Category: Personal Favorites

There are a lot of great places to eat in Cincinnati and Covington, and I’m not talking about chili parlors. In fact, the only thing I’m going to say about chili parlors is this: They are the only place you can order a “child’s three-way” and not get arrested.

To make this list manageable, I’m going to focus only on establishments that are in Covington and downtown Cincinnati. If I covered other neighborhoods, it would be a book.

Covington
Otto’s: This is one of my favorite places for lunch, dinner and brunch. It has a small menu of Southern food, but everything is outstanding. Get the tomato pie for lunch. Otto’s is also one of my contenders for best burger in the city.

Bouquet: Great wine bar and good food made with local ingredients. I love the trout.

Frida 602: A bustling Mexican place that specializes in mezcal and tacos. Get the queso. You’ll thank me.

Cock & Bull: The best fish and chips in town and a draft beer list that is insane (Delirium Tremens on draft – dang).

Goodfella’s Pizza and the Wiseguy Lounge: Downstairs is a small pizzeria with New York style pizza (yes, you can order a slice) and beer. Upstairs is one of the best bourbon bars in the state and a great place to relax.

Commonwealth Bistro: A new Southern food restaurant on Main Street. I’ve only been once but I was blown away by the fried rabbit and biscuit.

Crafts & Vines: One of the friendliest bars in the city. Wine on draft (you read that right). Plus an inventive beer selection.

Old Kentucky Bourbon Bar: The bartenders know me by name here. An astonishing bourbon selection. The patio out back is one of my favorite places to hang out with a crackling fire and a bourbon.

Covington Coffee: Super-friendly family-run place. Great pastries and the best bagels (Lil’s) in the city.

Crepe Cafe: A relatively new shop on Pike Street. A cozy family-run place with really good sweet and savory crepes, plus espresso. One of my favorite places for lunch – it’s two blocks from our shop.

Point Perk: My other favorite coffee shop in town. The hours are limited, but the espresso and chai drinks are fantastic.

Coppin’s in the Hotel Covington: Open less than a year, this hotel is the jewel of the city. It’s less than a block from Braxton Brewing. The restaurant and bar are highly recommended for breakfast, lunch, dinner and brunch. Get the corn fritters, the 16 Bricks bread and… oh just get everything.

Inspirado: Around the corner from Braxton. Eclectic menu. Osso buco and street tacos? Yes please. A very friendly place – lunch, dinner and brunch.

Amerasia Kung Food: Don’t be fooled by the appearance of this divey-looking Chinese place. People come from all over the city for lunch and dinner. It also has one of the best selections of beer in the city. If you like noodles, get the pork ho fun (and ask them to make it a little extra crispy).

Riverside Korean: Authentic Korean. A karaoke room (yes, we’ve done it). Riverside never disappoints.

House of Grill: Tasty Persian food served up by the friendliest family in the restaurant business.

Keystone Grill: Family-friendly place for lunch, dinner or brunch. The mac and cheese varieties are great.

The Gruff: A pizza place in the shadow of the Roebling bridge. Fantastic pizzas (try the Italian meat pizza or the Margarita) plus local craft beer and one of the most inspiring views in the city.

Whew, Now Cincinnati
I’m going to keep this brief. This blog entry is turning into an opus already. All of these restaurants are less than a mile from the river. I’m also skipping places that are so popular (The Eagle, Bakersfield, Taft Ale House) that you can’t easily get in.

Sotto: The best restaurant in the city. Period. The first time my daughter tried the short rib cappellacci she cried. No lie.

Boca: The big brother to Sotto. A bit fancy, but unforgettable in every respect.

Maplewood: The best breakfast in the city. No question.

Mita’s: Beautiful Spanish restaurant with achingly good paella.

Nada: Upscale Mexican with a fantastic brunch.

Senate Pub: Go early. Poutine and the best hot dog I’ve ever had (brioche bun!).

Krueger’s Tavern: Delicious hamburgers and homemade sausage.

Taste of Belgium: Fried chicken and waffles. Great breakfast. Belgian ale on tap.

Morelein Lager House: A local brewery with a restaurant – the view of the Roebling Bridge and Covington alone is worth the trip.

A Tavola: My favorite pizza in the city. Neapolitan-style. Awesome wagyu-beef meatballs and bacon tapenade. Great wine, beer and cocktails.

Salazar: I vacillate between Salazar and Sotto as my favorite places in the city.

Findlay Market & Eli’s: A old open-air market and the pride of Cincinnati. On weekends we walk around, eat whatever smells good and buy sausages (Kroeger meat) for the week. Eli’s is adjacent and it’s my favorite barbecue joint.

OK, that should be enough to keep you fed for one weekend.

— Christopher Schwarz

John and I are quite particular about how our books are made and spend a lot of time and money on details that most readers don’t notice. We want our books to be able to survive floods, attacks by babies and dogs and – most of all – time.

There are an enormous number of manufacturing steps our books have to go through, especially compared to digital, print-on-demand (POD) publishing. While POD is good for some things, such as bind-ups of classroom material, it has a long way to go to compete with traditional printing and binding.

And so we stick with the time- and labor-intensive methods for our books.

In late September, John and I visited one of the plants where our color books are printed on sheet-fed presses. Our black-and-white books, in contrast, are printed on web press. The difference between the two is somewhat akin to the difference between paper being fed into a photocopier (sheet-fed) or printing out your book on an enormous roll of butcher’s paper or paper towels (web press).

The above is a short peek at the process a typical book goes through. Note that I’ve left a lot of steps out and simplified things (so if you are in the printing industry, forgive me). It took two full days to tour the plant, so 5 minutes of video is going to leave out some details.

Thanks to Jostens of Clarksville, Tenn., for opening their doors to us and allowing us to photograph anything we please. And thanks to Phil Nanzetta of Signature Book who purchases most of our printing for us and helped arrange the visit.

— Christopher Schwarz

The first urge I ever felt to be a manager was at my first newspaper job in South Carolina. My desk was in the center of the newsroom and faced the glass-fronted offices of three people: the managing editor, the business editor and the special projects editor.

When I wasn’t reporting on a trailer fire or some piece of small-town political skullduggery, I’d look up from my keyboard and watch them. These three white guys decided everything – what was on the front page, who got to to write about the murder trials, who had to write about the centenarians’ birthdays (sorry Reece!) and who sorted the newsroom mail (sorry again Reece!).

Holy crap I wanted one of their jobs. Not because I wanted to boss people around, but because I’d get to make decisions that involved thinking, ideas, reason and the wisdom I’d accumulated about the region (I had none of the time). And those decisions would make the newspaper and community better.

It took 12 years for me to claw my way into one of those positions. After about six months in my perch I realized that my job was all about enacting the ideas (good and bad) of the layer of managers above me. And before I got any more bright ideas about further advancement, I saw there were two more layers of managers above my managers.

I think that’s when I developed a problem with authority.

I left corporate America in 2011 for a variety of reasons, but the No. 1 reason was to get a couple new bosses: failure and starvation.

After more than five years of working under failure and starvation, I can honestly say they are the most predictable and fair-minded superiors I’ve ever had. If I don’t work efficiently, I fail. If I don’t work hard, I starve. It really is that simple.

I can blame the economy when I fail, but that usually means I’m spending too much money or am making things that people really don’t need. So I need to adjust. You can say it’s more complicated than that, but it’s not. It’s how people lived for thousands of years before capitalist economies took hold. And these rules still apply today, just like breathing air is still good and breathing water will still kill you.

To my wife and friends it looks like I’m both always working and never working. On Monday morning I’m lingering over the newspaper and planning a nice meal for my family. On Christmas Day I’m furiously editing chapters for a forthcoming book. At 4 a.m. I’m answering frantic emails from Europe. At 10 a.m. I sleep for a while to clear my head.

Starvation and failure are totally fine with my behavior. There is no annual review session where I “meet” or “exceed” corporate expectations. There is only the bank account and the pantry. And whether or not they are full or empty is my decision alone.

— Christopher Schwarz