctors, to form support groups and distribute water purification packets, condoms, practical advice, and emotional support. Tangible success stories mix with maddening setbacks, like pulling out of one of the original villages where SOTENI worked.

With props in hand at the school, Wulsin is warm and direct as she describes the best and worst of human sexuality as an expression of love and life or of vio-

HIV and AIDS still plague the world’s poorest countries after 30 years. lence and coercion. She quizzes the Head Boy, Dennis—similar to a student-body president—about HIV/AIDs and how it’s transmitted. He says the disease spreads through intercourse and dirty needles. Wulsin tells the assembly, “Dennis told us that you can get HIV through sex. And that is when a man and a woman come together to make a baby, to make love, or to have fun. And if you are very blessed, you are doing all three at the same time.”

She urges the students to wait until they’re married or partnered to have intercourse. But she chooses her words carefully for an audience she knows includes sexually active or soon-to-be active teenagers. She discusses sex, anatomy, the works. She shows them a condom she wears on a necklace, its wrapper featuring a man and woman embracing. “This is a condom here that I carry just to remind people that it’s a normal thing,” she says. “Just like I take aspirins when I have a headache, I use a condom when I don’t want to get pregnant or get a disease.”

Her prop for a vagina is a cardboard toilet paper tube. She flattens it to indicate the shape at rest and expands it to show how it stretches for sex. And when you have a baby, she says,“it stretches this big,” encircling her fingers to the size of a baby’s head.

After students pass around the wooden penis, Wulsin enlists Mutwiri Mugambi Kelly, SOTENI’s new program director in Mituntu, to make one more point.

She unwraps a condom and asks him to hold his arm out straight and make a fist.

She stretches the condom around his hand and lower forearm. The message: No ex-

VISUAL AID (CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT) VICTORIA WULSIN DEMONSTRATES THE POWER OF A CONDOM IN MITUNTU, WHILE TEENAGE STUDENTS GIGGLE; AIDS BAREFOOT DOCTOR ROSELYNE AKINYI OMONDI LEADS A SUPPORT GROUP IN UGUNJA.

P H OTO G R A P H S BY J O N AT H A N W I L L I S

cuses for boys and men who think they’re too well-endowed to use one.

Jeremiah Munyi, secretary of SOTENI’s Mituntu board, watches the lecture seated against the front wall. Dressed in a black checkered sport coat and loosefitting gray slacks, the retired high school principal projects quiet authority as he rises to speak after Wulsin is finished.

“We Africans have to adopt the boldness of Americans,” he says. “We Africans have not been bold discussing HIV/AIDS. If you are not infected, you are affected.

Develop a love for HIV-positive people.”

S

OTENI HAS GROWN TO INCLUDE Brady, who became executive director in 2018; more than 40 paid staff in Kenya; and board members and volunteers scattered across the U.S. and Kenya. But it started with Wulsin and her singular passion for Africa’s public health crises.

She fell in love with Kenya in 1976 when she spent a fellowship year at the University of Nairobi following her first year of medical school at Case Western Reserve University. Wulsin sprinted forward with her education, earning an M.D. from Case Western, as well as a master’s in public health, specializing in epidemiology, and a doctorate in public health (both from Harvard). An array of public health jobs followed, 13 in all, in Cincinnati; Boston; Washington, D.C.; and back in Nairobi. She currently serves as director of preventive medicine and global health at UC’s University Health Services.

She married Lawson Wulsin, a native Cincinnatian, and they raised four sons, mostly in Cincinnati but also in Boston and Nairobi. Her heart never strayed from Kenya, though, and she returned to Nairobi in 1995 as HIV/AIDS advisor for East and South Africa for the U.S. Agency for International Development. Lawson taught at the University of Nairobi, and their sons attended a nearby school.

Victoria fought HIV/AIDS in 25 countries through 1997, as the epidemic laid waste to families. And she took notes.

“There were two things I thought could be done better,” she recalls. “First, the rush to get results within a two-year Congressional budget cycle was wrong because treatment takes lonCO N T I N U E D O N PAG E 62

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ORDER FORM: 062020

WORKING TO LIVE OR LIVING TO WORK? ¨ THERE’S NO DISPUTING THAT KEN OAKS AND FRIENDS HAVE BUILT TQL INTO A MULTIBILLION-DOLLAR BEHEMOTH IN THE LOGISTICS INDUSTRY. BUT THOUSANDS OF EX-EMPLOYEES ARE SUING THE COMPANY FOR THEIR FAIR SHARE OF THE SUCCESS. WRITTEN BY: JIM DEBROSSE

PHOTOGRAPH BY: AARON M. CONWAY

PAGE 53

Sales work immediately came to mind because, she remembers thinking, The harder you work, the more money you make.

With help from Miami’s recruitment office, she found Total Quality Logistics, a freight brokerage firm whose ads promised “endless opportunities for those who are self-motivated and dedicated to success.”

Headquartered in Clermont County’s Union Township, TQL is now the largest privately owned company in Greater Cincinnati. How? “It’s plain and simple—we work harder than anyone else in the business,” its website says. TQL’s founder and CEO, Anderson Township native Ken Oaks, is a near-billionaire and the wealthiest person in Cincinnati. TQL has consistently been named one of the best places

to work in the region and in the country by dozens of business publications, including Forbes and Fortune magazines.

But it didn’t work out that way for Yenser and thousands of other former TQL employees. She lasted longer than most TQL recruits: a year and half, first as a sales trainee at $33,000 per year and then as a junior account executive/broker who was paid a salary plus commission.

The salary, however, has to be covered by the sales revenue a broker brings into the company. Many former TQL employees say that’s difficult, if not impossible, for all but a tiny percentage of new recruits, no matter how many hours they work.

Some 4,500 former employees are now part of a class action suit against TQL in what local attorneys say could be the

ALWAYS BE CLOSING “IT’S PLAIN AND SIMPLE—WE WORK HARDER THAN ANYONE ELSE IN THE BUSINESS,” IS HOW TQL DESCRIBES THE SECRET TO ITS SUCCESS.

largest wage settlement case in Cincinnati history, claiming the group was collectively cheated out of tens of millions of dollars of overtime pay while struggling to make it under the company’s boiler room conditions. After 10 years of filings and motions on both sides, the lawsuit is scheduled to go to trial in July.

“If you want to make it there, you have to work really, really hard,” says Yenser, 32, who now sells for a pharmaceutical company. She isn’t part of the class action suit against TQL. “I was going in at 7 [a.m.] and leaving at 7 [p.m.],” she recalls, as well as taking phone calls from customers any hour of the day or night, including weekends and holidays. “I would get calls on Christmas Day or New Year’s Day. Say a refrigerated truck with a load of chicken breaks down, and it’s a holiday and you’re with your family. You still have to fix it.

You’re glued to your phone—it could take minutes or it could be hours.”

On top of managing freight shipments, brokers at TQL typically make 75 to 100 sales calls a day trying to drum up new customers, many of them first-time “cold calls” to shipping agents who hear daily from other brokers, including other brokers within TQL, Yenser says. “If you’re trying to make the most money, you’re going to go for the biggest companies, and everybody tries to get the same big customers. The people who make it have to be kind of cutthroat and kind of lucky.” For Yenser, the luck ran out when her biggest customer canceled the account over an incident she prefers not to discuss publicly.

I L L U S T R A T I O N B Y ( O P E N E R ) A N YA & M A R T I A L R E D / S T O C K . A D O B E . C O M / ( O P E N E R ) M O D E L : D A V E J A R R E D P H OTO G R A P H S ( L E F T & R I G H T PAG E S ) C O U R T E SY TOTA L Q U A L I T Y LO G I S T I C S

LIKE OTHER YOUNG PEOPLE FRESH OUT OF COLLEGE IN THE CINCINNATI AREA, MICHELLE YENSER WAS LOOKING FOR A JOB THAT WOULD HELP PAY OFF HER BURDENSOME STUDENT LOAN DEBT. IT WAS 2009, AND SHE’D JUST GRADUATED FROM MIAMI UNIVERSITY’S BUSINESS SCHOOL.

Fueled by hard work and possibly unrealistic sales pressures, TQL has had a remarkable run since Oaks launched it in 1997. And then came COVID-19, working from home, and a new economic model.

Analysts say it’s still too early to predict the pandemic’s full impact on the logistics industry, but it’s certain that a slowdown in the trucking industry that began in 2018 will continue. “Given the largely uncharted waters we are in, it is likely to be a slow, drawn-out process in order to return to ‘normal,’ or even a semblance of that,” Jeff Berman, group news editor of Supply Chain Management Review magazine, wrote in a March column.

TRANSPORTATION LOGISTICS IS one of the fastest growing U.S. industries, quadrupling in revenues from $57 billion in 2000 to more than $213.5 billion in 2018, the latest figures available from Armstrong & Associates, a market research and consulting firm. The modern transportation logistics industry was launched in the 1980s with the deregu-

WE’RE NUMBER 1 TOTAL QUALITY LOGISTICS, THE LARGEST PRIVATELY OWNED COMPANY IN CINCINNATI, IS DOUBLING ITS HEADQUARTERS FOOTPRINT IN UNION TOWNSHIP.

Logistics companies like TQL are matchmakers between the nation’s 1.2 million trucking firms that deliver goods (carriers) and the hundreds of millions of companies that need more than 11 billion tons of freight moved safely and on time

DRIVEN TO SUCCEED TQL CEO KEN OAKS (LEFT) AND PRESIDENT KERRY BYRNE.

lation of the trucking industry, then exploded in the 1990s and onward with the growth of the internet, GPS tracking, and mobile technologies transforming every other part of our lives.

every year (shippers). At TQL, brokers negotiate rates with carriers and shippers, find the most efficient “lanes” or routes for delivering and picking up loads, and track the loads until they reach their des-

PAGE 55

tinations. If brokers generate a positive margin as a result of those negotiations, they pocket a portion of it as commission.

Shipping products from point A to point B may seem simple, but it’s not, especially when carriers and shippers are at the mercy of fickle weather, road conditions, inevitable traffic accidents, and equipment breakdowns, not to mention outright theft and the foibles of truck drivers who can sometimes go AWOL. But there’s plenty of data crunching, tracking, and communication software out there to help make the system more manageable.

TQL has been an industry leader in developing and adopting those new technologies, including mobile apps that allow customers to track their own shipments and interact directly with brokers.

In 2018, TQL was the go-between for more than 1.5 million truckloads carrying nearly everything that touches our lives: food and beverages, chemicals and plastics, pharmaceuticals and healthcare products, automotive parts and electronics, and a multitude of retail and consumer goods. Armstrong & Associates ranked TQL second in the nation among freight brokerage firms in 2019. According to company figures, it grew from $52 million in revenues in 2003 to $3.6 billion in 2018, a mind-boggling factor of more than 70 times.

At its peak earlier this year, TQL employed more C O N T I N U E D O N P A G E 6 7

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ake a drive down Bellevue’s main drag and the signs of CBD’s explosive surge in popularity are, quite literally, everywhere.

The Kentucky Botanical Co., which deals extensively in CBD, occupies a shiny new storefront in the heart of town. Even the local coffee shop serves up CBD-infused brews. The sign outside a liquor store proclaims its message to passersby in bright, blinking red lights: “WE CARRY CBD.” The global market for cannabidiol (CBD) is set to grow to an astonishing $1.25 billion by 2023, according to a recent study cited by the FDA. While

5 8 C I N C I N N AT I M A G A Z I N E . C O M J U N E 2 0 2 0

it’s difficult to pinpoint when and why the substance became so popular in the first place, CBD’s benefits have been touted as wide-ranging and transformative, offering relief from pain, anxiety, and a host of other chronic ailments.

Just one of nearly 100 cannabinoids found in the cannabis sativa plant, CBD has historically been overshadowed by its more infamous cousin, THC, typically associated with the euphoric feeling that goes hand-in-hand with marijuana use. While THC and CBD are similar—they’re both phytocannabinoids—CBD’s effects are non-intoxicat-

Photograph by (Cover) matka_Wariatka /stock.adobe.com/ (This page) Tinnakorn /stock.adobe.com

DISPELLING CBD MYTHS If you’re finding it difficult to navigate the tangled web of claims about CBD, you’re certainly not alone. Research from the Consumer Brands Association (CBA) found that, although six in 10 Americans are familiar with CBD, at least four in 10 incorrectly believe the substance is just another name for marijuana. More than half erroneously believe CBD can get a person high.

The “alarming” lack of consumer knowledge, the CBA reports, underscores a need for greater clarity and regulations that address the most common consumer questions. Can CBD get you high? Will it show up on a drug test? Are the benefits real?

Jeri Schultz, a registered nurse and founder of Tulip Tree CBD, has heard all of these claims—and more. There was even a time when she was a bit skeptical about whether CBD could live up to the hype.

But long days spent managing emergency rooms and tending to patients took a toll on Schulz, who was prescribed anti-inflammatories to manage aches and pains. When a series of adverse reactions ruled out prescription medications, Schulz found herself on a quest to discover natural pain management alternatives. First, she tried food.

And then she tried cannabis.

“I’ve always been an advocate for the medicinal use of cannabis,” Schulz says.

“CBD started becoming more popular and I was able to actually assess it.”

She ordered products from a dozen different CBD companies. And she was impressed. CBD wasn’t just helping her manage chronic pain and inflammation associated with arthritis—it was helping her sleep better at night. But in researching the CBD that was on the market, she was troubled by discrepancies in quality.

Because the FDA is still evaluating many of the claims made about CBD’s benefits, it’s illegal to market CBD as a drug or dietary supplement. But paired with a lack of federal regulation, the sud-

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den influx of CBD products popping up on shelves in gas stations and gift shops can create confusion for consumers.

UNDERSTANDING THE LEGALITY OF CBD

KNOW BEFORE YOU BUY With the door wide open for CBD sales, dozens of CBD stores have popped up across Cincinnati. Even Kroger has joined the fray. The grocer does not offer ingestible or consumable CBD products—at least for now—opting instead for hemp-derived topical CBD products like lotions, oils, balms, and creams.

“Our top-selling item was the Veritas Farms lip balm, which is priced well for a consumer’s first experience with a CBD product,” says Erin Rolfes, corporate affairs manager for Kroger’s Cincinnati-Dayton Division.

“Similarly, we saw smaller containers of hemp-infused creams be popular with customers.”

If you’re interested in giving CBD a try, don’t just grab the first tincture

bottle you see on the shelf at a boutique. Avoid buying your CBD from Amazon—particularly if the products are coming from countries where CBD isn’t regulated.

“Make sure that it’s grown organically and that it’s not coming from China,” Schulz says. “There’s a lot of imports there and China doesn’t have the same regulations we have, so people are getting it and they’re not getting any benefits from it.”

Your best bet for quality CBD will always be a specialty retail store, whether online or brick-and-mortar.

And if you want to go the extra step to assure you’re purchasing reliable products, ask for a third-party lab report.

Reputable sellers will often send their CBD to third-party labs for neutral, unbiased quality tests.

Always consult with your doctor before trying a new CBD product. And always keep in mind: CBD is by no means a cure-all.

“Don’t get me wrong. CBD does not work for everybody,” Schulz says. “I’ll be the first to tell you it’s not a magic bullet. Like anything else, everybody’s individual.”

Illustration by Tong_art /stock.adobe.com

To understand CBD’s somewhat complicated relationship with the law, you need to jump back to 2018, when President Trump signed the Agricultural Improvement Act, a provision of which removed hemp from the Controlled Substances Act. Hemp and marijuana are both forms of cannabis, which has been illegal on the federal level since 1937. The government considers cannabis containing less than 0.3 percent THC to be hemp.

Anything above that percentage is marijuana.

So as long as CBD is derived from hemp, it’s legal, at least on the federal level. State regulations, meanwhile, are all across the board. Three states— Idaho, Iowa, and South Dakota—consider CBD illegal in all forms. Many others have specific restrictions, such as allowing CBD sales only in cannabis stores or banning CBD-infused foods and beverages.

Ohio is actually one of the more

lenient states when it comes to CBD sales, with no specific restrictions, so long as products contain less than 0.3 percent THC. Gov. Mike DeWine legalized hemp in 2019, in effect taking CBD off Ohio’s controlled substances list and ushering in a much-anticipated boom in CBD retailers.

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HEALTH WATCH EXPLORING CBD

WHAT TO KNOW BEFORE YOU TRY INTERESTED IN WHAT CBD COULD DO FOR YOU? HERE ARE FIVE THINGS TO CONSIDER. Quality of Ingredients: Not all tinctures and topicals are created equal. Before you make a purchase, do your research, shop around, and don’t be afraid to ask questions. Was the hemp grown organically?

Have the products been tested by a thirdparty lab? Be sure to read the label and confirm you’re buying CBD and not hemp seed oil, which doesn’t provide the same benefits.

Current Medications: Make sure you talk to your doctor about all medications, supplements, and vitamins you take before adding CBD to your daily regimen. While the existing body of research generally confirms that CBD is safe, it can change

Trying Topicals: If you’re seeking relief from chronic conditions like arthritis and psoriasis, you might benefit from CBD creams, lotions, or salves. And you might not have to go to a specialty shop to find what you’re looking for. Last summer, Kroger began carrying a specially curated selection of CBD topicals in select stores. the way your body processes certain medications, including blood thinners and antihistamines.

Choosing the Right Dose: Tincture bottles may tell you how many milligrams are in the bottle, but may not be clear on how

Not Seeing Results? It’s true that some people simply don’t respond to CBD, Jeri Schulz, owner of Tulip Tree CBD, says. But before you give up, talk to an expert. You may be dosing incorrectly, using a faulty product, or taking CBD in a way that isn’t right for your needs.

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much you should be putting under your tongue. Take too much or not enough, and you might miss out on the benefits. Talk to your provider to make sure you’re taking the correct amount of CBD. Or, if you’re looking for a low-fuss option, Tulip Tree offers single-dose tinctures, gummies, and soft gels.

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TYPES OF CBD PRODUCTS

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THESE FIVE CBD PRODUCTS MIGHT BE A PLACE TO START—AFTER CONSULTING YOUR DOCTOR, OF COURSE. Oils & Tinctures: Two of the most popular forms of CBD are oils and tinctures, liquid hemp extracts that are swallowed or absorbed under the tongue. But Tulip Tree CBD Founder Jeri Schulz cautions against buying the first bottle you see. Don’t buy it off Amazon, she says. “And for the love of God, don’t buy your CBD from a gas station.�

Skincare: CBD has made its way into the realm of skincare—perhaps with valid reason. A 2016 study found that topicals infused with CBD could relieve pain and inflammation for those suffering from arthritis. But if you’re just looking to incorporate CBD into your skincare routine, Kroger, which began selling CBD topicals last year, says its most popular product is

Seltzers: You heard that right. Cashing in on the same trend that spawned White Claw, companies nationwide, including homegrown Queen City Hemp, have introduced lines of nonalcoholic CBD-infused seltzers that come in natural flavors like passion fruit, guava, and lemon lavender.

a CBD-infused lip balm made by Veritas Farms.

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ALL OF US TOGETHER CONTINUED FROM PAGE 51

ger than two years. The other was a sense that treatment activities were driven by the donor rather than the people.”

Lawson and their oldest son, Wells, returned to Cincinnati in 1997 so Wells could finish high school here. But Victoria and her three younger sons stayed in Nairobi for another year. The family reunited in Cincinnati in 1998, and her ties to the Queen City deepened. So too did her commitment to fighting HIV/AIDS in Kenya.

In 2003, Wulsin started SOTENI, which is a translation from the Swahili language meaning All of us together. She resolved to

governed by a local management committee that’s empowered to budget scarce time and money. Members are locally elected and uncompensated, except travel reimbursements, tea, and pastries. Some travel an hour-plus to attend meetings.

SOTENI’s Mbakalo committee built a health clinic. Mituntu used donated land to build the Mixed Day Secondary School.

Ugunja has focused on AIDS Barefoot Doctors and their support groups. Kuria built a for-profit fish farm.

In Mbakalo, Raphael Barasa oversees a health clinic that never closes. By American standards, the clinic is rough: a “minor surgery” room, a cramped catchall examination/recovery room for women and girls, a similar room for men and boys. Women deliver babies on a narrow bed across from a tiny metal crib with space between for two people to pass. It’s clean and orderly but sparse.

The clinic offers immunizations every Monday and diagnoses malaria and other

SOTENI PARTNERS WITH P&G TO SUPPLY ITS VILLAGES WITH WATER PURIFICATION CHEMICALS, BUT CRACKED PLASTIC BUCKETS STOP THE PROCESS DEAD IN ITS TRACKS. empower Kenya residents rather than rely on Western experts parachuting in to problem-solve. And she would ensure that solutions were long term. “It was my Kenyan friends who were interested in starting an NGO [nongovernmental organization] that would be community-based and see if we could come together with our different strengths, resources, and interests,” she says. “I got a book from the library to see how you start a 501(c)(3) [nonprofit].”

Wulsin and five founding members of SOTENI visited more than 10 locations in Kenya to determine where the need was greatest: remote communities that were underserved, with a high concentration of HIV/AIDS, and with unused buildings from pork-barrel spending or unsuccessful ventures. They chose Kuria, Mbakalo, Mituntu, and Ugunja and held barazas—community meetings—to find the best way to serve each.

SOTENI’s village operations are now 6 2 C I N C I N N AT I M A G A Z I N E . C O M J U N E 2 0 2 0

diseases with an aging microscope. But it can’t magnify well enough to identify tuberculosis, a common and potentially deadly disease, especially for HIV-positive patients.

Prices are unrecognizable to Americans.

Barasa says a patient with undiagnosed malaria will be tested, diagnosed, and treated for about $2.30. Yet many can’t afford that sum in a region with low wages and high unemployment. SOTENI works out payment plans or subsidizes as best it can.

Barasa hopes to secure accreditation for this outpost as a national health system provider in order to receive federal reimbursements. He illustrates the arbitrary process to win accreditation at a meeting with his AIDS Barefoot Doctors, Wulsin, and Brady, telling them that health inspectors are expected soon. “OK, from the look of things, when those people from the ministry come, we will have to buy them some

soda,” he says, and pauses.

“Okaaaay,” Wulsin says slowly. “Yes,” says Barasa. “You know soda doesn’t mean just soda.”

“OK, I was wondering,” says Brady.

“Does soda also mean lunch or also other things?” “Yes, I can say lunch and transport,” Barasa replies, estimating that the unofficial expense may total about 500 schillings, or $5—a small sum, but one that approaches an ethical gray area.

EACH OF THE SOTENI VILLAGES LACKS clean water. For otherwise healthy people, that means enduring cholera, parasites, and other waterborne illnesses. For those with HIV/AIDs, it means wrestling with death.

For a solution, SOTENI looked homeward to Procter & Gamble and its simple purification system: four grams of powdered chemicals, two 10-liter buckets, a big stick or spoon, and a cloth filter. Those supplies, plus a lot of stirring, are all it takes to process clean water. P&G charges SOTENI a deeply discounted 6½ cents per chemical packet and provides 5½ cents per packet in training, travel, and general program support. Its massive program reaches more than 90 countries worldwide through 150-plus partners, purifying an estimated 16 billion liters of water since 2004.

Claude Zukowski, senior manager of P&G’s Children’s Safe Drinking Water Program, says the global giant needs nonprofit partners to get the chemical packets beyond its normal distribution system into remote places where they’re needed.

“It makes sense to work in communities where we know the packets are going to have the sort of impact on their livelihoods that SOTENI has,” says Zukowski.

We observe the purification process in Ugunja while visiting an HIV/AIDS support group. As Wulsin, Brady, and Ugunja Program Director Calvin Aloo approach the group, gathered in an Anglican church courtyard, the 25 in attendance sing and clap a song of welcome. Roselyne Akinyi Omondi, the AIDS Barefoot Doctor in charge of the group, leads them in an affirmation that all are “alive and kicking” by holding their palms out and shaking them.

Participants include two men, a toddler, and 23 women ranging from teenagers to elderly. Several leave early for choir prac-

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ALL OF US TOGETHER tice in the church. The courtyard is treeshaded, and we form a circle in plastic lawn chairs, which are omnipresent in nearly every home, yard, and office we visit.

Middle school children in crisp uniforms file by, and chickens peck for morsels at our feet. We’re all asked to make brief remarks in the middle of the circle.

That sort of greeting would be repeated at a Catholic mass, university board meetings, and numerous SOTENI gatherings.

In the deeply religious, heavily Christian country, this meeting and every other one we attend begins and ends with a prayer.

Omondi translates our remarks into Luo, the region’s predominant language.

A woman pours a P&G packet into a translucent plastic bucket and stirs with a wooden spoon that’s nearly as long as her arm. Aloo explains that huge wooden spoons are common utensils for cooking, especially ugali, a nutritious and inexpensive comfort food made from ground maize and sometimes combined with mil-

let. The consistency is similar to goetta but ground more finely.

Women in the support group dress in long skirts, some with colorful patterns, others solid and bright. One woman wears a red “Students for McCain 2008” T-shirt, emblazoned with an American flag. Men wear ubiquitous buttoned-down shirts and cotton khakis. Some speak English, but the conversation is in Luo. Members thank SOTENI for all they do, and one by one they plead for more.

They have enough P&G chemical packets, but many buckets have cracked. Others stretch the purified water over several days but can’t afford lids to keep out dust and bugs. In a region with crippling unemployment, a cracked bucket stops the water purification process dead in its tracks. Several ask for food so that they don’t have to take their HIV drugs on an empty stomach.

When the meeting ends, Wulsin warmly embraces each member. Smiles erupt. It’s the norm throughout the trip. Strangers

break into warm conversation with Wulsin, whose demeanor proves time and again to be disarming. Petite with shoulder-length thick white hair, bright blue eyes, a broad smile, and a quick embrace, she ensures even gruff security guards joke with her.

As for friends, colleagues, and clients? Bear hugs, eyes locked, pure joy radiating as they reconnect. Her charisma and commitment engender deep loyalty, including in an extraordinary man named Henry Unani.

Unani lived and worked in Nairobi in 2000, when he fell ill. He feared he’d contracted HIV, but tests were inconclusive.

His health deteriorated, he lost his job, and he was forced to move back home to Mbakalo, where there were few jobs but a lower cost of living. Unani fought the illness for five years and became a pariah among his kin. “Those were terrible days because, in my village, it was a time when nobody wanted to hear anything about HIV,” he says. “Most of the people thought that it was caused by witchcraft and mis-

SO CAN YOU. 6 4 C I N C I N N AT I M A G A Z I N E . C O M J U N E 2 0 2 0

conduct. You can’t share with anybody, especially plates. You aren’t free to live in society. I lost my job, I lost friends, I lost the respect of my own family.”

But Unani’s story didn’t end there.

When SOTENI came to Mbakalo in 2003, it hired him as a watchman for its health clinic. In 2005, he was finally diagnosed as HIV-positive and started a free regimen of antiretroviral drugs. (Quick recent history lesson: George W. Bush led the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief in 2003 to fight the HIV/AIDS epidemic. It provides free antiretroviral drugs and other support to Kenya and more than 50 other countries, and is lauded as one of the most successful U.S. global health initiatives.)

Unani’s health returned, as did a role in village life thanks in large part to SOTENI’s message of love and acceptance. Renewed in spirit and body, he longed to spare fellow HIV-positive villagers his fate of isolation and illness. He was among SOTENI’s first AIDS Barefoot Doctors. “I was eager to join

and be exposed to the information and give out and testify,” he says.

Twelve years later, Unani supports 100 group members with HIV. He says only a few scattered families still believe HIV is spread through witchcraft. The stigma of HIV/AIDS remains but is improving. Unani and his wife have raised seven healthy children, some of them already college-bound.

“I tend to think it’s a miracle,” he says.

AIDS Barefoot Doctors are not medical doctors, but trained community health workers with annual professional development refreshers. Unani and his colleagues trek as far as three miles to reach their clients by foot, moped, or bicycle, serving 169 support groups and nearly 19,000 HIVpositive people across Kenya.

SOME CHALLENGES PROVE INSURmountable. In Kuria, SOTENI battled corruption and misogyny. “The culture there was worse for women,” says Wulsin.“I never met a man in Kenya I didn’t love until I got

to Kuria. There were just some mean men.”

SOTENI and its Kuria council built and stocked a fish pond as a source of food and revenue for the village. The project was a money-maker, but the money disappeared.

Fingers pointed in many directions, including some at the village coordinator, whose story wasn’t convincing. “We were already having a hard enough time sustaining our other three villages,” says Wulsin.

A partner in the effort, the Danish International Development Agency, had shifted funding toward other priorities, so SOTENI pulled out of Kuria. “It was disheartening,” she says. “There is certainly a consequence of morale with the staff, reflecting why didn’t we follow the policies we have in place or have better policies.”

Early on, Wulsin dreamed of SOTENI scaling up to rival healthcare and antipoverty giants like Partners in Health or CARE, but she never found an angel investor, she says. She’s led 17 years of incremental growth and contractions from a head-

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ALL OF US TOGETHER quarters 8,000 miles away. How does she keep going? Wulsin answers in two parts, once in a van driving along a dusty dirt road and again after some reflection.

“We’ve weathered mistakes and setbacks and even corruption,” she says in the van. “It’s all of us together. I actually have a folder in my filing cabinet called ‘Guaranteed to feel good,’ full of letters and e-mails about changed lives.

Because I do get discouraged.”

And she credits her husband. “Lawson is blessed with a unique combination of compassion and wanting to help, optimism, creativity, coming up with alternatives and thinking outside the box, and believing in me. He’s the one who gets me through. I alter the Grateful Dead song line, ‘When there were no dreams of mine, you dreamed of me . . .’ to ‘When I had no dreams to dream, you dreamed for me.’ ” With infection rates cut in half, the world health community’s focus on HIV/ AIDS has waned. Wulsin describes the new challenge of “organizational survival issues” in the wake of shrinking economies and shrinking wealth, and she sees grim parallels between coronavirus and HIV/AIDS. “I think the anger I feel about our lack of [federal] response to COVID-19 is similar to how I felt for 20 or 30 years about HIV/AIDS,” she says—sickness and economic pain that could have been far less severe if Washington, D.C., had mobilized resources when public health officials first raised the alarm.

SOTENI fights on from Cincinnati, led by Brady, who left a job as a corporate communications executive to join the organization. She brings a perfectionist’s organization to this trip, finding safe transportation on chaotic roads, corralling SOTENI volunteers and staff for a series of well-timed meetings, keeping everyone running on time. In Cincinnati, she does high-level analysis of how SOTENI is faring and explores ways to keep it growing and meeting its communities’ most pressing needs. “It’s great to go where you’re led, but I think we have to implement a little more strategy to grow,” she says.

Brady helped streamline SOTENI, distilling five mission statements into 6 6 C I N C I N N AT I M A G A Z I N E . C O M J U N E 2 0 2 0

one. In March 2019, the organization broadened its mission to prevent and mitigate diseases—especially HIV/ AIDS, but also waterborne and maternal illnesses. A year from now, she wants a larger, stronger support base; an app that AIDS Barefoot Doctors can use to track progress; and more money to bring staff wages closer to market rate.

The COVID-19 pandemic makes caring for Kenyans that much more challenging.“How do we raise our consciousness about something that is 8,000 miles away?” Brady wonders.“If the world feels a little more connected because of us in a year, then that would be good too.”

Back home after the trip, Wulsin says she worries about keeping her UC staff— and all university students—safe in the current health crisis. “This is like the early days of HIV, when epidemiologists would burst into tears,” she says. “People just choke up because we’re faced with our limitations. We can only do so much, and people are really suffering.”

Still, when the pandemic subsides, she sees an opportunity for middleclass Americans to feel more empathy for impoverished Kenyans. “The average Cincinnati Magazine reader is affected

by COVID-19 in a way that HIV never did,” she says. “People with HIV have had their lives shrunk like that for decades.”

Wulsin and Brady have eager and energetic allies in Kenya, bringing fresh ideas and determination to the mission.

Kelly in Mituntu wants to create groups of HIV-positive and -negative residents to focus on job training and entrepreneurship, breaking down barriers. SOTENI Kenya Program Manager Noreen Obilo wants to expand to fighting typhoid, tuberculosis, and other deadly diseases and to tackle the root cause of it all: poverty.

On the trip’s closing days in Kenya, Wulsin reflects on this particular visit and the prospect of reuniting with a husband she loves so deeply that she limits overseas communication to e-mail to avoid becoming too homesick. “It’s bittersweet going home,” she says. “Visiting is always a shot in the arm for my work in the U.S. with SOTENI. It’s amazing that so few resources can do so much.”

LIVING TO WORK

ORDER FORM: 062020

WORKING TO LIVE OR LIVING TO WORK? ¨ THERE’S NO DISPUTING THAT KEN OAKS AND FRIENDS HAVE BUILT TQL INTO A MULTIBILLION-DOLLAR BEHEMOTH IN THE LOGISTICS INDUSTRY. BUT THOUSANDS OF EX-EMPLOYEES ARE SUING THE COMPANY FOR THEIR FAIR SHARE OF THE SUCCESS. WRITTEN BY: JIM D EBROSSE

PHOTOGRAPH BY: AARON M. CONWAY

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than 5,500 people at 57 offices in 26 states, from Boston to Phoenix and Minneapolis to Ft. Lauderdale. Nearly 2,000 worked in its four Cincinnati area offices. The company is doubling the footprint of its headquarters on Ivy Pointe Boulevard in Union Township, with construction in view of motorists along I-275, in order to add 600 employees. At least that was the plan before the pandemic hit.

TQL terminated “a number of employees” in March for underperformance, says Tom Millikin, the company’s corporate communications manager. But according to Freight Waves, a leading market research and news website for the freight industry, the company laid off as many as 700 workers due to an inability to handle everyone working remotely on its virtual network. Former employees and industry insiders told the website that TQL fired them without severance packages, extensions on their health insurance coverage, or waivers of the company’s ironclad non-compete clause if they hoped to seek other jobs in the industry.

With its central location and access to nearby interstates, the Cincinnati area has become a regional hub for logistics companies. But TQL has also played a big role in the creation of that hub by developing and then spinning off talent who formed their own companies. There are now 24 logistics firms in Greater Cincinnati with revenues of more than $10 million each, according to a 2019 Cincinnati Business Courier survey. Many of the departing employees who became TQL competitors wanted a better work-life balance, including Ryan Legg, Oaks’s original business partner. Legg and his wife Denise started MegaCorp Logistics in

2009 because they “wanted to create an employee-centric, family-oriented business where their employees could thrive,” according to a MegaCorp press release.

KEN OAKS DECLINED AN INTERVIEW for this story, but the record shows that he was one of the smart few who jumped hard on the right idea at the right time.

Two trends created the U.S. logistics boom, says Lisa Ellram, a professor of supply chain management at Miami University. The deregulation of the trucking industry in the 1980s opened the way to negotiated shipping rates, and the internet’s rapid growth provided an easy platform for brokers to connect carriers and shippers. Oaks, who graduated from McNicholas High School in 1983 and the University of Dayton in 1987, saw the opportunities while working as a produce buyer and salesman for Cincinnati-based Castellini Company, one of the nation’s largest distributors of fresh produce.

From the beginning of TQL, Oaks has recruited to his management team many of his former McNicholas football teammates. The 1983 team yearbook photo reads like a page from the future TQL executive playbook: Center No. 52 (CEO Oaks) hikes the ball to quarterback No. 7 (president Kerry Byrne), who hands off to tailback No. 23 (CFO Mike Zins), who drops back and throws long to wide receiver No. 15 (executive sales director Gary Carr). Touchdown, Rockets! And coming off the bench is freshman halfback Jeff Montelisciani, TQL’s vice president of sales. Former McNicholas football coach George Markley remembers the 6-foot-2 Oaks as “a quiet leader, a very efficient blocker, someone who completed his assignments as directed. He was never any problem. He was a willing worker.”

“Athletes are definitely the type of personality they’re looking for—the competitiveness and the ability to keep going in the face of No!” from cold-call customers, says Devin Reilly, a former safety on the St. Xavier football team.

Reilly worked at TQL from 2005 to 2012 before leaving to start his own company, Custom Pro Logistics, which moved from

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LIVING TO WORK Hyde Park to Over-the-Rhine in 2016. Kerry Byrne, who did give an interview for this story, says recruiting former players makes sense. After all, they learned on the field how to have each other’s backs—literally.“Trust is the first thing,” he says. “One of our guiding principles here is we value teamwork.”

TQL’s executive Gang of Four was part of a larger group of about a dozen boys at McNicholas who hung out together and still do decades later, taking golf trips and family vacations together, says Karen Veeneman (née Yorio), who knew the group while attending both Holy Angels Elementary School and McNicholas. She remembers that “all of them played football or baseball together and, of course, they were all cute. The girls all seemed to know them.”

(She would later marry one of the group’s “cute guys,” Mike Veeneman.) From Mc-

After winning the Carl H. Lindner Award for Entrepreneurial and Civic Spirit in 2017, Oaks told The Enquirer that he started TQL because he “saw the need for a higher level of service in the transportation industry that ensured customers received 24/7/365 service and honest, ethical, and proactive communication.

So I leveraged everything I had and opened Total Quality Logistics in 1997. Over the years, we have consistently grown by hiring high-quality people with a great work ethic and incentivizing them to provide consistent, incredible service to our customers.”

THE FORMER EMPLOYEES IN THE ONGOing class action lawsuit against TQL argue the company was built in large measure on the backs of exploited young people.

TQL’S TOP EXECUTIVES ARE PART OF A TIGHT-KNIT GROUP OF MCNICHOLAS HIGH SCHOOL FOOTBALL PLAYERS AND FRIENDS WHO STILL HANG OUT TOGETHER TODAY. Nicholas, she went on to the University of Dayton with Oaks and Zins, both of whom played on the rugby team there.

Oaks used to get his hair cut by Veeneman’s roommate in their dormitory hallway. (“The same trim. He still looks a lot like he did back then.”) Veeneman describes Oaks and his buddies as typical, hardworking high school kids “because our parents just didn’t hand everything to us. Everyone had to work in some capacity.”

After college, in the 1990s, many of the same group would hit the budding singles scene on Main and Sycamore streets in Over-the-Rhine. Veeneman remembers even then that “it would be 12 o’clock at night and we would all be having a good time, and [Oaks] would be out on the sidewalk on his phone and I’m thinking, Man, this guy is serious” about his job. Oaks has always shied from attention, she says. “He really doesn’t like to be praised. He’s a very humble person. He’s done very well for himself, but if he walked down the street, no one would think a thing about him being successful. He’s just another guy in a pair of jeans.”

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In a 2011 amended complaint filed in federal court here, plaintiffs tell a similar story—that they were expected to work 60 hours a week while on-call 24/7 for their customers, then discarded if they couldn’t meet the company’s sales revenue demands. The suit alleges the former employees were cheated out of their overtime pay because TQL had illegally exempted them from provisions of the U.S. Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA), a law that dates back to 1938 and the Great Depression. Neither side will talk about the case publicly. But at the heart of the legal dispute is whether TQL trainees and brokers fall under one of the three classes of exemptions for overtime pay allowed by FLSA: executive, administrative, and professional.

TQL argues that its trainees are exempt as administrative employees, which traditionally has meant office workers, IT staff, and others who support management or operations. But lawyers for the former employees argue that TQL trainees spend six months in the classroom, then

primarily act as assistants to brokers who are selling the company’s product, not managing its operations. As for its brokers, TQL argues that they’re exempt from overtime pay as commissioned employees. Plaintiff lawyers say the law requires that exempted employees earn more than half their pay from commissions. Many TQL brokers can barely cover their salaries, much less earn twice as much from commissions, plaintiffs argue. Those who can’t cover their salary with sales revenue within the first year are let go or, as company officials say, sometimes transferred to other company departments.

TQL won’t say what its dropout and turnover rate is among recruits, but Bruce Meizlish, one of the Cincinnati labor attorneys representing the lawsuit’s plaintiffs, said he doubts any more than 5 to 10 percent of young recruits make it to the one-year mark as commissioned brokers.

“What really happens is that [TQL] gets a large number of new hires—and a large number of those tend to be recent college grads—and tells them, If you go out there and kick butt, you’re going to make a bunch of money,” Meizlish says. “Like most organizations, though, that’s really not what happens in most cases. People can form their own opinions on [TQL’s] business model, whether they think that’s a good thing or a bad thing or they just don’t care.”

Oaks told Inc.com in a 2013 story headlined “Hiring Rule #1: Slackers Need Not Apply” that the average yearly pay for a second-year TQL employee was $60,000.

After three years, the average jumps to $81,000, and, after four years, to $112,000.

But he acknowledged in the article that the jobs weren’t for everyone. “It’s high stress, high pressure, but a lot of these people thrive on that.” Company spokesperson Millikin says the average pay ranges from $53,000 to $79,000 a year for brokers who have been selling one to three years and $104,000 to $120,000 per year for those selling three to five years.

Byrne says the company prides itself on the quality of its training program for new recruits and for giving them the tools they need to succeed. And, he adds, no one is hiding the truth of its high-pressure operation from new hires. “We’re a sales organization, so we’re always going to have

LIVING TO WORK turnover,” he says. “To mitigate that, we make sure the applicant really knows as much as they can about what it is that we do. So that’s why we provide as much information [as we can] and they shadow brokers throughout the job and the application process.”

In pre-pandemic days, TQL also provided a variety of antidotes aimed at destressing its mostly millennial employees, including monthly and holiday-themed patio parties at headquarters, Friday afternoon office “beer drops” (or water or soda, if you prefer) when the sales force exceeded its weekly revenue goal, and fund-raising shenanigans like a semi-tractor pull for cancer research, trivia night contests for the Cincinnati Youth Collaborative, and a “Toss the Boss” event when Oaks and 14 other employees rappelled down the company’s four-story headquarters to raise money for Big Brothers Big Sisters. The “TQL Cares” webpage says the company and its employees have an annual impact of more than 6,000 volunteer hours and $2 million donated to more than 2,800 charitable organizations.

Online reviews of the company’s work culture are decidedly mixed among former and current TQL employees. A longtime employee who gave the firm five out of five stars posted this on Glassdoor: “Pros: Clear goals for Sales with training to succeed.

High energy. Clear direction by Sr Leadership with open access to ask questions.

Great perks (beer drops, patio parties, relaxed dress code, employee appreciation events and even had a camel and kangaroo visit). Cons: Fair amount of turnover. Pay and benefits are good but not great.” But an employee who worked there less than a year posted a one-star review under the headline “Don’t do it!”: “If you are desperate enough and believe that after 26 weeks of training making $35,000 you will be able to make $100,000 then you are crazy. First of all you work for a Broker who is basically training you. You make all his calls and do all his work while he is supposed to be trying to get more. . . . After 6 months when your training is up, if you are not hitting the revenue, and you won’t be, then you will be terminated....”

Chris Bregger, a former TQL trainee who went on to sell paper products for 7 0 C I N C I N N AT I M A G A Z I N E . C O M J U N E 2 0 2 0

Millcraft, offers an opinion somewhere in the middle. Bregger joined the company after graduating from the University of Cincinnati in 2012 and left just six months later, but credits TQL’s “unparalleled” sales training with launching his career. “People pay thousands of dollars to get that kind of training,” he says. “But if you hate it, you hate it. It’s just about logging hours and hours making calls, and you have to be willing to answer the phone any time of the day or night. It wears on you.”

PERHAPS THE STRONGEST TESTAMENT to TQL’s training program is that so many of its competing logistics companies were started by former TQL employees. “If you talk to other brokerage firms in the area, most of [their owners] have worked for TQL at some point,” says Lacy Starling, who calls herself “President and Fearless Leader” of Florence-based Legion Logistics. Starling launched the company 10 years ago with then-husband Tony Coutsoftides, who had been one of TQL’s top sales people. He’s billed as Legion’s “CEO and Freight Guru.”

Starling says she and Coutsoftides, who divorced eight years ago but still work and raise their daughter together, decided they wanted to build a more family-friendly work culture than other companies in the region. At TQL, brokers operate like individual businesses, competing for their own customers and then taking “cradle-tograve” responsibility for all of their transportation needs, day or night. “We wanted to create an environment that offers a little bit more balance for employees, that you don’t have to be working 24/7 every single day,” Starling says. “So we have a team approach to our sales. Our team works together to service all of our customers, and then we’ve got one person [from the team] on call for a week and we rotate that as well.

If you’re going to attract people with families, if you want to retain employees, you have to create an environment where they feel like they can do this job and take a vacation with the family.”

Despite the growing competition—including recent entries into the industry of national heavyweights like Uber Freight and Amazon—TQL continues to grow with its hard-charging business model.

“There’s a lot of discussion about potential disruption in brokerage with some of the new players,” says company president Byrne. “How do we compete? Like we’ve always competed. Be very good at what we do. Offer superior customer service. And make sure that we are on the front lines of technology. We don’t want to be the first ones to develop everything, because we want to make sure people want it. So we’re in the process now of getting out to our top customers and carriers and asking, What do you really like? What do you want?”

Byrne says he’s confident the company will continue to adapt and grow. In recent years, TQL has boosted growth by expanding its brokerage service to include less than full truckloads and intermodal transport that uses both trucks and trains.

A key component, too, has been the company’s continuing focus on developing new technologies, including automated dispatch for carriers, enhancements to its mobile app for customers who want to book and track their own shipments, and the use of artificial intelligence to handle back office tasks like billing and scheduling. The new $20 million addition to the current headquarters building will accommodate a booming IT department, growing its 230 employees to 300 by year’s end, says TQL’s Millikin.

On the sales side, Byrne says TQL will stick to its tried-and-true approach of “single source accountability” in which brokers, with the help of trainees, vie for their own customers and then handle all their needs 24/7/365. Coordinating all tasks in one point of contact rather than dividing and rotating the workload among teams prevents miscommunication and lost loads, he says. “Folks told us early on that we couldn’t scale with that [approach], but we have been able to scale.

I guess there are pluses and minuses to both, but this is what we’ve always done, and it’s worked for us.”

But perhaps not for the thousands of employees who have departed TQL over the years. “I’m not someone who likes to speak poorly of a place where I learned a lot,” says Reilly, owner of Custom Pro Logistics. “But certainly the individual isn’t someone that’s really cared for [at TQL].

They’re treated more like plug and play.”

OLD BAY ® CRISPY OVEN FRIES INGREDIENTS | 6 Servings 3 medium russet potatoes,(about 2 ½ pounds), washed and peeled 2 tablespoons olive oil 1 tablespoon OLD BAY® Seasoning 1. Preheat oven to 350°F. Cut potatoes into ¼ inch thick strips.

Place potatoes in large bowl and add cold water to cover. Allow to soak 30 minutes.

2. Drain potatoes. Rinse well with cold water and pat dry. Place potatoes in large bowl. Add oil and OLD BAY®; toss to coat well.

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WRAPPED UP The Chickychicky Wrap, with chickpea shawarma, slaw, onions, and za’atar garlic hummus wrapped in a pita, from Harmony Plant Fare.

PHOTOGR APH BY DUSTIN SPARKS

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HOT PLATE

Keyed Up

Head to Kiki for the ramen, stay for everything.

THE FIRST THING TO KNOW IS THAT you’re not going to order wrong. The second thing is that if your dining partners will share plates, share plates (see: first thing). Such as the shishito buono, a piled-high plate of roasted shishito peppers—more filling than edamame and heartier than a salad, but just as green—tossed in shaved parmesan and bagna cauda, a warm, rich blend of garlic and anchovies. And the karaage fried chicken, with—and we can’t emphasize this enough—the Jordy mayo. Or the pepe meshi, confit chicken on spaghetti and rice that somehow works, and works so well. And the ramen, certainly the ramen. We went for the shio, with the pork belly and tea-marinated soft-boiled egg, but we will be back for the kimchi, which subs in tofu and its namesake cabbage for the meat.

Beyond the goodness coming out of the kitchen, Kiki has somehow made a fairly minimalist aesthetic wholly comforting (though, in fairness, the ramen might be doing some lifting here).

Kiki started as a pop-up at Northside Yacht Club, opening on its College Hill corner in August. And the new digs are all about low-key class: simple wooden chairs and stools, stunning stoneware plates, and delicately papered and water-colored walls. You’ll appreciate the aesthetic even if stopping by for carryout. So order another off the Japanese craft beer list—we loved the Hitachino Yuzu lager—and soak it in.

—A LYSS A KO N E R M A N N Kiki, 5932 Hamilton Ave., College Hill, (513) 541-0381, kikicincinnati.com. Dinner Wed–Sun, late night Fri & Sat.

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PHOTOGRAPHS BY ZACHARY GHADERI

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MICHAEL MAXWELL

LUNCHBOX

WEEKEND TASTINGS MAY be on hold, but the Market Wines proprietor has been finding the right bottle for Findlay shoppers since 2008.

I assume a lot of your usual market customers have a weekly routine: meat, produce, bread, wine? Yeah, that is the one thing that has been the most fun for me. I’ve been a market shopper for close to 28 years now. Being down there as a business, it’s nice when people come in and say, Hey, this is what I’m having. What do you suggest to go with it?

One-Stop Shop IN THE FEW MONTHS SINCE IT BECAME A PERMANENT FIXTURE WITH A STALL AT FINDLAY Market, Harmony Plant Fare has quickly gained a following among Queen City vegans and non-vegans alike, and for good reason: The staff is friendly and attentive, and its plantbased eats are served within minutes. Sandwiched between the bustling market’s meat counters, Harmony fills a niche with meatless twists on New York–style deli classics, plus vegan sides and desserts. Whether you’re a veteran vegan picking up pantry essentials or a newbie interested in meatless options, there’s no judgment here. Staffers are quick to answer any questions about flavors and ingredients and offer samples before you buy.

Meatless options here go far beyond salads. The toasted vegan sandwiches taste like the real thing, including spicy buffalo chicken ranch, turkey with melted Havarti cheese, and Greek gyros. Cold sandwiches boast classic flavors, like egg salad, Italian sub, and ham and cheese. Our pick is the chickpea shawarma, a tangy mix of garlic hummus, onions, coleslaw, and chickpeas, wrapped up in a pita. In true deli fashion, Harmony Plant Fare also serves as a convenient spot to pick up vegan meats and cheeses by the pound, plant-based dips and desserts, and dairyHarmony Plant Fare, 1801 Race St., free milks. For sides, try the Sunny Broccoli Salad with maple-tahini Over-the-Rhine (513) dressing and the creamy potato salad. Add a Chubby Bunny cookie, and 818-2839. Lunch and dinner Tues–Sun. you’ve got yourself a sweet ending to a tasty meal. — V I C T O R I A M O O R W O O D 7 6 C I N C I N N AT I M A G A Z I N E . C O M J U N E 2 0 2 0

You haven’t been able to do the weekend tastings for obvious reasons, but what are they normally like? We set them up to be pretty informal. And just a lot of fun, because that’s how I see wine. It should be fun, it should be enjoyed. It’s a beverage. You should drink it. And so we try to do generous amounts on our pours, and let you really taste it. Usually we’ll throw in some wines that you may have never even heard of. A Fiano, or a falanghina, or we’ll do some sparkling wines from areas in Southern France that are made from the Mauzac grape.

Do you have any go-to, everyday recommendations? There are a couple of things that I will go to all the time. Château De Ségriès Côtes du Rhône is a red wine that goes with a ton of different foods. And in the summertime, when it’s hot and they need something that’s superrefreshing, Château du Campuget rosé. — J A S O N C O H E N Market Wines, market-wines.com Read a longer conversation with Michael at cincinnatimagazine.com

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SNACK TIME

DESSERT DUPES WHAT DO YOU GET when you cross a home baker with a bodybuilder? A line of treats without refined sugar or other unhealthy ingredients that—wait for it—actually taste good. Personal trainer Rebecca Ward founded The Body Bakery & Co. after she started bodybuilding and found that most healthy “desserts” didn’t make the grade, flavor-wise. And she’s serious about getting it right. “I will not put a product out there just because it hits macros,” she says. (For the uninitiated, “macros” are the macronutrients that make up a food’s calories: fat, carbs, and protein.) “When I say ‘double chocolate chip muffin,’ it has to feel like a double chocolate chip muffin. It has to smell like it and it has to taste like it,” Ward says.

“I can’t call it a muffin and have it be chalky or dry.” Ward creates cheesecake, buckeyes, and other desserts from natural ingredients like apples, sweet potatoes, and oats, and then tests and retests them to make sure they’re worth the calories.

—AMY BROWNLEE The Body Bakery, thebodybakery.net Available at GNC, Better Blend, and other health food retail locations

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OFF THE MENU

ALL TOGETHER NOW ARNOLD’S CHEF KAYLA ROBISON BRINGS FAMILIES TOGETHER WITH HER AT-HOME COOKING KITS AND CLASSES. — T O R I W E R N S M A N

With most of our time being spent indoors during pandemic stay-athome orders, and with restaurants open for carryout only (at press time), lots of folks are honing their kitchen skills and sharing the resulting home-cooked meals with family. When Arnold’s Bar and Grill closed (except for Friday evening carryout) in mid-March, Kayla Robison took the opportunity to share her expertise on social media. The Arnold’s executive chef shows off recipes and techniques in weekly Facebook Live cooking classes. “[It] keeps my own sanity going,” Robison says. It’s also something she and her 10-yearold daughter can do together.

A few weeks into her web tutorials, she decided to make it even easier for viewers to follow along, and to bring in some needed revenue for Arnold’s, by selling meal kits—sourcing as many local suppliers for the premeasured ingredients as possible—at quarantine cookingwithkayla.com.

Her first meal kit dish?

The creamy pistachio pesto chicken penne that earned her a win on Food Network’s Guy’s Grocery Games. The tutorial for the “budgetfriendly, quick dish” garnered more than 8,000 views within a few days on Facebook.

Her thought process for selecting dishes to put in the food kits is simple, she says: It’s all about being kid-approved and at an accessible skill level.

“I knew I wanted to do family-friendly meals, since it’s something my daughter and I do together,” says Robison.

“I also wanted it to be at a basic skill level, but [viewers] can learn a lot.”

While she says she never thought she would be hosting a cooking show, she has had a ton of fun doing it. “It has sparked a new creative side for me, a new outlet,” says Robison. She says

creating the tutorials has expanded her passion for food. She’s even thinking about continuing them after the stay-at-home orders are lifted.

Her biggest takeaway from the experience is that this is time to spend together as a family, or with whomever you may be hunkering down. “Cooking is that one thing we will always have in life,” says Robison. “[It’s] very therapeutic.”

Quarantine Cooking with Kayla, quarantinecookingwithkayla.com, facebook.com/ arnoldsbar. Get the recipe for Chef Robison’s homemade gnocchi at cincinnatimagazine.com.

Supporting area food producers, Chef Robison sources local ingredients for her DIY meal kits whenever possible from Findlay Market, Avril-Bleh Meat Market & Deli, Sixteen Bricks, and more.

GOOD TO KNOW

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DINING GUIDE CINCINNATI MAGAZINE’S

dining guide is compiled by our editors as a service to our readers.

The magazine accepts no advertising or other consideration in exchange for a restaurant listing.

The editors may add or delete restaurants based on their judgment.

Because of space limitations, all

of the guide’s restaurants may not be included. Many restaurants have changing seasonal menus; dishes listed here are examples of the type of cuisine available and may not be on the menu when you visit.

To update listings, e-mail: cmletters@cincinnati magazine.com

THE BIRCH

On any given evening, guests nibble at spicy hummus served with French breakfast radishes and pita bread while sipping slightly spumante glasses of Spanish Txakolina. And while the dinner menu reads strictly casual at first glance— soups, salads, and sandwiches—the preparation and quality is anything but. An endive salad with candied walnuts, Swiss cheese, crispy bacon lardons, and an apple vinaigrette surpassed many versions of the French bistro classic. And both the Brussels sprouts and Sicilian cauliflower sides refused to play merely supporting roles.

Both were sensational studies in the balance of sweet, spicy, and acidic flavors. 702 Indian Hill Rd., Terrace Park, (513) 831-5678, thebirchtp.com.

Lunch and dinner Tues–Sun. MCC. DS. $

With wine on tap and an extensive local beer list, Coppin’s is an ideal place to meet for drinks. In addition to plenty of Kentucky bourbon, much of the produce, meat, and cheese comes from local growers and producers. House-cured meat and cheese from Kenny’s Farmhouse and cheese from Urban Stead populate the “Artisan Cheese and Charcuterie Board,” which dresses up the main attractions with honey, dijon mustard, house pickles, and Sixteen Bricks grilled sourdough. The mussels—made with seasonally rotating sauces and chorizo from Napoleon Ridge Farms in Gallatin County—were served with a peppery tomato sauce, perfect for sopping up with bread. The seven-ounce Sakura Farms Wagyu rib eye with wild mushrooms, roasted parsnip, and beef jus is a must have. Or try the striped bass with grape farro roasted broccolini and mussel cream sauce. 638 Madison Ave., Covington, (859) 905-6600, hotelcovington. com/dining/coppins. Breakfast, lunch, and dinner seven days. MCC. $$

COZY’S CAFÉ & PUB

On a visit to England, Jan Collins discovered the “cozy” atmosphere of London restaurants built in ILLUSTR ATIO N S BY C A R LI E B U R T O N

Named a

Top 10 Best Restaurant March 2020

historic houses. She brought that warm, comfortable feeling back to the United States in opening Cozy’s. Though the atmosphere in the restaurant is reminiscent of Collins’s London travels, the food remains proudly American. The produce in virtually every dish is fresh, seasonal, and flavorful.

The 12-hour pork shank stands out with its buttery grits and root vegetable hash, along with a portion of tender meat. And when it comes down to the classics, from the biscuits that open the meal to carrot cake at the end, Cozy’s does it right.

AMERICAN

COPPIN’S

KEY: No checks unless specified.

AE American Express, DC Diners Club DS Discover, MC MasterCard, V Visa MCC Major credit cards: AE, MC, V $ = Under $15 $$$ = Up to $49 $$ = Up to $30 $$$$ = $50 and up

Please call ahead to confirm services and hours during COVID-19 mandates.

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AMERICAN BARBECUE CHINESE ECLECTIC INDIAN ITALIAN JAPANESE MEDITERRANEAN MEXICAN THAI VIETNAMESE

EMBERS

6440 Cincinnati Dayton Rd., Liberty Twp., (513) 644-9364, cozyscafeandpub.com. Dinner Tues–Sat, brunch Sat & Sun. $$$

The menu here is built for celebration: poshly priced steak and sushi selections are meant to suit every special occasion. Appetizers are both classic (shrimp cocktail) and Asian-inspired (crabcakes); fashionable ingredients are namechecked (micro-greens and truffles); a prominent sushi section (nigiri, sashimi, and rolls) precedes a list of archetypal salads; Kobe beef on sushi rolls sidles up to steaks of corn-fed prime; nonsteak entrées (Chilean sea bass or seared scallops with mushroom risotto and broccolini) make for high-style alternative selections. Talk about a party. 8170 Montgomery Rd., Madeira, (513)

CWC THE RESTAURANT

984-8090, embersrestaurant.com. Dinner seven days. MCC, DC, DS. $$$$

Founded by the sister duo behind the culinary multimedia platform Cooking with Caitlin, this eatery makes comfort food feel a notch more au courant, imbuing a true family-friendly philosophy. Its burgers are topped with a generous ladle of gooey house-made cheddar sauce and served with hand-cut French fries that many a mother will filch from her offspring’s plate.

Portions—and flavors—are generous, eliciting that feeling of being royally indulged. Similarly, every item on the Sunday brunch menu virtually dares you to go big or go home. Make a reservation for parties of more than four and plan to be spoiled rotten. Then plan to take a lengthy nap.

1517 Springfield Pke., Wyoming, (513) 407-3947, cwctherestaurant.com. Dinner Fri & Sat, brunch Sun. MCC. $

THE EAGLE OTR

The revamped post office at 13th and Vine feels cozy but not claustrophobic, and it has distinguished itself with its stellar fried chicken. Even the white meat was pull-apart steamy, with just enough peppery batter to pack a piquant punch.

Diners can order by the quarter, half, or whole bird—but whatever you do, don’t skimp on the sides. Bacon adds savory mystery to crisp corn, green beans, and edamame (not limas) in the succotash, and the crock of mac and cheese has the perfect proportion of sauce, noodle, and crumb topping. The Eagle OTR seems deceptively simple on the surface, but behind that simplicity is a secret recipe built on deep thought, skill, and love. 1342 Vine St., Over-the-Rhine, (513) 8025007. Lunch and dinner seven days. MCC. $

GREYHOUND TAVERN

Back in the streetcar days, this roughly 100-yearold roadhouse was at the end of the Dixie Highway line, where the cars turned around to head north. The place was called the Dixie Tea Room then, and they served ice cream. The fried chicken came along in the 1930s, and they’re still dishing it up today. Families and regulars alike pile in on Mondays and Tuesdays for the fried chicken dinner. While the juicy (never greasy) chicken with its lightly seasoned, crisp coating is the star, the side dishes—homemade biscuits, cole slaw, green beans, mashed potatoes, and gravy—will make you ask for seconds. Call ahead no matter what night you choose: There’s bound to be a crowd. Not in the mood for chicken? Choose from steaks, seafood, sandwiches, and comfort food options that include meatloaf and a Kentucky Hot Brown. Or just try the onion rings. You’ll wonder where onions that big come from. 2500 Dixie Highway, Ft. Mitchell, (859) 331-3767, greyhound tavern.com. Lunch and dinner seven days, brunch Sat & Sun. MCC, DS. $$

GOOSE & ELDER

The third restaurant from chef Jose Salazar, Goose & Elder is a more everyday kind of joint compared to his others. The prices are lower, and most of the dishes, from burgers to grits, are familiar. Salazar’s menus have always hinted that the chef had a fondness for, well, junk food.

But junk food is only junk if it is made thoughtlessly. Everything here is made with little twists, like the cumin-spiced potato chips and delicate

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ribbons of housemade cucumber pickles with a sweet rice wine vinegar. Even the fries, crinkle cut and served with “goose sauce,” a mildly spiced mayonnaise, are wonderfully addictive.

The restaurant demonstrates that what we now consider “fast food” can be awfully good if someone makes it the old-fashioned, slow way. 1800 Race St., Over-the-Rhine, (513) 579-8400, goose andelder.com. Lunch Tues–Fri, dinner Tues–Sun, brunch Sat & Sun. MCC. $$

THE NATIONAL EXEMPLAR The classics are here—prime rib with horseradish and au jus; liver and onions; an eight-ounce filet with bernaise—plus some new favorites, including short rib pasta. Or have breakfast, English-style: fried eggs, bacon, sausage, stewed beans, roasted tomatoes, and buttered toast.

The dinner menu also features burgers, risotto, pasta, seafood, and plenty more lighter options.

6880 Wooster Pke., Mariemont, (513) 271-2103, nationalexemplar.com. Breakfast, lunch, and dinner seven days. MCC, DS. $$

THE NORTHSTAR CAFÉ

OPEN WIDE During restaurant and bar dine-in closure mandates due to COVID-19, Yavonne Sarber, the founder of Covington’s Sugar Whiskey Sis, who also owns Agave & Rye next door, overhauled the spirits-centric bar and restaurant’s concept in favor of one centered on jochos, or Mexican street hot dogs. Papi Jochos Street Dogs & Cantina opened for carryout and delivery just in time for Cinco de Mayo, serving specialty all-beef hot dogs piled-high with muchos toppings.

papijochos.com

In Northstar’s first outpost beyond the Greater Columbus area, the space itself reflects the ethos of the food: warm and comfortable, but still modern and fresh. The dinner and cocktail menus are fab, as is the large bar. But breakfast is worth waking up early for. Take the mushroom frittata, made with meaty mushrooms, caramelized sweet onions, and Gruyère. The portions are no joke—that frittata comes with breakfast potatoes and a dense, perfectly crumbly-but-moist housemade biscuit—yet it doesn’t feel gluttonous or excessive. In large part that’s due to the freshness (e.g., the sausage made in-house daily) and the abundance of healthy options. One of our favorites: the shooting star juice, a balanced blend of carrot, ginger, orange, and lemon. 7610 Sloan Way, Liberty Township, (513) 759-0033, thenorthstarcafe.com. Breakfast, lunch, and dinner seven days. MCC. $$

OTTO’S Chef/owner Paul Weckman opened Otto’s, named after his father-in-law, with $300 worth of food and one employee—himself. Weckman’s food is soothing, satisfying, and occasionally, too much of a good thing. His tomato pie is beloved by lunch customers: Vine-ripe tomatoes, fresh basil, and chopped green onions packed into a homemade pie shell, topped with a cheddar cheese spread, and baked until bubbly. Weckman’s straightforward preparations are best. The shrimp and grits with sauteed shrimp spinach, mushrooms, Cajun beurre blanc atop a fried grit cake, short ribs braised in red wine and herbs, served over mashed potatoes with green beans and caramelized baby carrots that will bring you the comfort of a home-cooked meal. This is, at its heart, a neighborhood restaurant, a place with its own large, quirky family. 521 Main St., Covington, (859) 491-6678, ottosonmain. com. Lunch Mon–Fri, dinner seven days, brunch Sat & Sun. MCC. $$

QUATMAN CAFÉ The quintessential neighborhood dive, Quatman’s sits in the shadow of the Our Lady of the Holy Spirit Center, serving up a classic bar burger. Look elsewhere if you like your burger with exotic toppings: This half-pound of grilled beef is served with lettuce, tomato, onion, and pickle. Sometimes cheese. The no-frills theme is straightforward and appealing. A menu of standard sandwich fare and smooth mock turtle soup; beer on tap or soda in cans (no wine or liquor); and checkered tablecloths, serving baskets, and plenty of kitsch is served daily.

Peppered with regulars, families, political discussions, and the occasional fool, Quatman’s is far from fancy. But it is fun, fast, and delicious.

2434 Quatman Ave., Norwood, (513) 731-4370, quatmancafe.com. Lunch and dinner Mon–Sat. MC, V. $

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RED FEATHER KITCHEN Historically peasant-grade cuts of meat get the full Pygmalion treatment at Red Feather in Oakley, where there’s deep respect for the time and tending necessary to bring a short rib, pork chop, or hanger steak to its full potential. After a quick sear to lock in juices, the steak takes a turn in the woodfired oven. While primal cuts play a leading role, the supporting cast is just as captivating. The hot snap of fresh ginger in the carrot soup was especially warming on a winter evening and the crispy skin on the Verlasso salmon acts as the foil to the plump, rich flesh. Service here only improves the experience. 3200 Madison Rd., Oakley, (513) 4073631, redfeatherkitchen.com. Dinner Tues–Sun, brunch Sun. MCC. $$

RED ROOST TAVERN At its best, Red Roost Tavern—located in the Hyatt Regency, downtown—meets its singular challenge with verve: offering a locally sourced sensibility to an increasingly demanding dining public while introducing out-of-town guests to unique Cincinnati foods. Take the goetta, rich pork capturing the earthiness of the steel-cut oats, served as a hash with sweet potatoes and poached eggs. The seasoning added a restrained, almost mysterious hint of black pepper. But the kitchen’s talent seems straightjacketed. Chefs thrive on instincts not covered by the five senses; restaurants thrive by taking careful risks. Red Roost seems to be struggling to find its third eye, and sometimes the entrées don’t live up to their ambitions. 151 W. Fifth St., downtown, (513) 354-4025. Breakfast, lunch, and dinner seven days. MCC,DS. $$$

RON’S ROOST They stake their reputation on their fried chicken, serving 10,000 pieces weekly. It takes a few minutes, since each batch is made to order. Ron’s also serves chicken 18 other ways, including chicken and waffles and chicken livers in gravy.

It’s all about the chicken here, but that’s not all they have. The menu is five solid pages of stuff good enough to be called specialties: Oktoberfest sauerbraten, Black Angus cheeseburgers, fried whitefish on rye, hot bacon slaw, lemon meringue pie (homemade, of course), and the best Saratoga chips this side of Saratoga.

3853 Race Rd., Bridgetown, (513) 574-0222, ron sroost.net. Breakfast Sun, lunch and dinner seven days. MCC, DS. $$

THE SCHOOLHOUSE RESTAURANT An old flag stands in one corner and pictures of Abe Lincoln and the first George W. hang on the wall of this Civil War–era schoolhouse. The daily menu of familiar Midwestern comfort fare is written in letter-perfect cursive on the original chalkboard. Once you order from a woman who bears an uncanny resemblance to your high school lunch lady, the elevated lazy Susan in the center of the table begins to fill up with individual bowls and baskets of corn bread, slaw, salad, mashed potatoes, chicken gravy, and vegetables.

The deal here is quantity. More mashed potatoes with your fried chicken? More corn bread with your baked ham? You don’t even have to raise your hand. 8031 Glendale-Milford Rd., Camp

(513) 242-3521, eatsugarnspice.com, Breakfast and lunch seven days. MCC. $

TANO BISTRO Gaetano Williams’s Loveland bistro is comfortable, with reasonably priced food and amenable service. The menu is tidy—25 or so dishes divided between appetizers, salads, and entrées, plus two or three specials—its flavor profile partially influenced by a childhood growing up in a third generation Italian family. Most of Tano Bistro’s main courses lean toward the comfortable side of American. For instance, Williams serves a stuffed salmon and potato-crusted chicken. The simple roast chicken is also worth a trip to Loveland, sweetly moist beneath its crisp bronze skin.

204 W. Loveland Ave., Loveland, (513) 683-8266, foodbytano.com. Lunch and dinner Mon–Fri, brunch and dinner Sat & Sun. MCC. $$$

TELA BAR + KITCHEN Classically conceived but casually executed comfort food, including mini-Monte Cristo sandwiches with tangy house-made pimento cheese stuffed into sourdough bread and fried crisp, mac and cheese topped with a Mr. Pibb–braised pulled short rib, and steak and potatoes. Servers are slightly scattered, yet enthusiastic and friendly, with a good grasp of the beverage program.

1212 Springfield Pke., Wyoming, (513) 821-8352, telabarandkitchen.com. Lunch and dinner Tues– Sat, brunch Sun. MCC. $$

TRIO Trio is nothing if not a crowd pleaser. Whether you’re in the mood for a California-style pizza or filet mignon (with side salad, garlic mashed potatoes, sauteed swiss chard, and mushroom jus), the menu is broad enough to offer something for everyone. It may lack a cohesive point of view, but with the number of regulars who come in seven nights a week, variety is Trio’s ace in the hole. A simple margherita pizza with roma tomatoes, basil, Parmesan, and provolone delivered a fine balance of crunchy crust, sharp cheese, and sweet, roasted tomatoes. Paired with a glass of pinot noir, it made a perfect light meal. The service is friendly enough for a casual neighborhood joint but comes with white tablecloth attentiveness and knowledge. Combine that with the consistency in the kitchen, and Trio is a safe bet. 7565 Kenwood Rd., Kenwood, (513) 984-1905, triobistro.com. Lunch and dinner seven days. MCC, DC. $$$

THE WILDFLOWER CAFÉ

Dennison, (513) 831-5753, theschoolhousecincin nati.com. Lunch Thurs & Fri, dinner Thurs–Sun. MCC, DS. $

Wildflower Café is not the sort of place that tries to wow anyone with feats of inventiveness. Its formula is simple but satisfying: lots of mostly local meat and produce, a menu that continuously changes with available ingredients, a nice selection of wine and beer, and well-made, homey food. The small, focused menu has a classic American quality (salads, steaks, burgers) with enough surprises to keep things interesting. Many of the dishes are designed with open spaces to be filled with whatever is available in the kitchen that day, an advantage of an unfussy style. You don’t go to Wildflower expecting a certain kind of perfection; you accept that your favorite dish from last time might be made differently tonight, or no longer available. Like the farmhouse that Wildflower occupies, the imperfections are part of the charm. 207 E. Main

SUGAR N’ SPICE

St., Mason, (513) 492-7514, wildflowergourmetcafe. com. Lunch and dinner Tues–Sat. MCC. $$$

This Paddock Hills diner has been dishing up wispy-thin pancakes and football-sized omelettes to Cincinnatians since FDR was signing new deals. Breakfast and lunch offerings mix old-hat classics like steak and eggs, corned beef hash, and basic burgers with funky iterations that draw on ethnic ingredients such as chorizo and tzatziki. Get here early if you don’t want to stand in line. 4381 Reading Rd., Paddock Hills,

YORK STREET CAFÉ Five blocks from the Newport riverfront, Terry and Betsy Cunningham have created the sort of comfortable, welcoming environment that encourages steady customers. A dependable menu and quirky atmosphere appeal to a broad range of diners, from non-adventurous visiting relatives to non-attentive children. Desserts

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have always been one of the stars: flourless chocolate hazelnut torte, bittersweet, rich and moist; butter rum pudding that would be equally at home on a picnic table or a finely dressed Michelin-starred table. 738 York St., Newport, (859) 261-9675, yorkstonline.com. Lunch and dinner Tues–Sat. MCC, DS. $$

BARBECUE ELI’S BBQ Elias Leisring started building his pulled pork reputation under canopies at Findlay Market and Fountain Square in 2011. Leisring’s proper little ’cue shack along the river serves up ribs that are speaking-in-tongues good, some of the zazziest jalapeño cheese grits north of the Mason-Dixon line, and browned mashed potatoes that would make any short order cook diner-proud. The small no-frills restaurant—packed cheek-by-jowl most nights—feels like it’s been there a lifetime, with customers dropping vinyl on the turntable, dogs romping in the side yard, and picnic tables crowded with diners. The hooch is bring-your-own, and the barbecue is bona fide. 3313 Riverside Dr., East End, (513) 533-1957, elis barbeque.com. Lunch and dinner seven days. MCC. $

PONTIAC BBQ Dan Wright’s BBQ dream comes to life in a honky-tonkish setting, delivering inexpensive barbecue that draws from multiple traditions—Kansas City, Memphis, and Texas— a few basic sides (bacon-and-pickled-jalapeño-topped white grits and a silky mac-and-cheese), and plenty of bourbon. Snack on fried pickles or smoked wings, then move on to brisket (both fatty and lean), pulled pork, and smoked-on-the-bone short ribs. This is ridiculously highquality comfort food at a friendly price point. 1403 Vine St., Over-the-Rhine, (513) 579-8500, pontiacbbq.com. Lunch and dinner Tues–Sun, brunch Sun. MCC. $$

WALT’S HITCHING POST A Northern Kentucky institution returns. Roughly 750 pounds of ribs per week are pit-fired in a small building in front of the restaurant, with a smaller dedicated smoker out back for brisket and chicken. Walt’s ribs begin with several hours in the smokehouse and then are quick-seared at the time of service. This hybrid method takes advantage of the leaner nature of the baby-back ribs they prefer to use. Each rib had a just-right tooth to it where soft flesh peeled away from the bone. One hidden treasure: Walt’s house-made tomato and garlic dressing.

Slightly thicker than a vinaigrette yet unwilling to overwhelm a plate of greens, the two key elements play well together. 3300 Madison Pke., Ft. Wright, (859) 360-2222, waltshitchingpost.com. Dinner seven days. MCC. $$

CHINESE AMERASIA A sense of energetic fun defines this tiny Chinese spot with a robust beer list. The glossy paper menu depicts Master Chef Rich Chu as a “Kung Food” master fighting the evil fast-food villain with dishes like “fly rice,” “Brocco-Lee,” and “Big Bird’s Nest.” Freshness rules. Pot stickers, dumplings, and wontons are hand-shaped. The Dragon’s Breath wontons will invade your dreams. Seasoned ground pork, onion, and cilantro meatballs are wrapped in egg dough, wok simmered, and topped with thick, spicy red pepper sauce and fresh cilantro. Noodles are clearly Chef Chu’s specialty, with zonxon (a tangle of thin noodles, finely chopped pork, tofu, and mushrooms cloaked in spicy dark sauce and crowned with peanuts and cilantro) and Matt Chu’s Special (shaved rice noodle, fried chicken, and seasonal vegetables in gingery white sauce) topping the menu’s flavor charts. 521 Madison Ave., Covington, (859) 261-6121. Lunch Sun–Fri, dinner seven days. MCC. $

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ORIENTAL WOK This is the restaurant of your childhood memories: the showy Las Vegas-meets-China decor, the ebulliently comedic host, the chop sueys, chow meins, and crab rangoons that have never met a crab. But behind the giant elephant tusk entryway and past the goldfish ponds and fountains is the genuine hospitality and warmth of the Wong family, service worthy of the finest dining establishments, and some very good food that’s easy on the palate. Best are the fresh fish: salmon, sea bass, and halibut steamed, grilled, or flash fried in a wok, needing little more than the ginger–green onion sauce that accompanies them. Even the chicken lo mein is good. It may not be provocative, but not everyone wants to eat blazing frogs in a hot pot. 317 Buttermilk Pke., Ft. Mitchell, (859) 331-3000; 2444 Madison Rd., Hyde Park, (513) 871-6888, orientalwok.com. Lunch Mon–Fri (Ft. Mitchell; buffet Sun 11–2:30), lunch Tues–Sat (Hyde Park), dinner Mon–Sat (Ft. Mitchell) dinner Tues–Sun (Hyde Park). MCC. $$

THE PACIFIC KITCHEN The monster of a menu can be dizzying. Ease in with some top-notch Korean Fried Chicken. These slightly bubbly, shatter-crisp wings are painted with a thin gochujang pepper sauce (a foil to the fat). It takes 24 hours to prep the Cantonese duck, between a honey-vinegar brine to dry the skin, a marinade of star anise, bean paste, and soy within the re-sealed cavity, and the crispy convection oven finish. Dolsot bibimbap had plenty of crispy rice at the bottom of the stone bowl, and the accompanying banchan were soothing yet flavorful, especially the strips of lightly pickled cucumber. Even dishes like a Malaysian goat stew resonated with rich, original flavors. 8300 Market Place Lane, Montgomery, (513) 898-1833, thepacific.kitchen. Lunch and dinner seven days; dim sum Sat & Sun. MCC. $$

also includes Korean kalbi (tenderific beef ribs marinated and glazed in a sweet, dark, sesame soy sauce) and dolsat bibimbap, the hot stone bowl that’s a favorite around town. 1544 Madison Rd., East Walnut Hills, (513) 751-3333, suziewongs.com. Lunch Tues–Sat, dinner Tues–Sun. MCC, DS. $$

UNCLE YIP’S Long before sushi somehow un-disgusted itself to the Western World, China had houses of dim sum. Uncle Yip’s valiantly upholds that tradition in Evendale. This is a traditional dim sum house with all manner of exotic dumplings, including shark fin or beef tripe with ginger and onion. As for the seafood part of the restaurant’s full name, Uncle Yip has most everything the sea has to offer, from lobster to mussels. The menu has more than 260 items, so you’ll find a range of favorites, from moo goo gai pan to rock salt frog legs. 10736 Reading Rd., Evendale, (513) 7338484, uncleyips.com. Lunch and dinner seven days. MCC, discount for cash. $$

YAT KA MEIN This noodle house caters to our inner Chinese peasant.

Yat Ka Mein offers humble, everyday Cantonese dishes of egg noodles, tasty dumplings packed with shrimp or pork, fresh veggies, and chicken broth. Almost begrudgingly the menu includes popular American-style Chinese dishes, like the ubiquitous sweet and sour chicken, Moo Goo Gai Pan, roast duck, and so forth. But what makes the place unique are less familiar dishes like Dan Dan noodles, a spicy, sweat-inducing blend of garlic, chili peppers, and ground chicken marinated in chili sauce. 2974 Madison Rd., Oakley, (513) 321-2028, yatkamein.biz. Lunch and dinner seven days. MCC. $

SHANGHAI MAMA’S This 1920s Asian noodle house—complete with dark woodwork and bird cages—offers big bowls of noodle soups, rice bowls, and crunchy, traditional salads. The noodle bowl selections are the most popular, with everything from spicy chicken to Shanghai ribs, shrimp to tofu, and orange duckling to wild mushrooms. Try the Shanghai flatbreads, a “pancake” with different toppings and tangy dipping sauce. You’ll find the downtown professional crowd during the day, but come weekend nights Shanghai Mama’s is bright lights big city with after-theater diners, restaurant staff, and bar patrons socializing and slurping noodle soups until the wee morning hours. 216 E. Sixth St., downtown, (513) 241-7777, shanghaimamas.com. Lunch Mon–Fri, dinner Mon–Sat. MCC. $$

SICHUAN BISTRO CHINESE GOURMET Like many Chinese restaurants that cater to both mainstream American and Chinese palates, this strip mall gem uses two menus. The real story here is found in dishes of pungent multi-layered flavors that set your mouth ablaze with fermented peppers and fresh chilies and then just as quickly cool it down with the devilish, numbing sensation of hua jiao, Sichuan pepper. Its numbing effect is subtle at first: appetizers of cold sliced beef and tripe, as well as slices of pork belly with a profusion of minced garlic, lean toward the hot and sweet; mapo tofu freckled with tiny fermented black beans and scallions, and pork with pickled red peppers and strips of ginger root, progress from sweet to pungent to hot to salty—in that order. Alternated with cooling dishes—nibbles of rice, a verdant mound of baby bok choy stir-fried with a shovelful of garlic, refreshing spinach wilted in ginger sauce, a simply sensational tea-smoked duck—the effect is momentarily tempered.

7888 S. Mason Montgomery Rd., Mason, (513) 770-3123, sichuanbistro.com. Lunch and dinner Tues–Sun. MCC, DS. $$

SUZIE WONG’S ON MADISON A few items on the menu resemble those that were once served at Pacific Moon, such as laub gai and Vietnamese rolls, both variations of lettuce wraps. For the laub gai, browned peppery chicken soong (in Cantonese and Mandarin, referring to meat that is minced) is folded into leaf lettuce with stems of fresh cilantro and mint, red Serrano peppers, a squeeze of lime juice, and a drizzle of fish sauce. In the Vietnamese roll version, small cigar-sized rolls stuffed with chicken and shrimp are crisp fried and lettuce wrapped in the same manner. The Pan-Asian menu

ECLECTIC Top 10

ABIGAIL STREET

Most people who’ve eaten at Abigail Street have favorite dishes that they order every visit: the Moroccan spiced broccoli, for example, or the mussels charmoula, with its perfect balance of saffron, creaminess, and tomatoey acidity. Many of the new items on the menu have the same perfected feeling as these classics.

Working within a loose framework of Middle Eastern and North African flavors, Abigail Street has never fallen into a routine that would sap its energy. New offerings like the duck leg confit, with spicy-sour harissa flavors, firmtender butternut squash, and perfectly made couscous, feel just as accomplished as old favorites like the falafel, beautifully moist and crumbly with a bright parsley interior. The restaurant is always watching for what works and what will truly satisfy, ready to sacrifice the superficially interesting in favor of the essential. 1214 Vine St., Over-the-Rhine, (513) 421-4040, abigailstreet.com. Dinner Tues–Sat. MCC, DS. $$

Top 10

BOCA

With its grand staircase, chandelier, and floorto-ceiling draperies, Boca has an atmosphere of grandeur and refinement. There is a sense of drama not only in the decor but in everything it serves. In some dishes, there is a painterly sense of contrast and surprise, like violet-derived purple sugar beside the pain de Gênes (French almond cake). In others, there is a dramatic suspense, like the whole egg yolk quivering in the center of the Fassone tartare waiting to be broken. While staying mostly grounded in the fundamentals of Italian and French cuisine, Boca has an air of international sophistication that sets its food apart. The hamachi crudo, an old standby on the menu, takes Japanese flavors and gives them new dimensions with grapefruit suprêmes and slivers of shishito pepper. This is food of extraordinary creativity and flair. 114 E. Sixth St., downtown, (513) 5422022, bocacincinnati.com. Dinner Mon–Sat. MCC, DS. $$$

Top 10

BOUQUET RESTAURANT AND WINE BAR

Normally diners aren’t pleased when a restaurant runs out of something. At Bouquet, though, surprise changes to the menu are simply a sign of integrity. Chef-

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3834 Fulton Grove Rd Cincinnati, OH 45245 (513) 275-8368 or (513) 444-6020 thefultongrovewinery.com fultongrovewinery@gmail.com

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Vintage Ohio South

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9LVLW 3UHEOH &RXQW\Ĺ?V Ć“UVW DQG RQO\ ZLQHU\ ORFDWHG LQ DQ RULJLQDO Ĺ?V one-room brick schoolhouse. ([SHULHQFH WKH EHDXWLIXO WDVWLQJ URRP IHDWXULQJ LQWHUQDWLRQDOO\ DZDUG ZLQQLQJ ZLQHV PDGH RQ VLWH 2YHU KDQG FUDIWHG ZLQHV DYDLODEOH 5HOD[ DQG HQMR\ 3UHEOH &RXQW\Ĺ?V Ć“QHVW winery.

152 State Route 726 Eaton, OH 45320 (937) 472-WINE (9463) oshwinery.com

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owner Stephen Williams is serious about using seasonal ingredients, and if the figs have run out or there is no more chicken from a local farm, so be it. The flavors at Bouquet are about doing justice to what’s available. Preparations are unfussy, complexity coming from within the vegetables and proteins themselves. A tomato salad—wonderfully fresh and vibrant, so you know the tomatoes have just come off a nearby vine—is dressed with chopped shiso, a crimson herb that tastes like a mysterious combination of mint and cilantro. This determination to make something delicious out of what’s on hand, to embrace limitations, gives the food at Bouquet a rustic, soulful quality. 519 Main St., Covington, (859) 491-7777, bouquetrestaurant.com. Dinner Mon–Sat. MCC, DS. $$

COMMONWEALTH BISTRO

SUGAR FIX Cincinnatians hunkering down at home during the pandemic had reason to celebrate in April when Holtman’s Donuts opened its muchanticipated Oakley location on Madison Road—and also reopened its West Chester store—for online carryout orders. A sign of the times, the opening was marked by a limited-release black-and-orangestriped Tiger King doughnut filled with peanut butter mousse. holtmans

donutshop.com

Everything from the old jukebox by the entrance to the sepia-toned rabbit-and-pheasant wallpaper exudes an appreciation for the antique. But rather than duplicating old recipes, Covington’s Commonwealth uses history as a springboard to create something elegant and original. Two dishes get at what makes this place special: biscuits and fried rabbit. Their biscuit, served with tart quince butter, is perfection—moist and flaky, without being coat-your-throat buttery or crumble-to-ash dry. The rabbit is crisp, light, and not at all greasy, with just the right touch of seasoning and a bright biz baz sauce, a cilantro and garlic sauce of Somali origin that tastes like a creamy salsa verde. Brunch offers the same sort of mashup, including salsa verde pork with pickled jalapeño grits made creamy with the yolk of a 75-degree egg and a smoky, spicy, not too salty Bloody Mary. 621 Main St., Covington, (859) 916-6719, commonwealthbistro. com. Dinner Tues–Sun, Brunch Sat & Sun. MCC. $$

CROWN REPUBLIC GASTROPUB What makes Crown Republic special isn’t its handful of outstanding dishes. It’s the place’s sheer consistency. No single dish is absolutely mind-blowing or completely original, but when almost everything that comes out is genuinely tasty, the service is always friendly and attentive, and (stop the presses!) the bill is quite a bit less than you expected, you sit up and pay attention. The crab and avocado toast, served on grilled bread with lime juice and slivers of pickled Fresno chiles, is a prime example of what makes Crown Republic tick. The cocktails are equally unfussy and good, like the Tipsy Beet, made with vodka, housemade beet shrub, cucumber, mint, and citrus peel. Crown Republic has a mysterious quality that I can only describe as “good energy.”

720 Sycamore St., downtown, (513) 246-4272, crgcincy.com. Lunch and dinner Tues–Sat. MCC. $$

E+O KITCHEN The former Beluga space comes alive with a menu that conjoins minimalist Asian with gutsycum-earthy Latin. The results are hit-or-miss: while guacamole was pointlessly studded with edamame, the pork belly buns are especially tender. Taco plates are a safe bet, with the “sol” pastor—pineapple coupled with Korean kimchi, bulgogi pork, and cilantro—hitting all the right notes. More adventurous palates may opt for the nuanced ramen—the pork and soy broth teeming with cuts of both pork belly and slow-cooked shoulder, while a superbly poached egg lingers at the edge, awaiting its curtain call. Service is friendly but tends to sputter when it comes to the basics of hospitality. 3520 Edwards Rd., Hyde Park, (513) 832-1023, eokitchen.com. Lunch and dinner seven days. MCC. $$

THE LITTLEFIELD Inside a modest 1,500 square-foot space on Spring Grove, just south of Hamilton Avenue, at least 70-odd bourbons behind the bar drive this

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little restaurant’s philosophy. The menu is meant to be limited, the better to support and celebrate the bottled flavors up front. There are surprises: a faint hint of curry powder deepens the moody cauliflower fritters; skewered golf-balls of mild, peppery ground lamb get a faint crust from the final sear. You’ll also want to order the smoked pork katsu. Panko crusted cutlets of pork, topped with tonkatsu sauce, served with sesame ginger slaw and kewpie mayo. The signature chicken and corn chowder is exactly what you need on a cold winter’s day. 3934 Spring Grove Ave., Northside, (513) 386-7570, littlefieldns.com. Lunch Mon–Sat, dinner seven days, brunch Sun. V, MC. $

MAPLEWOOD KITCHEN The latest effort from local restaurant juggernaut Thunderdome, owner of the Currito franchise. Order at the counter, then find your own table, and a server will deliver what you’ve selected. There’s no cohesive cuisine, rather, the menu takes its cue from all corners of the globe: chicken tinga, spaghetti pomodoro, a New York Strip steak, guajillo chicken are all represented, along with a satisfying pappardelle with housemade sausage. Brunch is available all day; try the light lemon ricotta pancakes or the satisfying avocado benedict. 525 Race St., downtown, (513) 421-2100, maplewoodkitchenandbar.com.

Breakfast, lunch, and dinner seven days. MCC. $$

MELT REVIVAL In this Northside sandwich joint, the restaurant’s name pretty much dictates what you should get. Diners have their choice of sandwiches, including the vegetarian cheesesteak—seitan (a meat substitute) topped with roasted onions, peppers, and provolone—and the J.L.R. Burger, a black bean or veggie patty served with cheese, tomato, lettuce and housemade vegan mayo. For those who require meat in their meals, try the verde chicken melt: juicy pieces of chicken intermingle with pesto, zucchini, and provolone. Not sure you’ll want a whole sandwich? Try one of the halvesies, a halfsalad, half-soup selection popular with the lunch crowd. 4100 Hamilton Ave., Northside, (513) 8188951, meltrevival.com. MCC, DS. $

THE MERCER This Vine Street spot is the brainchild of Jon Zipperstein, owner of the steak and sushi mainstay Embers in Kenwood. The Mercer proves admirably that comforting staples—when prepared with precision and served with warmth—can send even the most curmudgeonly diner off fat and happy. Take the short ribs. Many places do a great short rib, but these are lovely, dutifully seared, braised slow and low until tender, and not overwhelmed by fatty gravy. It’s the polenta that really launches this dish into high orbit, the quicksand texture that ever-so-slowly absorbed the braising liquid, still suggestive of root vegetable sweetness. For dessert, try the savory cheesecake. It’s criminally rich, and worth saving room for the unique mix of four cheeses: blue, goat, cream, and ricotta. The slice relies on compressed grapes, crumbs of rosemary-infused walnut cookie crust and drops of a port and pear reduction to offer just a hint of sweet. 1324 Vine St., Over-the-Rhine, (513) 421-5111, themercerotr. com. Dinner Tues–Sun. MCC. $$

METROPOLE Metropole has been remarkably stable since it opened in 2012. Even when chefs have left, the organization has promoted from within, kept popular dishes on the menu, and maintained a certain vibe. Its new chef, David Kelsey, has been with the business since 2016, and his menu will feel familiar, with a balance between sophistication and rusticity. Its vegetarian fare contains many of its most inventive and delightful creations. The chilled cantaloupe soup has a creamy note from coconut milk and a hint of spice floating in at the

end of every bite to balance the subtle, melon-y sweetness. The fancy “candy bar,” with its light and crispy peanut wafers and ring of flourless chocolate cake and caramel, encapsulates Metropole at its best: fun and whimsical, but rooted in careful execution of deep and satisfying flavors.

609 Walnut St., downtown, (513) 578-6660, metropoleonwalnut.com. Breakfast and dinner seven days, lunch Mon–Fri, brunch Sat & Sun. MCC. $$ Top 10

MITA’S

It’s fitting that chef Jose Salazar named this restaurant after his grandmother, because there is something deeply homey about the food at Mita’s. With a focus on Spanish tapas, it always feels, in the best possible way, like elevated home cooking. Its sophistication is modestly concealed. The flavors are bold and direct, whether the smoky depths of the chimichurri rojo on skewers of grilled chicken or the intensely bright sourness of the pozole verde.

In dishes like the mushroom soup, the chef hits every register: the acid of red piquillo peppers to balance the earthy mushrooms, the crisp fried leeks against the delicately creamy soup. But what mainly comes through is the warm-hearted affection a grandmother might have put into a meal for a beloved grandson. It’s the kind of big hug everyone needs from time to time. 501 Race St., downtown, (513) 421-6482, mitas.co. Dinner Mon–Sat. MCC. $$$

Top 10

ORCHIDS AT PALM COURT

Executive chef George Zappas is maintaining the proud traditions of Orchids with food that is wonderfully complex, diverse, and surprising. A dish of parsnip soup has a quinoa chip and apple butter, along with salty duck prosciutto, notes of smoke and spice from the espelette pepper at the base of the bowl, and a touch of acid that crept in on the roasted parsnip. In a few dazzling bites it all comes together like a highly technical piece of music. A Southeast Asian–inspired halibut dish, with its green curry paste, adobo, and peanut brittle, shows how Zappas can break out of the restaurant’s traditionally European comfort zone.

Aside from the food, part of the pleasure is simply being in the space, enjoying the jazz band, and watching the grace and assurance of the staff as they present the meal. 35 W. Fifth St., downtown, (513) 564-6465, orchidsatpalmcourt.com. Dinner seven days. MCC. $$$$

PLEASANTRY With only 40 seats inside, Daniel Souder and Joanna Kirkendall’s snug but spare OTR gem—they serve breakfast, lunch, and dinner like a true neighborhood spot—features an engaging wine program aimed at broadening your palate alongside small plates that are equally ambitious.

Classic technique and fresh produce anchor an approachable menu—“everything” biscuits with cured salmon, burgers, and chicken salad sandwiches are available at lunch, and the cauliflower with sambal is a comforting mash-up of a rich cauliflower-and-coconut-cream schmear topped with a head of sambal-roasted cauliflower, grapefruit segments, toasted cashews, and cilantro. This is not to say that the proteins aren’t something special. Traditionally a much less expensive cut, the small hanger steak was decidedly tender, served with braised cippolini onions and sauteed mushrooms. 118 W. 15th St., Over-the-Rhine, (513) 381-1969, pleasantryotr.com.

Dinner Tues–Sat, brunch Fri–Sun. MCC. $ Top 10

PLEASE

It’s hard to describe the food at Please to a person who hasn’t been there, except that it’s like nothing else in Cincinnati.

Some of chef-owner Ryan Santos’s culinary experiments have been bizarre, some fascinating, and some simply delicious—and all of it emerges from a dining room–centered kitchen that seems

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like it belongs in a small apartment. Almost all of his risks hit their marks, from the frothy bay leaf–grapefruit mignonette on the oysters to the cedar-rosemary custard.

What has made Please increasingly wonderful is a willingness, at times, to deliver something straightforward, like an outstanding course of rye gnocchi or a spicy green kale sauce with a lemony zing. That this weird and wonderful restaurant exists at all, and is actually thriving, is a compliment not just to Santos and his staff but to the city as a whole. 1405 Clay St., Over-the-Rhine, (513) 405-8859, pleasecincinnati.com. Dinner Wed–Sat. MCC. $$$

SACRED BEAST Sacred Beast advertises itself as a kind of upscale diner, but the real gems are the oddball dishes that don’t quite fit the diner mold. The menu can be disorienting in its eclecticism: foie gras torchon is next to lobster poutine, and a king salmon is next to a diner breakfast and deviled eggs. Winners are scattered throughout the menu in every category. On the cocktail list, the Covington Iced Tea, a lemon and coffee concoction made with cold brew, San Pellegrino, and vodka is oddly satisfying. The service is good, and there is some flair about the place—including vintage touches, from the facsimile reel-to-reel audio system to the mostly classic cocktails—even within its rather chilly industrial design. In short, go for the late night grub; stay for the elegant, shareable twists on classic snacks. 1437 Vine St., Over-the-Rhine, (513) 213-2864, sacredbeastdiner.com. Lunch, dinner, and late night seven days. MCC. $$

TASTE OF BELGIUM Jean-François Flechet’s waffle empire grew from a back counter of Madison’s grocery at Findlay Market to multiple full-service sit-down spots. There’s more on the menu than

the authentic Belgian treat, though it would be a crime to miss the chicken and waffles: a dense, yeasty waffle topped with a succulent buttermilk fried chicken breast, Frank’s hot sauce, and maple syrup. There are also frites, of course, and croquettes—molten Emmenthaler cheese sticks—plus a gem of a Bolognese. And let’s not forget the beer. Six rotating taps offer some of the best the Belgians brew, not to mention those made in town. 1133 Vine St., Over-the-Rhine, (513) 381-4607, and other locations, authenticwaffle.com. Breakfast and lunch Mon–Sat, dinner Tues–Sat, brunch Sun. MCC. $$

20 BRIX Paul Barraco mixes Mediterranean influences with homespun choices, and he comes up with some marvelous food.

Lamb meatballs with melted onions and romesco sauce are sweet and peppery, and their simplicity partners well with a lush Zinfandel. And his chicken and waffles could inspire you to regularly take a solo seat at the bar. The excellent wine list, arranged by flavor profiles within the varietals, features dozens of varieties by the glass in fiveounce or two-ounce pours, which makes it easy to try several. 101 Main St., Milford, (513) 831-2749, 20brix.com.

Lunch and dinner Mon–Sat. MCC, DS, DC. $$

INDIAN

daily lunch buffet is 100 percent animal-product-free on Wednesdays. Tuck into a warm and savory channa masala (spiced chickpeas) or malai kofta (vegetable dumplings in tomato sauce) from the curry menu. Or tear into a crispy, two-foot diameter dosa (chickpea flour crepe) stuffed with spiced onions and potatoes. 7633 Reading Rd., Roselawn, (513) 821-2021, ammaskitchen.com. Lunch buffet seven days (all-vegan on Wed), dinner seven days. MC, V, DS. $

BOMBAY BRAZIER Indian food in America is hard to judge, because whether coming from the kitchen of a takeout joint or from a nicer establishment, the food will rarely taste all that different.

It will generally be some twist on Punjabi cuisine. Bombay Brazier does it just right. Chef Rip Sidhu could serve his dal tadka in India, along with several other extraordinary dishes, and still do a roaring business—and this is not something that can be said of most Indian establishments in America. Try the pappadi chaat, a common Indian street food rarely found on American menus, and you will see what sets this place apart. They do everything the way it is supposed to be done, from the dusting of kala namak (a pungent black rock salt) on the fried crisps to the mixture of tamarind and mint chutneys on the chopped onion, tomatoes, and chickpeas—having this dish properly made is balm to the soul of a homesick immigrant, and fresh treasure for any American lover of this cuisine. 7791 Cooper Rd., #5, Montgomery, (513) 794-0000, bombaybra ziercincy.com. Dinner Mon–Sat. MCC. $$$

AMMA’S KITCHEN Muthu “Kumar” Muthiah serves traditional southern Indian and Indo-Chinese vegetarian cuisine, but with a sizable Orthodox Jewish community nearby, Muthia saw an opportunity: If he was going to cook vegetarian, why not also make it kosher? Muthiah prepares every item— from the addictively crunchy gobhi Manchurian, a spicy Chinese cauliflower dish, to the lemon pickle, tamarind, and mint sauces—entirely from scratch under the careful eye of Rabbi Michoel Stern. Always 80 percent vegan, the

BRIJ MOHAN Order at the counter the way you might at a fast food joint, except the shakes come in mango and there’s no super-sizing your mint lassi. The saag, full of cream in most northern Indian restaurants, is as intensely flavored as collard greens in the Deep South—real Punjabi soul food. Tarka dal is spectacular here, the black lentils smoky from charred tomatoes and onions, and the pani puri, hollow fried shells into which you spoon a peppery

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cold broth, burst with tart cool crunch. Follow the spice with soothing ras malai, freshly made cheese simmered in thick almond-flavored milk, cooled and sprinkled with crushed pistachios. 11259 Reading Rd., Sharonville, (513)

bons of beets in the pickled beet salad or the balance of bitterness, funkiness, and creaminess in the endive and Gorgonzola salad. Order an old favorite, by all means, but make sure you try something new, too. 1420 Sycamore

769-4549, brijmohancincinnati.com. Lunch and dinner Tues– Sun. MC, V, DC. $

St., Pendleton, (513) 721-6200, nicolasotr.com. Dinner Mon– Sat. MCC, DC, DS. $$$

I TA L I A N FORNO Cristian Pietoso’s second restaurant has all the bones of an upscale eatery, but the menu is infused with enough Italian soul to make nonna proud. In most instances, raving about a side of creamed corn wouldn’t bode well for the rest of the menu. Here, that side dish—kernels swimming in a pool of truffle-laced heavy cream that demands sopping up—is evidence that each component prepared by chef de cuisine Stefano Carne is purpose-driven. The red wine–braised honeycomb tripe, which carries a warning label (“Don’t be scared!”), and the pappardelle with spiced cinghiale (wild boar) ragu are examples of the elevated, adventurous comfort food that Pietoso strives for. 3514 Erie Ave., East Hyde Park, (513) 818-8720, fornoosteriabar. com. Dinner Tues–Sun, brunch Sun. MCC. $$ Top 10

NICOLA’S

Nicola’s has entered a new era of exuberant creativity under the leadership of chef Jack Hemmer.

You can still get the old Italian classics, and they’ll be as good as ever, but the rest of the menu has blossomed into a freewheeling tour of modern American cuisine. Any establishment paying this level of attention to detail— from the candied slice of blood orange on the mascarpone cheesecake to the staff ’s wine knowledge—is going to put out special meals. Rarely have humble insalate been so intricately delicious, between the perfectly nested rib-

PADRINO This sister restaurant to 20 Brix is also owned and operated by the Thomas family and their superstar Executive Chef Paul Barraco, who brings his passion for the slow food movement to the Padrino menu. Billed as “Italian comfort food,” Padrino offers the classics (like lasagna and chicken carbonara) plus hoagies and meatball sliders, an impressive wine list, seasonal martinis, and a decadent signature appetizer—garlic rolls, doughy buns smothered in olive oil and garlic. Best of all, Barraco’s pizza sauce, which is comprised of roasted tomatoes and basil, is so garden-fresh that one can’t help but wonder: If this is real pizza, what have we been eating all these years? 111 Main St., Milford, (513) 965-0100, padrinoitalian.com. Lunch and dinner seven days. MCC, DS. $$

PRIMAVISTA Besides offering the old world flavors of Italy, Primavista also serves up a specialty no other restaurant can match: a bird’s eye view of Cincinnati from the west side. The kitchen is equally comfortable with northern and southern regional specialties: a Venetian carpaccio of paper thin raw beef sparked by fruity olive oil; house-made fresh mozzarella stuffed with pesto and mushrooms; or artichoke hearts with snails and mushrooms in a creamy Gorgonzola sauce from Lombardy. Among the classics, nothing is more restorative than the pasta e fagioli, a hearty soup of cannellini, ditali pasta, and bacon. Most of the pastas are cooked just a degree more mellow than al dente so that they soak up the fragrant tomato basil or satiny cream sauces. The fork-tender osso buco Milanese, with its marrow-filled center bone and salty-sweet brown

sauce (marinara and lemon juice), is simply superb. Desserts present further problems; you’ll be hard-pressed to decide between the house-made tiramisu or bread pudding with caramel sauce, marsala soaked raisins, and cream. 810 Matson Pl., Price Hill, (513) 251-6467, pvista. com. Dinner Tues–Sun. MCC, DC, DS. $$

Top 10

SOTTO

There are certain books and movies that you can read or watch over and over. Eating at Sotto is a similar experience: familiar, but so profound and satisfying that there is no reason to ever stop. Unlike other restaurants, where the techniques are often elaborate and unfamiliar, the magic at Sotto happens right in front of you, using ordinary elements and methods. When you taste the results, though, you realize that some mysterious transmutation has taken place. Penne with rapini and sausage comes in a buttery, lightly starchy broth with a kick of spice that you could go on eating forever. From the texture of the chicken liver mousse to the tart cherry sauce on the panna cotta, most of the food has some added element of soulfulness. 118 E. Sixth St., downtown, (513) 977-6886, sottocincinnati.com. Lunch Mon– Fri, dinner seven days. MCC, DS. $$$

J A PA N E S E ANDO You don’t go just anywhere to dine on uni sashimi (sea urchin) or tanshio (thinly sliced charcoal-grilled beef tongue). Don’t miss the rich and meaty chyu toro (fatty big-eye tuna), or the pucker-inducing umeshiso maki (pickled plum paste and shiso leaf roll). Noodles are also well represented, with udon, soba, or ramen options available.

And don’t forget to ask about the specials; owners Ken and Keiko Ando always have something new, be it oys-

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ters, pork belly, or steamed monkfish liver, a Japanese delicacy that you’ll be hard-pressed to find in any of those Hyde Park pan-Asian wannabes. The only thing you won’t find here is sake, or any other alcohol. Bring your own, or stick to the nutty and outright addicting barley tea. 5889 Pfeiffer Rd., Blue Ash, (513) 791-8687,

note, even served cold, and a pleasing bite with wasabi mixed in. The kinoko itame, sauteed shiitake and enoki mushrooms, is surprisingly buttery and sweet, showing a voluptuous quality rarely associated with this tradition, but a perfect counterpoint to the more austere offerings. 8660 Bankers St., Florence, (859)

andojapaneserestaurant.com. Lunch Tues & Thurs, dinner Tues–Sat. MCC. $$$

525-6564, miyoshirestaurant.com. Lunch and dinner Mon–Sat. MCC. $$$

KYOTO

ZUNDO RAMEN & DONBURI

Owner Jason Shi seems to know everybody’s name as he chats up diners, guiding them through the extensive sushi and sashimi menu. Five young sushi chefs, all part of Shi’s family, work at light speed behind the bar, a choreography backlit by rows of gleaming liquor bottles. Dinner proceeds with glorious chaos as a feisty Carla Tortelli–like server delivers one dish after another—slivers of giant clam on ice in a super-sized martini glass, a volcanic tower of chopped fatty tuna hidden inside overlapping layers of thin avocado slices, smoky grilled New Zealand mussels drizzled with spicy mayo, and delicate slices of a samurai roll—all between shots of chilled sake. 12082 Montgomery

A stark contrast to Styrofoam cup soup, chef Han Lin’s ramens are a deep and exciting branch of cuisine, capable of subtlety, variation, and depth. The simplicity of the dish’s name hides a world of complexity. Zundo uses the traditional Japanese building blocks of flavor—soy sauce, miso, sake, mirin—to create something freewheeling and time-tested. Bowls of ramen come with a marinated soft-boiled egg half, roast pork, green onion, and a healthy serving of noodles. Each has a distinct identity, like the milky richness of the tonkotsu, the rich and buttery miso, or the light and faintly sweet shoyu ramen. A transformative add-in is the mayu, or black garlic oil. Dripped on top of one of the subtler broths, it adds a deep, mushroom-y richness, with the hint of burned flavor that makes barbecue so good. W. 12th St., Over-the-Rhine, (513)

Rd., Symmes Twp., (513) 583-8897, kyotosushibar.com.

Lunch and dinner seven days. MCC. $$

MATSUYA At this relaxed little sushi boutique, try ordering kaiseki, a traditional six-course meal that features a succession of small plates but plenty of food. You might encounter an entire steamed baby octopus or yellowtail with daikon radish, pickled mackerel or deep-fried oysters. You can depend on cucumber or seaweed salad, tempura shrimp, a grilled meat or fish, and of course, sushi—and sometimes even the colorful Bento box sampler. There’s a Nabemono—tableside pot cooking—section on the menu featuring shabu shabu: slices of prime beef swished through bubbling seaweed broth just until the pink frosts with white. Served with simmered vegetables, ponzu sauce, daikon, and scallions, the concentrated, slightly sour flavor of the beef is vivid. 7149 Manderlay Dr., Florence, (859) 746-1199, matsuya-ky.com. Lunch Mon–Fri, dinner seven days. MCC, DC, DS. $$

MEI Mei’s menu is meant to represent traditional Japanese cuisine, appealing to the novice as well as the sushi maven. It is divided into sections that encourage a progressive meal of small dishes: One each for hot and cold appetizers, noodles, sushi and sashimi, special rolls, soups and salads, sushi dinners (with miso soup), and combinations (such as tempura paired with sashimi). Deep-fried soft shell crab comes with ponzu sauce—a dipping sauce made of rice vinegar, soy sauce, mirin, and citrus juice—and the kind of yakitori that you can find on the streets of New York. Bento boxes—lacquered wooden boxes divided into compartments—offer the neophyte a sampling of several small dishes. Mei’s are lovely: deep red and stocked with tempura, cooked salmon, sashimi, stewed vegetables, and a fabulous egg custard with shrimp and gingko nut. Mei’s sushi—nigiri, maki, and handrolls—is exceptionally good with quality cuts of fresh seafood.

The staff is knowledgeable, extremely efficient, respectful, and attentive, even when it’s at peak capacity.

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8608 Market Place Lane, Montgomery, (513) 8916880, meijapaneserestaurant.com. Lunch and dinner seven days. MCC, DS. $$

MIYOSHI For too long, Japanese cuisine in America has meant miso soup, sushi and sashimi, and various grilled meats with teriyaki sauce. Yes, you can get excellent versions of all of these at Miyoshi, but what makes this restaurant truly special is the revelation of the true panorama of Japanese cuisine. From ochazuke (tea soup) with umeboshi (a salty-sour pickled plum) to shime saba, marinated mackerel in a delicately pickle-y broth of cucumber and vinegar, there are a dozen items not seen elsewhere. Anyone who enjoys sushi or miso broth has built the foundation to appreciate the rest of this cuisine. Cha soba, green tea noodles with shredded seaweed, chopped scallions, and a sweet and soupy broth, has a satisfying umami

975-0706, zundootr.com. Lunch Tues–Sun. MCC. $$

M E DI T E R R A N E A N ANDY’S MEDITERRANEAN GRILLE In this lively joint with a burnished summer lodge interior of wood and stone, even the food is unrestrained: rough-cut chunks of charbroiled beef tenderloin, big slices of onion and green pepper turned sweet and wet in the heat, skewers of marinated and charbroiled chicken perched on rice too generous for its plate. Co-owner Andy Hajjar mans his station at the end of the bar, smoking a hookah pipe that fills the air with the sweet smell of flavored tobacco, while the friendly but hurried staff hustles through.

906 Nassau St., Walnut Hills, (513) 281-9791, an dyskabob.com. Lunch Mon–Sat, dinner seven days.

MCC. $$

CAFÉ MEDITERRANEAN Chef-driven Middle Eastern cuisine leans heavily on Turkish tradition here. The baba ghanoush uses seared eggplant, which adds a pleasant smokiness to the final product. Börek is described as a “Turkish Egg Roll,” wrapping feta and fresh and dried herbs into phyllo dough, and frying it lightly to brittle flakiness. The pastry arrives atop a vivid cherry tomato marmalade, which adds a welcome dimension of barely sweet fruitiness. While there is a smooth, simple hummus on the menu, you should go for the classic sucuklu hummus, which is spiked with sujuk, a common beef sausage popular all over the Middle East. 3520 Erie Ave., East Hyde Park, (513) 871-8714. Lunch Mon–Sat, dinner seven days. MCC. $$

FLOYD’S Sure, you can go here for the great baked kibbeh, a blend of delicately spiced ground lamb, pine nuts, and onions, stuffed inside a shell of ground lamb, lamb fat, and bulgur wheat. Or you could visit for the vegetarian moussaka with eggplant, onions, tomatoes, and cilantro. But you’d be missing out on Floyd’s famous tender-crisp spit-roasted chicken and lima beans with chopped parsley, garlic, and olive oil. Not all of the specialties are the real Lebanese deal, but we’ll keep ordering them anyway. 127 Calhoun St., Clifton Heights, (513) 221-2434, floydsofcincy.com. Lunch Tues– Fri, dinner Tues–Sat. MC, V. $ Top 10

PHOENICIAN TAVERNA

No matter how much restraint you go in with, meals at Phoenician Taverna quickly become feasts.

There is just too much that’s good, and everything is

meant to be shared. With fresh pita bread continuously arriving from the ovens, and a table of quickly multiplying meze (hummus, falafel, muhammara), there is a warmth and depth to the cooking that envelops you.

With such traditional cuisine, you may think there isn’t much left to discover beyond simply executed classics prepared according to time-tested methods. But there are always new discoveries as the flavors mingle from plate to plate: the tabbouleh with the hummus, mixed with a touch of harissa, or the smoky baba ghanoush spooned onto falafel. Phoenician Taverna keeps taking these classics a little further. 7944 Mason Montgom-

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ery Rd., Mason, (513) 770-0027, phoeniciantaverna.com.

Lunch Tues–Fri, dinner Tues–Sun. MCC. $$

SANTORINI Steak, eggs, and home fries. Jumbo haddock sandwich with Greek fries. Chocolate chip hot cakes with bacon. Notice something wrong with this menu? Chicken Philly cheese steak sandwich with Olympic onion rings.

Yep, it’s obvious: What’s wrong with this menu is that there’s nothing wrong with this menu. Greek feta cheese omelette with a side of ham. It’s been owned by the same family for more than 30 years. Santorini has diner standards, like cheeseburgers, chili five ways, and breakfast anytime, but they also make some Greek pastries in house, like spanakopita and baklava. 3414 Harrison Ave., Cheviot, (513) 662-8080.

Breakfast, lunch, and dinner Mon–Sat, breakfast and lunch Sun. Cash. $

SEBASTIAN’S When the wind is just right, you can smell the garlicky meat roasting from a mile away. Watch owner Alex Sebastian tend to the rotating wheels of beef and lamb, and you understand how Greek food has escaped the American tendency to appropriate foreign cuisines.

Sebastian’s specializes in gyros, shaved off the stick, wrapped in thick griddle pita with onions and tomatoes, and served with cool tzatziki sauce. Alex’s wife and daughter run the counter with efficient speed, and whether you’re having a crisp Greek salad with house-made dressing, triangles of spanikopita, or simply the best walnut and honey baklava this side of the Atlantic (often made by the Mrs.), they never miss a beat, turning more covers in their tiny deli on one Saturday afternoon than some restaurants do in an entire weekend. 5209 Glenway Ave., Price Hill,

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(513) 471-2100, sebastiansgyros.com. Lunch and dinner Mon–Sat. Cash. $

SULTAN’S MEDITERRANEAN CUISINE The meze, a parade of small plates and appetizers— the refreshing yogurt dish with cucumber, mint, and garlic known as cacik, and its thicker cousin haydari, with chopped walnuts, dill, and garlic—is rounded out with flaky cheese or spinach boureks, falafels, soups, salads, and more, while baked casseroles or stuffed cabbage and eggplant dishes (dubbed “Ottoman specials”) augment the heavy focus on kebabs: chunks of lamb and beef on a vertical spit for the popular Doner kebab (a.k.a. Turkish gyro), peppery ground lamb for the Adana kebab, or cubed and marinated for the Shish kebab. 7305 Tyler’s Corner Dr., West Chester, (513) 847-1535, sultanscincin nati.com. Lunch and dinner seven days. MCC, DS. $$

MEXICAN EL VALLE VERDE Guests with dietary issues, high anxiety, and no Spanish may take a pass, but for hardy souls, this taqueria delivers a memorable evening. Seafood dishes are the star here—ceviche tostadas, crisp corn tortillas piled high with pico de gallo, avocado, and lime-tastic bits of white fish, squid, and crab; the oversized goblet of cocktel campechano, with ample poached shrimp crammed into a Clamato-heavy gazpacho; and simmering sopa de marisco came with langoustines, mussels, crab legs, and an entire fish—enough to feed J U N E 2 0 2 0 C I N C I N N AT I M A G A Z I N E . C O M 9 3

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MAIN WHERE REVIEW TO EAT NOW

three. 6717 Vine St., Carthage, (513) 821-5400.

Lunch and dinner seven days. $

HABAÑERO It’s easy to find a cheap burrito place around a college campus, but you’d be hard-pressed to find one as consistently good as Habañero, with its flavors of Latin America and the Caribbean wrapped up in enormous packages. Fried tilapia, apricot-glazed chicken breast, hand-rubbed spiced flank steak, shredded pork tenderloin, or cinnamon-roasted squash are just some of the ingredients for Habañero’s signature burritos. All salsas are house-made, from the smoky tomato chipotle to the sweet-sounding mango jalapeño, which is hot enough to spark spontaneous combustion. 358 Ludlow Ave., Clifton, (513) 961-6800, habanerolatin.com. Lunch and dinner seven days. MCC, DC, DS. $

MAZUNTE Mazunte runs a culinary full court press, switching up specials to keep both regulars and staff engaged. Tamales arrive swaddled in a banana leaf, the shredded pork filling steeped in a sauce fiery with guajillo and ancho chilies yet foiled by the calming sweetness of raisins. The fried mahi-mahi tacos are finished with a citrusy red and white cabbage slaw that complements the accompanying mango-habañero salsa. With this level of authentic yet fast-paced execution, a slightly greasy pozole can be easily forgiven.

Don’t miss the Mexican Coke and self-serve sangria (try the blanco), or the cans of Rhinegeist and MadTree on ice. 5207 Madison Rd., Madison-

ON THE ROAD Fifty West bumped up the planned opening of its Burger Bar—originally slated for May—to late April. On the menu, single and double burgers are joined by chicken, Beyond, and flat-top hot dog protein options. Toppings are inspired by the popular flavors of U.S. states crossed

by Route 50. Wash it all down with the brewery’s new housemade root beer, orange floats, and milkshakes in flavors including chocolate, vanilla, and (naturally!) beer. fiftywestbrew.

com

ville, (513) 785-0000, mazuntetacos.com. Lunch and dinner Mon–Sat, brunch Sun. MCC. $

NADA The brains behind Boca deliver authentic, contemporary, high-quality Mexican fare downtown. You’ll find a concise menu, including tacos, salads and sides, large plates, and desserts. Tacos inspired by global cuisine include the Señor Mu Shu (Modelo and ginger braised pork) and fried avocado (chipotle bean purée).

The ancho-glazed pork shank with chili-roasted carrots comes with a papaya guajillo salad (order it for the table); dreamy mac-and-cheese looks harmless, but there’s just enough of a roasted poblano and jalapeño punch to have you reaching for another icy margarita. 600 Walnut St., downtown, (513) 721-6232, eatdrinknada.com.

Lunch Mon–Fri, dinner seven days, brunch Sat & Sun. MCC, DS. $$

TAQUERIA CRUZ The menu at this four-table mom-and-pop welcomes you to “a little piece of Mexico.” The huaraches (spelled guarachis here), are flat troughs of thick, handmade fried masa dough the approximate shape and size of a shoeprint, mounded with beans and slivers of grilled beef or chili-red nubs of sausage, shredded lettuce, a crumble of queso fresco, and drizzle of cultured cream. Should you have an adventurous side, you can have your huarache topped with slippery tongue, goat meat, shredded chicken, or pork.

There are stews, carne asada plates, and sopes— saucers of fried masa much like huaraches, only smaller. 518 Pike St., Covington, (859) 431-3859.

Lunch and dinner seven days. Cash. $

TAQUERIA MERCADO On a Saturday night, Taqueria Mercado is a lively fiesta, with seemingly half of the local Hispanic community guzzling margaritas and cervezas, or carrying out sacks of burritos and carnitas tacos—pork tenderized by a long simmer, its edges frizzled and crispy. The Mercado’s strip mall interior, splashed with a large, colorful mural, is equally energetic: the bustling semi-open kitchen; a busy counter that handles a constant stream of take-out orders; a clamorous, convivial

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chatter in Spanish and English. Try camarones a la plancha, 12 chubby grilled shrimp tangled with grilled onions (be sure to specify if you like your onions well done). The starchiness of the rice absorbs the caramelized onion juice, offset by the crunch of lettuce, buttery slices of avocado, and the cool-hot pico de gallo. A shrimp quesadilla paired with one of their cheap and potent margaritas is worth the drive alone. 6507 Dixie Hwy., Fairfield, (513) 942-4943; 100 E. Eighth St., downtown, (513) 381-0678, tmercadocincy.com.

Lunch and dinner seven days. MCC, DS. $

of masago, scallions, and of course, spicy mayo.

It’s tasty, even though the sweet fried floodwall of tempura and spicy mayo overpowered the tuna completely. The spicy pad char entrée was a solid seven out of 10: broccoli, carrots, cabbage, succulent red bell peppers, green beans, and beef, accented with basil and lime leaves in a peppercorn-and-chili brown sauce. 3655 Edwards Rd., Hyde Park, (513) 533-9500, wildgingercincy.com.

Lunch and dinner Mon–Sun. MCC, DS. $$

VI ETNAM E S E THAI GREEN PAPAYA Inside this simple dining room, replete with soothing browns and greens and handsome, dark wood furniture, it takes time to sort through the many curries and chef’s specialties, not to mention the wide variety of sushi on the somethingfor-everyone menu. Have the staff—friendly, attentive, and knowledgeable—help you. When the food arrives, you’ll need only a deep inhale to know you made the right choice. The Green Papaya sushi rolls are as delicious as they look, with a manic swirl of spicy mayo and bits of crabstick and crispy tempura batter scattered atop the spicy tuna, mango, cream cheese, and shrimp tempura sushi—all rolled in a vivid green soybean wrap. 2942 Wasson Rd., Oakley, (513) 731-0107, greenpapayacincinnati.com. Lunch Mon–Sat, dinner seven days. MCC. $$

SUKHOTHAI Nestled in the nearly hidden Market Place Lane, this tiny restaurant isn’t exactly slick. A chalkboard lists the day’s specials, usually spicy dishes worthy of an adventurous diner. But if it’s noodle dishes and curries you’re after, Sukhothai’s pad kee mao—wide rice noodles stir-fried with basil—is the best around. Served slightly charred, the fresh and dried chilies provide enough heat to momentarily suspend your breath. Pad Thai has the right amount of crunch from peanuts, slivers of green onion, and mung sprouts to contrast with the slippery glass noodles, and a few squeezes of fresh lime juice give it a splendid tartness. The crispy tamarind duck is one of the best house specials, the meat almost spreadably soft under the papery skin and perfectly complemented by the sweet-tart bite of tamarind.

8102 Market Place Lane, Montgomery, (513) 7940057, sukhothaicincy.com. Lunch Mon–Fri, dinner Mon–Sat. DS, MC, V. $

THAI NAMTIP Classic Thai comfort food on the west side from chef/owner Tussanee Leach, who grew up with galangal on her tongue and sriracha sauce in her veins. Her curries reign: pale yellow sweetened with coconut milk and poured over tender chicken breast and chunks of boiled pineapple; red curry the color of new brick, tasting of earth at first bite, then the sharply verdant Thai basil leaves, followed by a distant heat. Tom Kha Gai soup defines the complex interplay of flavors in Thai food: astringent lemongrass gives way to pepper, then Makrut lime, shot through with the gingery, herbaceous galangal, all yielding to the taunting sweetness of coconut. 5461 North Bend Rd., Monfort Heights, (513) 481-3360, thain amtip.com. Lunch and dinner seven days. MC, V. $

WILD GINGER Wild Ginger Asian Bistro’s ability to satisfy a deep desire for Vietnamese and Thai fusion cuisine is evidenced by their signature Hee Ma roll—a fortress of seaweed-wrapped rolls filled with shrimp tempura, asparagus, avocado, and topped with red tuna, pulled crab stick, tempura flakes, a bit

PHO LANG THANG Owners Duy and Bao Nguyen and David Le have created a greatest hits playlist of Vietnamese cuisine: elegant, brothy pho made from poultry, beef, or vegan stocks poured over rice noodles and adrift with slices of onions, meats, or vegetables (the vegan pho chay is by far the most flavorful); fresh julienned vegetables, crunchy sprouts, and herbs served over vermicelli rice noodles (again, the vegan version, bun chay, is the standout); and bánh mì. Be sure to end with a cup of Vietnamese coffee, a devilish jolt of dark roast and sweetened condensed milk that should make canned energy drinks obsolete.

1828 Race St., Over-the-Rhine, (513) 376-9177, pholangthang.com. Lunch and dinner seven days.

MCC, DS, DC. $

QUAN HAPA The Nguyen brothers, Duy and Bao, along with partner David Le, have followed up on Pho Lang Thang’s success at Findlay Market by bursting onto the OTR scene with some of the boldest flavors in the city. A tuna ceviche makes use of the fiery sweetness of Malaysian sambal oelek and a banh mi steakburger gains crunch from pickled daikon and a side of Indonesian shrimp chips.

Or try the okonomiyaki, a traditional Japanese pancake topped with a choice of bacon, prawns, or vegetables. The Vietnamese coffee, a complex, chicory-forward blend, is an ideal way to end the meal. 1331 Vine St., Over-the-Rhine, (513) 421-7826, quanhapa.com. Lunch and dinner seven days. MCC, DS. $

SONG LONG The menu does have a substantial Chinese section, but make no mistake, the reason there’s a line at the door on weekend nights is the fine Vietnamese specialties cooked and served by the Le family. Begin with the goi cuon, the cold rolls of moistened rice paper wrapped around vermicelli noodles, julienned cucumbers, lettuce, cilantro, and mung bean sprouts. Or try the banh xeo, a platter-sized pan-fried rice crepe folded over substantial nuggets of chicken and shrimp, mushrooms, and wilted mung sprouts.

The phos, meal-sized soups eaten for breakfast, are good, but the pho dac biet is Song Long’s best.

Crisp-tender vegetables, slices of beef, herbs, and scallions glide through the noodle-streaked broth. 1737 Section Rd., Roselawn, (513) 3517631, songlong.net. Lunch and dinner Mon–Sat. MCC, DC, DS. $ CINCINNATI MAGAZINE, (ISSN 0746-8 210), June 2020, Volume 53, Number 9. Published monthly ($14.95 for 12 issues annually) at Carew Tower, 441 Vine St., Suite 200, Cincinnati, OH 45202-2039.

(513) 421-4300. Copyright © 2020 by Cincinnati Magazine LLC, a subsidiary of Hour Media Group, 5750 New King Dr, Ste 100, Troy, MI 48098. All rights reserved. No part of this magazine may be reproduced or reprinted without permission. Unsolicited manuscripts, photographs and artwork should be accompanied by SASE for return. The magazine cannot be held responsible for loss. For subscription orders, address changes or renewals, write to CINCINNATI MAGAZINE, 1965 E. Avis Dr., Madison Heights, MI 48071, or call 1-866-660-6247. Periodicals postage paid at Cincinnati, Ohio, and additional mailing offices. Postmaster: Please send forms 3579 to CINCINNATI MAGAZINE, 1965 E. Avis Dr., Madison Heights, MI 48071. If the Postal Service alerts us that your magazine is undeliverable, we have no further obligation unless we receive a corrected address within one year.

five nights. ten chefs.

summer series 2020

ONE DELICIOUS EXPERIENCE.

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Pinecroft at Crosley Estate

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CINCINNATIMAGAZINE.COM/OUREVENTS

JULY 27–31

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Our lavish, five-night dinner series returns to Pinecroft, the historic Powel Crosley Jr. estate in Mt. Airy. Be sure to #savorthedate for our summer dinner series and experience a one-of-a-kind meal in a one-of-a-kind setting.

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CINCY OBSCURA

Truck Rally HOW DOES A 100-YEAR-OLD Norwood fire truck make its way to a barn in Indiana, then to

Maine, Connecticut, and Texas, then back again to its original Montgomery Road firehouse?

A network of memorabilia collectors and restorers, plus locals on the ground with a commitment to history. “It has lots of patina on it,” says Norwood Fire Department Lieutenant Brodie Cianciolo. “But it runs, it pumps, it does everything it’s supposed to do.” When Cianciolo and company took delivery of the newly restored truck (via donation), they were inspired to finish the job and restore the firehouse, too. Firehouse No. 2, which the truck called home for about 20 years, was built in 1913. It closed in the 1980s, sat vacant for some 30 years, and was used for storage, which included the newly re-acquired truck. That’s when it clicked that the building needed its own overhaul. They worked out a deal with the city of Norwood to restore the building with private donations. Now, the public can call to schedule a tour and see the truck parked inside, right where it belongs. — A M Y B R O W N L E E 9 6 C I N C I N N AT I M A G A Z I N E . C O M J U N E 2 0 2 0

PH OTO G R A PH BY D E V Y N G LI S TA

Together again, soon.

Every year, the Chamber looks forward to releasing its annual publication, The Listings, at Cincinnati Pride. While we can’t do that this year, we share in the belief that Pride isn’t just a day or a month. Pride is every day.

Happy Pride - we will see you soon!

View our online publication and consider joining the GCGCC by visiting us online: www.gaychambercincinnati.com

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