Where to eat

Our restaurant recommendations take into account the types of restaurants that are prevalent and popular. There is a bias toward restaurants created by local entrepreneurs , as opposed to well-known franchise restaurants, because visitors new to the area want this information.

The recommendations begin with two “big deal” restaurants, followed by others arranged alphabetically by category.

Additions, corrections, complaints welcome at jgreenma@uga.edu.

Big deal: Epic, Mabella

Epic is Jamie Keating’s elegant, fine-dining restaurant, housed in the Eagle & Phenix Mills, once important textile mills, now residential lofts. Over-the-top is at the heart of the experience: Owner Keating is a global competitive chef. AAA’s Four Diamond rating, the only one in Columbus. The restaurant offers an eight-course tasting menu at a chef’s kitchen table. Approaches include molecular gastronomy and sous vide. A thirty-page list of wine and spirits, including 15 tequilas. Riedel stemware. Excellent, if expensive, fare. Save with the early-evening three-course menu.

Mabella, an Italian-infused steakhouse, opened in 2015 on 11th Street, just off Broadway. Chef Tom Jones re-interprets the classical antipasti, insalata, secondi menu. Also, pasta sauced or stuffed: try the bucatini puttanesca. The steakhouse part is what comes off the wood-fired grill: beef, chicken, lamb – all but the chicken enough for two. The kitchen responds well to requests for a lower-calorie, lighter hand on saucing and portions. Anything can be split. The contorni, or side dishes, offer great value. Indeed, one could assemble a $14 dinner from three sides: Wild mushroom risotto, grilled broccolini and a chopped kale salad. A note on the name: The 1880s-era building once housed a telephone switching center. Thus, Ma Bell became Mabella. From the Buddy Nelms organization, owner of The Loft on Broadway.

TripAdvisor reviews, ranking: Mabella, Epic

Barbeque: 13th Street Barbeque in Phenix City

13th Street BBQ, 1310 7th Avenue, Phenix City. For more than a quarter century, the Johnson family has served up pork loin and butt, smoked in hickory and oak. Most famous for the pork chop sandwich. Slay Johnson claims the sauces are his great grandmother’s recipes. Also, ribs, chicken and a potato-cheese-pork combination called the “Q-Tater.” Other stores are franchises. A food-truck version parks on 13th Street in Columbus, across the street from the Villages at 13th Street many Saturdays. Better known, and well-respected for community involvement and philanthropy, is Country’s.

TripAdvisor reviews, ranking: 13th Street Barbeque in Phenix City, Country’s

Breakfast: Ruth Ann’s Restaurant

Ruth Ann’s Restaurant sits on ground that once was Temple Israel. It’s been a restaurant since 1959, and has carried Ruth Ann Heisey’s name since 1996. Her daughter, Mary, is the current owner. We recount the history because it seems to matter to customers, who regard “let’s meet at Ruth Ann’s” as a breakfast rite or pilgrimage. Eggs, meats and potatoes in all the expected ways, plus “Benedicts” four ways, including fried green tomatoes substituting for Canadian bacon. The richest, sweetest pancakes in town: try the red velvet. Choice of six breads, four cheeses. Also lunch, where the best value is the three-vegetable plate off the seasonal list. The collards and cornbread dressing are lovingly cooked in lard.

TripAdvisor reviews, ranking: Ruth Ann’s Restaurant

Burgers: Black Cow, Speakeasy

The Black Cow, a Mark Jones Kitchens restaurant downtown, is the only Columbus restaurant to make Garden & Gun magazine’s “Guide to the South’s Best Burgers” in Columbus, based on reader responses on Facebook. Among the Black Cow burger choices: The Bacon Pimento Cheeseburger that features house-made pimento cheese, bacon and jalapeno jelly, $8.99. The Murphy Burger at the Speakeasy in MidTown is a half-pound of seasoned ground beef, served with sauteed mushrooms, Monterrey Jack cheese, lettuce and tomato, $8.99.

TripAdvisor reviews, ranking: The Black Cow, Speakeasy

Catfish: Rosehill Seafood, Ezell’s Catfish Cabin

Locals regard Rosehill Seafood, 2621 Hamilton Road, as the city’s “classic” catfish joint. Well they should. Fresh seafood at inland restaurants is generally suspect: Either it’s too old, or it’s too expensive. Not so for catfish, which comes from inland farms. Rosehill sources its catfish from the Simmons farms in Yazoo City, Mississippi, arguably the South’s best source. The Rosehill restaurant and market sell all manner of seafood, but catfish dominates. Fresh in the market, fried in the restaurant. Ezell’s Catish Cabin, 4001 Warms Springs Road, is a close competitor. Indeed, some claim its hush puppies are better.

TripAdvisor reviews, rankings: Rosehill Seafood, Ezell’s Catfish Cabin

Chinese: Chef Lee’s Peking Restaurant

Joe Lee brought his San Francisco chef training to Columbus in 1984. Three decades later, his Chef Lee’s Peking Restaurant, 6100 Bradley Park Drive, is the city’s grand emporium of Chinese cuisine. Spicy Szechuan dishes are Chef Lee’s specialty, but the typically organized menu offers all of the expected preparations of beef, pork, chicken and seafood. Also, soups, rice and lo mien noodles. Don’t hesitate to specify preferences to servers: light sauce, no MSG, add this-or-that ingredient. Special order the Peking duck. Chef Lee’s wife and a small group of tough, no-nonsense women run the dining room. Always busy but seating always available. Generous pours from the bar. The fortune cookie fortunes are always upbeat.

TripAdvisor reviews, ranking: Chef Lee’s Peking Restaurant

Coffee: Iron Bank, Fountain City — and Burger King

Take coffee from local shops downtown that are passionate (and knowledgeable) about the stuff. One is Iron Bank Coffee Company within The White Bank Building, 1048 Broadway, a cast iron-clad building fabricated in Pittsburgh before the Civil War and completed after. It was home to First National Bank. Today, the coffee shop occupies the ground floor. Seating in one of the bank’s vaults lends an historic note. Its coffee is from Counter Culture Coffee, a roaster based in Durham, North Carolina. A block north at 1007 Broadway is Fountain City Coffee, which roasts its own beans. This craft orientation to coffee differentiates Fountain City from its competitors. Try the double-caffeinated Jack! A remarkable value for seniors is morning coffee in any of the city’s Burger Kings. A cup and free refills of Seattle’s Best (which most people in Seattle prefer to Starbuck’s) is 53 cents and a copy of the daily newspaper is free.

TripAdvisor reviews, rankings: Iron Bank, Fountain City

Drinks: Cannon Brew Pub, Scruffy Murphy’s, Maltitude, 11th & Bay, Mabella, The Loft

The artisan-beer movement has taken hold here. Try these three downtown stops: Cannon Brew Pub, the first to offer its own craft beers, and a favorite among soldiers. Scruffy Murphy’s, an Irish pub where “a pint of the good stuff,” which is to say Guinness, is always on offer. Maltitude, is the most-recent of the craft brewers, with samples in small glasses, cans and up to 64-ounce growlers to go. And, here are three popular, higher-end, after-work, drinks spots downtown: 11th & Bay, Mabella and The Loft. Cocktails, wines by the glass, beer on tap and in bottles at all three. Also, a good selection of after-dinner liquors for later in the evening. The bar tops in 11th & Bay were formed from materials scavenged from the cotton warehouse that was re-purposed as this restaurant. Ask the owner for the details. Mabella and The Loft are owned by Buddy Nelms, the earliest and most important force in development of downtown entertainment.

TripAdvisor reviews, rankings: Cannon Brew Pub, Scruffy Murphy’s, Maltitude, 11th & Bay, Mabella, The Loft

Hot dogs: Regret to say, not the scrambled dog at Dinglewood Pharmacy

The meat’s the key, critics say about Georgia barbeque, not the sauce. Same for hot dogs. The scrambled dog at Dinglewood Pharmacy may be famous for its chili and oyster cracker toppings, but the meat is inferior, and it’s expensive at $5.75. What’s needed in a hot dog is an all-beef, no filler, preferably Kosher, sausage. Try the Kosher-style hot dog at Five Guys, Cook’s Place and sports-themed Jordan’s Girls Gourmet Hot Dawgs.

Italian: Trevioli Artisan Pasta Company

Trevioli Artisan Pasta Company,  7466 Blackmon Road, Suite D. This restaurant attracts a cult following. Chef and owner Trevor Morris draws praise for many shapes of fresh pasta, sauced in creams, tomato blushes. Meat and fish, too. A Zagat entry might read “Different … delicious … a way to go”

TripAdvisor reviews, rankings: Trevioli

Jamaican: Mercy’s Jamaican Kitchen

Mercy’s Jamaican Kitchen, 5753 Milgen Road. An order counter that looks in on the kitchen is where you start in this diner-like space. Six tables in a Jamaica-themed dining area, though many lunch orders are to go. Jerk and curry spiced chicken pork, shrimp, goat and oxtails are on the menu every day – plus specials. At lunch, entrees are served over rice and peas with two sides for $7. Everything is “yardy style,” meaning like home cooking. Call to order the fried red snapper, ackee with salt fish, and other fish dishes. No alcohol.

TripAdvisor reviews, rankings: Mercy’s

Korean: Golden Chopsticks, Koreana

Golden Chopsticks, 3846 St. Mary’s Road. Don’t be misled by the name; this isn’t a Chinese restaurant. Try the lunch specials. The experience is like a buffet without the steam tables nor the lines. Dishes ranging from daeji bulgogi to bibimbob, from mandoo to hot stone bowls, come with at least five small bowls of vegetables, including a cabbage kimchi. An alternative is Koreana, 5828 Moon Road, where the approach fuses Korean and Western cuisine.

TripAdvisor reviews, rankings: Golden Chopsticks, Koreana

Large groups: Speakeasy

Dining out in large groups is best at the Speakeasy, 3123 Mercury Drive, in MidTown. Good food, fast service, low prices. Most large groups book in advance, but others come unannounced. Doesn’t seem to matter; the servers and kitchen adjust. Try the West Georgia Cavier as an appetizer. It’s chili-seasoned black-eyed peas with melted cheese, served with warmed tortilla chips. Half-pound burgers for $7. Fifteen-inch cheese pizzas for $10. Salads, soups and sandwiches, too. They’ll serve the Kids Menu to adults. Many order the toasted cheese sandwich. This Losonsky family-owned restaurant has been in business since 1976.

TripAdvisor reviews, rankings: Speakeasy

Meat-and-three: Royal Cafe, Minnie’s

Lila Mae Starr, owner of the Royal Café, 600 11th Street, has presided over this meat-and-three lunch spot for decades. The food is carefully prepared, properly seasoned, and always comes with tea. The Monday through Friday crowd is a mix of lawyers and judges, businessmen in ties, construction workers, even ladies who lunch. Order the seasonal Veggie Dinner for $6.50: in summer, for example, creamed corn, fresh spinach, macaroni and cheese, sliced beefsteak tomatoes, served on a plastic food tray with a cornbread muffin. Minnie’s Uptown Restaurant, 104 8th Street, offers comparable fare, cafeteria style. Lunch is served in the surround of restored, 19th century homes. Busy at lunch on weekdays, but fast service and reliably good food. The mac and cheese – a vegetable in the South – is highly regarded. Minnie’s also offers whole cakes and pies to go.

TripAdvisor reviews, rankings: Royal Cafe, Minnie’s

Mexican: La Mexicana

Mexican restaurants here are a great value. Dinner is $10, no matter what you order. This is “Mexican” for American tastes. Whether the menu offers 25, 50 or 75 choices, every dish is made from these 12 ingredients: beef, chicken, shrimp, tomatoes, beans, rice, onion, fresh cheese, tortillas, lettuce, cilantro and chilis. From dozens of moms-and-pops, Chipotle, and now Downing Barber’s Barberitos Southwestern Grille downtown, the choice is yours. If you crave “authenticity,” try La Mexicana at 3305 Victory Drive. Enter through the Mexican grocery to an unfinished space in the back. Spanish is the first language of the customers and the wait staff. Men in military uniform are from Latin America, training at Fort Benning. Same menu; same 12 ingredients.

TripAdvisor reviews, rankings: La Mexicana

Neighborhood cafe: Evelyn’s Cafe

The regulars at Evelyn’s Café don’t use mobile devices over lunch. This is an older crowd, reflective of an earlier time in this Rose Hill neighborhood of small, textile-worker homes. They’re too busy yakking around tables for six as they work through the day’s meat-and-three. It is southern fried chicken on Tuesdays, the busiest day of the week, servers say. For $8.95, you get the chicken, your choice of three sides – don’t miss the dry lima beans cooked in fat meat – two pieces of corn cob shaped corn bread and tea. An attractive option is substituting one of the sides for the day’s dessert. Open early for breakfast. No credit cards. And, the fact that mobile devices aren’t ringing is a plus.

TripAdisor reviews, rankings: Evelyn’s Cafe

Picnic lunch: RiverWalk Island

Enjoy a picnic lunch on RiverWalk Island, just behind the Eagle & Phenix Lofts. Here you’ll find a football-field size space – part concrete, mostly large boulders, and a small plot of grass. It’s at the edge of the whitewater course’s toughest stretch of waves, and there’s nothing to obstruct the view. So take particular care with children. Keep a lookout for world-class freelance kayakers like Hunter “Katt” Katich, who trains here most days. Where to buy a picnic lunch? Lots of choices along Broadway and its cross streets. Or, step across the Frank Martin Pedestrian Bridge to sample food-truck fare offered by the Stompin’ Grounds. Five trucks take turns offering lunch and dinner. No alcohol nor glass on the island, the rules say. Restrooms one block north at the base of the bridge.

Steakhouse: Buckhead Steak & Wine

Dining on a USDA prime steak is like having your dessert first. Rich, buttery, velvety taste and texture, the result of marbling that bastes the steak from the inside out, and often dry aging that breaks down the fibers and makes the meat more tender and flavorful. As the WSJ’s Katy McLaughlin observed, USDA prime is the “Holy Grail of steakhouses, the thing that gets customers in the door and justifies the prices.” In Columbus, the Holy Grail of USDA prime steak resides most fully at Buckhead Steak & Wine, 5010 Armour Road, formerly Buckhead Grill. All of its steaks, the restaurant says, are graded USDA prime, and prices reflect that: the 11-ounce New York strip, for example, is $39. Luke’s Pub in Ellerslie and 11th and Bay downtown participate in the Certified Angus Beef program, serving the upper-end of USDA choice and some prime. If your budget won’t permit the cost of eating out on USDA prime steaks, buy one and cook at home. Fresh Market, 1591 Bradley Park Drive, stocks USDA prime strips and ribeyes at half the restaurant price. If your cardiologist objects to all this luscious fat, try the lean, grass-only fed cuts, from Hereford at Fresh Market and White Oak Pastures at Maltitude.

TripAdvisor reviews, rankings: Buckhead Steak & Wine

Thai: Lemongrass Thai & Sushi

Lemongrass Thai & Sushi, 2435 Wynnton Road, is the ambitious undertaking of Jennie and Rodrigo Sardinas. Her family – from Thailand and Laos – plants and picks spices from the garden and does all of the cooking, reports the Ledger’s Tony Adams. The sushi menu offers 88 choices of nigiri, sashimi, sushi and special rolls. The Thai menu offers rolls, curries, rice and noodle dishes, as well teriyaki, tempura, katsu and hibachi preparations from Japan. Portions are family size, so order for the table. The kitchen has a knowing hand with the curries, saucing meats, seafood, vegetables and – especially – bean curd with a blending of lemongrass and coconut milk and cream. (As with Thai food everywhere, know your limits on spiciness. “Mai phet” means “not spicy,” yet that will bring to your table Thai dishes with light, back-of-the-throat heat.)

TripAdvisor reviews, rankings: Lemongrass Thai & Sushi

Vegetarian: Country Life

Country Life, 1217 Eberhart Avenue, is part mission, part health-food store and part vegetarian restaurant. It is a ministry of the Uchee Pines Institute, founded four decades ago by two physicians who heal through “science and spirit.” Most come for “the least expensive and healthiest salad bar” in Columbus, as the restaurant boasts. Vegetarian cooks stock up on such bulk-sold foods as herbs, grains, seeds, nuts, dried peas and lentils. They consult vegan and vegetarian cookbooks. And, they take regularly offered cooking classes. Others come for health-related advice, supplements and natural care products.

TripAdvisor reviews, rankings: Country Life

Vietnamese: Uptown Vietnamese Cuisine, Pho Viet

Uptown Vietnam Cuisine, 1250 Broadway. This is Vietnamese cuisine of the north, influenced by the French. The centerpiece is beef noodle soup, called pho, pronounced fuh. Choice of beef parts: brisket, flank skirt, soft tendon, tripe. Another choice, also typical of the north, is the bun, a choice of meats served in a bowl of vermicelli rice noodles, lettuce, cucumber, cilantro, pickled carrot and fish sauce. Pho comes steaming hot; bun is room temp. Start with the spring rolls, served with house-made peanut sauce. Pho Viet, 5300 Sidney Simon Boulevard, was the first pho-oriented entrant in the area when it opened Pho Vy on River Road, now a Thai restaurant. Menu is similar to Uptown Vietnam Cuisine and the food is just as good.

TripAdvisor reviews, rankings: Uptown Vietnamese Cuisine, Pho Viet

Water view: Marina at Lake Oliver, Bulldawg Bait and Tackle

Alas, the restaurants with the best views of the river are private. Both the Chattahoochee River Club downtown and the Big Eddy Club in Green Island Hills offer the best fine-dining in Columbus – and dramatic water views – if you can wrangle an invitation. If not, perfect for groups and families are the chili dogs, chips and a drink on offer at two waterside spots. One is the city-owned marina on Lake Oliver. After lunch, peer into the wooden bait box filled with live crickets. It’s large, the size of a steamer truck. The lid is propped open, yet the swarm of lively, moving-about, crickets remains in the box. Ask the staff to explain why. (Peering into the box is likely to elicit “wow” from some children, “ew” from others.) Next is the pair of lakeside duck-feeding stations. Deposit a quarter, then turn the crank for a handful of food. Scatter along the shore and here come the ducks. The educational aspect is the explanation why bread, popcorn and other foods-for-humans are deadly to the ducks. The other spot for waterside chili dogs is Bulldog Bait and Tackle at Rotary Park off Victory Drive. Owner F.D. Williams has been on the site since 2001 and is full of river stories.