From the Editor
An Uphill Climb
2
COLUMBUS MONTHLY RESTAURANT GUIDE 2021
barbecue joints, butchers, cheesemongers, emerging cuisines, international markets, pastry makers, wine shops and more. To put together our restaurant listings (Page 18), a team of fearless college interns, working remotely this summer, contacted hundreds of restaurants to check their details and ask whether they were still open. While the restaurant listings have been fact-checked, some of the restaurants included will inevitably pivot, pause, reopen, change hours and, sadly, close for good. All is not dire. The pandemic and the racial justice protests following the May 25 killing of George Floyd have inspired difficult but much-needed conversations around issues like race, sexual harassment and restaurants’ financial structures. Some restaurants, like Chapman’s Eat Market on our cover, have dared to hold grand openings amid the pandemic. Walking into Chapman’s in German Village, with its bold wallpaper, handsome barstools, globally inspired menu and Black Lives Matter sign in the window, I felt hopeful for the future of the Columbus dining scene, but aware that smaller mom-and-pops face an uphill climb. I am hopeful that we’ll come out of this with a new restaurant industry, a better one. One that takes better care of its employees’ physical, mental and financial health. One that provides equity of opportunity to people of color. But the industry will need help to get there. I know we will go to museum openings again and spontaneously dine out afterward. Until then, I urge you to support the Central Ohio restaurants and bars in this guide in whatever way you can: order takeout, dine alfresco, buy to-go cocktails (they’re really quite fun) and tip very well. The local restaurant scene we once knew is gone. It will be missed, but Godspeed to the next one.
Erin G. Edwards Dining Editor
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Columbus Monthly’s Restaurant Guide, a supplement to Columbus Monthly magazine, is published annually by Gannett. All contents of this magazine are copyrighted © Gannett Co., Inc. 2020. All rights reserved. Reproduction or use, without written permission, of editorial or graphic content in any manner is prohibited. Publisher assumes no responsibility for return of unsolicited materials.
PHOTO: TIM JOHNSON
Right before the world changed, Columbus Monthly was planning to review Spagio in Grandview. In 1981, German-born chef Hubert Seifert and his wife, Helga, first launched a restaurant called Gourmet Market in the same space. After adding a pizza oven, Spagio was born in 1991. Last year, the beloved chef, who trained local talents like chefs Alana Shock and Brian Hinshaw, wanted to retire and sold Spagio to a local restaurant group. Our reviewer was surreptitiously dining at Spagio early this year, but she never got to write that story—Ohio’s dinein ban, prompted by the coronavirus pandemic, prevented it. And Monthly will never get the chance again. In August, Spagio closed for good after nearly 40 years. Its contents—from convection ovens to glassware to kitschy Christmas décor to cans of tomatoes—were auctioned off online. It was a depressing postscript for the Grandview landmark, which was undergoing a refresh when 2020 began. Confession: I haven’t dined in an actual restaurant dining room since March 5, but I remember that meal well. I had just gone to an art exhibition opening at the Columbus Museum of Art. The museum was (gasp) packed with people to see Art After Stonewall, 1969-1989. A friend and I decided to grab dinner afterward at Wolf’s Ridge Brewing, a restaurant always on my 10 Best Restaurants radar. Never did I imagine that it would be my last meal inside a restaurant for months, nor that we’d end up canceling the feature (and its companion dining event) that normally runs in these pages: our annual ranking of the 10 Best Restaurants in Central Ohio. Restaurant criticism, rankings, James Beard Awards—they don’t matter much when we’re losing longtime restaurants like Spagio, and businesses as diverse as Huong Vietnamese, Hubert’s Polish Kitchen, Flavor 91 Bistro and Comune are in a fight for survival. In these pages, instead of our 10 Best Restaurants list, you’ll find our Food Lovers’ Guide from A to Z (Page 3), a rollicking compilation of some of the city’s best
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