Food & Drink in Columbus

In and Around Columbus featured Ringside Café. TripAdvisors give the cafe 3.5 owl eyes, and 89% of Urbanspooners recommend Ringside.

Serving more than 33 sandwich, salad, and soup options, The Pickle is a haven of fruit, meat, and veggie-filled lunch packets. Capricious creations include the fiesta chicken sandwich, a spread of bacon, cheddar cheese, barbecue sauce, southwest dressing, red onion, and cilantro on toasty bread ($7.99), and the candied-pecan fields of the strawberry chicken salad ($6.19). All-day breakfast sandwiches ($3.49) can restart the day at 3 p.m., and homemade pies can convince even the surliest sweet tooth to chew thoroughly. The Pickle also caters to lunch-break munchers with its boxed lunches, combining a half sandwich and pickle or large salad with chips and a cookie ($6.99–$7.49). The casual restaurant’s speedy staff will be sure to get your midday meal in your hands faster than the speed at which electricity flows through copper wiring.

Armed with the belief that quick-service eats should not come at the expense of taste or freshness, the sandwich engineers at Lynnally's slow-roast their own turkey, beef top round, and pork shoulder, synthesizing dishes that restore the soul and mollycoddle the mind in a timely fashion. Lynnally's lunch menu lumbers with generous portions. Nosh a signature salad such as the salsa-tinged, Southwestern-inspired Adobo ($6.45), or synthesize your own ($6.95) with high-end ingredients such as beet curls, avocado, pine nuts, and pickled diamonds. Lynnally's soups, such as the savory chicken noodle ($2.95), are cooked from scratch each day and—like all Lynnally's dishes—fashioned from ingredients produced without hormones or pesticides whenever possible. Early birds can opt to wrench a juicy offering from the hearty breakfast menu, which includes stuffed sensations such as the Morning Fiesta burrito, a hunger-pummeling piñata of sausage, egg, green peppers, spicy salsa, and cheddar ($3.95).

Barrio Tapas Lounge's executive chef sweeps from Spain to South America by preparing a rotating menu populated by Spanish fusion tapas. The restaurant’s gustatory gurus plumb the depths of the ocean to plate mahi-mahi and shrimp, and landlocked dishes lavish chili and butter-sage sauces on meat ranging from chicken to veal. A spread of cheese and charcuterie treats the senses to goat's- and sheep's-milk cheeses alongside paprika- and garlic-cured meats. The lengthy list of Argentinean and Chilean wines doubles as 2018's list of must-have baby names.

The dining space mirrors Barrio's artful approach to tapas, its leather couches and cow-spotted cushions set beneath high, wooden ceilings. During the restaurant's opening buzz, a reporter from the Columbus Dispatch highlighted the interior’s “industrial fixtures and natural surfaces designed by George Acock,” including “a sweeping bar that features tables made of thick slabs cut from trees in North Carolina.”

Chinese, Vietnamese, and European culinary traditions all come into play in the kitchen of Rogue Pasta + Noodles, a newly opened eatery that showcases the sheer variety possible in the world of pasta. Linguini serves as the base of an Italian-inspired dish with calamari and housemade marinara sauce, and also for a Cajun dish with roasted red peppers, onions, zucchini, spinach, seafood, and butter sauce. About half of the menu revolves around Asian flavors: creamy peanut sauce dresses chilled noodles, and pho simmers with aromatic spices. To round out meals, order a crisp salad or an appetizer such as the hummus and tapenade platter with pita chips.

A stone oven roars at the heart of Element Pizza, its flames licking hand-stretched pizzas crowned with gourmet toppings. Each pie begins with fresh dough made in house, followed by locally cured meats, specialty-cheese blends, and fresh vegetables. Macaroni noodles coated in a double-cheddar sauce rest on a blanket of mozzarella and provolone on the mac ’n’ cheese pizza, local hard salami mixes with capicola on the capicola pizza, and prosciutto nestles beside almonds and raisins on the balsamic-coated Parma pizza. In addition to the doughy rounds, the kitchen crew tosses fresh salads and grills crisp panini sandwiches made with freshly baked ciabatta bread. They also comply with specialty diet preferences, offering gluten-free crust and vegan cheese.