Amara
CITY GUIDES | OHIO
Columbus is Ready for its Michelin Close-Up
The Michelin Guide still hasn’t made it to Ohio’s capital city, so we went searching for Columbus restaurants that should be in the Michelin Guide.
By Jamie Dutton
Oct. 11, 2026
AUTHOR BIO: Jamie Dutton's job has her in airports regularly, as does a family spread out across the Midwest. She’s partial to BPTs and Bell’s.
The Michelin Guide may be covering Cleveland and Cincinnati in its American Great Lakes guide, but Columbus still, inexplicably, remains outside the announced territory. But the very excellent Columbus restaurant scene has carried on anyway: Bengali cooking in the Brewery District, handmade pasta downtown, and Mediterranean spreads beside the Scioto River.
So, to fill in this obvious Michelin gap, we went searching for the Michelin-quality restaurants in Columbus. This is our Michelin wishlist. If the inspectors add Columbus to their route, these are the restaurants where we’d send them first.
Agni
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At Agni in the Brewery District, Avishar Barua builds a tasting menu around Bengali cooking, Midwestern memories, and whatever else has lodged in his head. The current Foundations menu moves from hot-and-sour soup and Midwestern chaat to curry, barbacoa, and duck, with rice pudding among the closing courses. There’s also a separate bar menu, where bulgogi pierogi pair grilled lamb with kimchi and sour crema. Choose the tasting menu for the full progression, or take a bar seat for a shorter introduction to Barua’s cooking.
What it deserves: Michelin Star
Alchemy Kitchen
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Alchemy Kitchen in Grandview makes breakfast and lunch out of ingredients that might otherwise get sentenced to a sad desk salad. The pesto power bowl combines grains, hemp-walnut pesto, kale, beet pico, hummus, feta, and toasted hazelnuts. For something handheld, the turkey tzatziki sandwich puts dill-feta spread, cucumber, pickled onion, and honey on housemade focaccia. Registered dietitian Alexis Joseph helped develop the business with Abed Alshahal, and the menu gives vegetables plenty to do without requiring anyone to make a speech about wellness.
What it deserves: Michelin Recommended
Alqueria
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Jacob Hough and Patrick Marker’s University District restaurant puts its farmhouse-kitchen identity into dinners built around familiar ingredients and a few useful complications. Buttermilk fried chicken comes with herb-mascarpone potato purée, seasonal vegetables, and local honey hot sauce. Brussels sprouts get smoky blue cheese, apricot gastrique, corn nuts, and Marcona almonds, while the burger piles pimento cheese, bacon, and horseradish pickles onto challah. The menu changes, but the approach makes Alqueria an easy place to bring someone who wants a substantial dinner rather than a culinary guessing game.
What it deserves: Michelin Star
Amara
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Josh Dalton, the chef behind Veritas and Speck, brought Mediterranean cooking to the Scioto Mile when Amara opened in July 2026. Begin with hummus topped with braised lamb neck and zhoug, or muhammara made with red pepper, walnut, and pomegranate. The dinner menu follows those spreads with roasted chicken over freekeh, whole grilled branzino, and smoked cauliflower with labneh and mujaddara. With a patio beside the river and a menu that rewards sharing, Amara gives a downtown walk a much better destination than the parking garage.
What it deserves: Michelin Recommended
Comune
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Comune, on the Schumacher Place edge of German Village, gives a vegetarian dinner enough range that nobody needs to negotiate a compromise order. Crispy rice comes with kimchi and tahina, with an egg or avocado available on top. Elsewhere on the changing menu, lion’s mane mushrooms get the steak-frites treatment with peppercorn sauce, while pappardelle takes a walnut-mushroom bolognese. Natural wines and cocktails round out the evening. Bring people willing to share, because the vegetable dishes here deserve more attention than the side of the plate.
What it deserves: Michelin Star
Gene’s
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In historic Dublin, Gene’s is the dinner counterpart to neighboring Coast Wine House, with Bobby Moore handling the kitchen and Michael Vehlber overseeing the wine. Moore trained in Québec, and his seasonal menu leaves space for both French sauces and chicken-fried mushrooms. Recent offerings include tilefish with fermented-tomato beurre blanc and creamed kale, and ricotta cavatelli with artichokes, maitakes, and peas. Start with whipped ricotta and grilled sourdough, then let the wine list help determine what follows, with enough time to consider a second glass.
What it deserves: Michelin Star
HARU Omakase
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At HARU Omakase, executive chef Yudi Makassau gives Polaris a dinner built around a set progression of seafood rather than a sprawling sushi order. The five-course Tour changes seasonally; the current version includes yellowtail with calamansi jelly, Japanese flounder with finger lime, and bluefin tuna handrolls with ume and caviar. A matcha-yuzu cake closes the meal, and a premium option adds fatty tuna, wagyu, and other selections. Book the counter if you want to watch the team assemble the courses, and leave the usual roll-ordering routine at home.
What it deserves: Michelin Star
Lola & Giuseppe’s Trattoria
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Lola & Giuseppe’s in Gahanna takes the difficult dinner decision and offers a practical solution: Giuseppe’s Sampler, with a meatball, spaghetti, lasagna, and eggplant Parmesan. If you prefer to commit to one thing, Giuseppe’s gnocchi comes with marinara, peppers, onions, and Italian sausage. The Sicilian onion soup adds Marsala and cream, then finishes with a Parmesan-and-bacon crouton. It’s the kind of Italian menu that makes a quiet neighborhood dinner easy to plan, provided nobody at the table objects to a generous amount of cheese.
What it deserves: Michelin Recommended
Metsi’s Wood-Fired Italian
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BJ Lieberman, formerly of Husk and Rose’s Luxury, opened Metsi’s in the Short North in 2025, keeping a wood-fired hearth at the center of the kitchen. The two-level restaurant serves wood-fired artichokes with garlic aioli, roasted chile, and grilled lemon, radiatori alla vodka with lobster, and pork-shank osso buco with whipped potatoes. General Ciao’s cauliflower gives former Chapman’s regulars a familiar idea in Italian company. Reserve downstairs for a view of the hearth, and start with sourdough focaccia and whipped ricotta while you settle the pasta question.
What it deserves: Michelin Recommended
Novella Osteria
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Matthew Phelan’s Powell restaurant gives Italian dinner a clear starting point: veal-and-ricotta meatballs with pomodoro and basil. From there, choose between rigatoni with short-rib ragù, hand-cut pappardelle with lamb bolognese, or linguine cacio e pepe. The menu also makes space for squash ravioli with sage brown butter and amaretti, alongside a pork shank with mushroom polenta. Novella keeps enough familiar dishes in rotation to work as a neighborhood regular, while the changing pastas give you a reason to reconsider your usual order.
What it deserves: Bib Gourmand
The Refectory
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The Refectory makes dinner an occasion with candlelight, the exposed beams of a former church, and Richard Blondin’s French cooking. The Lyon-born chef trained with Pierre Orsi and Paul Bocuse, a background that shows in a menu of terrines, seafood, game, and carefully matched sauces. Recent choices include scallops with saffron bonne femme sauce and a duck-and-rabbit duet, followed by vanilla crème brûlée named for Bocuse. Order à la carte or choose a tasting menu, and give the wine list the time it asks for.
What it deserves: Michelin Star
Service Bar
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Service Bar turns a visit to Middle West Spirits into a full dinner, with James Tuckey’s cooking giving the whiskey company a second reason to draw a crowd. His changing menus have included pastrami-smoked trout on crispy potatoes, chicken-pot-pie croquettes, and beet pierogies filled with potato and housemade sauerkraut. The bar pours Middle West spirits in cocktails and tasting flights, so you can explore the distillery’s work without making a separate stop. Check the latest menu before booking, and allow more time than a quick drink requires.
What it deserves: Michelin Recommended
Speck Italian Eatery
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At Speck downtown, Josh Dalton’s team makes pasta daily and gives you several good reasons to order more than one shape. Mafaldine carries sausage ragù and stracciatella; cacio e pepe turns up as gnudi with peppercorn and pecorino. Start with mussels in salumi broth and fennel, using the accompanying scacciata to collect what remains in the bowl. Lunch brings panini and a shorter pasta list, while dinner adds dishes such as Chianti-braised short rib. It’s an easy choice when the evening’s only firm plan is Italian food.
What it deserves: Bib Gourmand
Veritas
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Veritas is Josh Dalton’s downtown tasting-menu restaurant, where a fixed sequence gives the kitchen space to move between seafood, pasta, meat, and dessert. The current fall menu pairs bluefin tuna with cranberry and green apple, and offers squash cappelletti with brown butter and vadouvan among the later courses. Menus change, so treat those dishes as examples of the approach rather than a permanent order. For a shorter visit, the separate bar menu offers caviar-topped deviled eggs, potato croquettes, and a brown-butter lobster roll.
What it deserves: Michelin Star
Wolf’s Ridge Brewing
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Wolf’s Ridge gives downtown diners a brewery that can handle a full dinner as readily as a pint. Tom Sommer took over the kitchen in March 2026, and the changing menu includes barleywine-braised short rib with potato purée and carrots, plus duck-leg confit with stout hoisin and a Peking pancake. At brunch, the longstanding toad in the hole brings eggs in brioche with bacon, potatoes, and sawmill gravy. Choose the dining space for the broader menu, and order a beer flight if one glass leaves too many decisions unresolved.
What it deserves: Michelin Recommended
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