Cincinnati eats.

My latest ranking of the top 50 prospects in baseball is up for Insiders, and I held a Klawchat this afternoon. Also, my latest boardgame review, of Flea Market, is up over at Paste.

I was only in Cincinnati for about 32 hours, but managed to squeeze in a fantastic meal at Sotto right downtown and to find a gem of a coffee shop in Collective Espresso a few blocks north.

Sotto was a recommendation from the unofficial mayor of Cincinnati, C. Trent Rosencrans, who obviously knows what he’s talking about and couldn’t have made a better suggestion to me – this is my kind of food. Sotto’s menu is fundamentally Italian, but with top-quality ingredients that keep most of the dishes very simple and clean, as well as immaculate execution. The menu is straightforward, with four main sections: bruschettas, salads, primi (pasta dishes), and secondi (meats/entrees). I went with three dishes, probably a little too much food for me but in total about right for an average person’s appetite, and those plus a cocktail (rum, lime, mint, bitters) ran $48 before tip. I sat at the food bar, so I ended up with a bonus dish of their garlic and olive oil bruschetta, grilled right in front of me on their giant wood-fired grill, followed by the goat cheese/honey/hazelnut bruschetta, all excellent but at heart about the bread, like a Tuscan loaf (but with salt), brushed with EVOO and lined with grill marks.

The salad was Sotto’s take on a Caesar salad, using baby kale leaves and julienned lacinato kale leaves, with house-made croutons made from local bakery Blue Oven’s bread and a garlic/Parmiggiano dressing. (I didn’t ask if they used anchovies, but the menu didn’t say so and that’s neither authentic nor particularly Italian.) The pasta dish, cappellacci with braised short rib meat inside, were unbelievably light, with the pasta wrapping on the dumplings thinner than any Italian filled pasta I’ve had, with a texture more like that of (good) wontons than typical ravioli or similar dishes. Sotto served it in a sauce of Amish butter (only some of which ended up on my shirt) and thyme, which was rich enough that I barely needed any of it on the pasta. I’m dessert would have been wonderful but I ate everything I ordered and was fit to burst by that point. This would easily have been a $70-80 meal in a larger city and everything I ate was spectacular from ingredients to execution. I can also verify, since the chef showed me, that they have this amazing immersion circulator-type device that allows them to keep pasta water constantly boiling, with one side kept limited to gluten-free pastas to avoid cross-contamination.

Collective Espresso has a few locations, at least one of which serves brunch on the weekends, but I met a friend at the tiny original shop on Woodward the morning of the Futures Game. They use Blacksmith Espresso beans from Louisville roaster Quills for their espresso, a blend of three beans from Brazil, Peru, and Colombia that produces a balanced shot with a rich texture. I also sampled one of CE’s peach scones, which was more like a cake but served its purpose well (I don’t drink coffee on an empty stomach). I also left Collective Espresso with a bag of Rwanda Inzovu beans from Deeper Roots Coffee, a local roastery; the beans are out of this world, a huge peach bomb with nutmeg and cocoa notes, and DR roasted them to what seems like the perfect color.