A first bite of Kenwood Towne Center's buzzy new restaurant
Highly Recommended is a weekly spotlight on some of food writer Keith Pandolfi's favorite finds as he eats his way across Greater Cincinnati. Come back every Tuesday for more.
On a recent Thursday night at Northstar Cafe, a jazz band played standards from the American Songbook, reminding me of the New Year's Eve scene in "When Harry Met Sally" with its sparkly Harry Connick Jr. soundtrack. It was a much sunnier time in American culture when movies focused on real-life human interaction instead of superhero franchises and dystopian science fiction.
Old friends sat around the bar with heavy pours of wine. The room felt celebratory, and people were laughing. It felt good. Strange, I thought, that all of this was happening just across from the Cheesecake Factory at Kenwood Towne Center.
If you haven't been to Northstar, a Columbus-based chain with seven locations in Ohio, it works like this: You stand in line and order at the counter, then take a seat at one of the restaurant's comfy booths, banquettes or barstools to wait for your food to arrive. It's a relatively quick process, and once you're seated and enjoying your food, it feels more like an upscale restaurant than a counter-service joint.
Most of the food at Northstar is solid, but some of it is inexplicably perfect. In that latter category, I'll point to the so-called "Simple Salad." On the menu, it reads just like that − Napa cabbage, kale, Parmesan cheese and croutons with a vinaigrette − but it delivers so many textures and sweet, salty flavors that, like me, you might go online looking for the recipe (there are plenty).
I also liked the enchiladas, which are given an almost Southern California treatment. Baked in the same wood-fired oven that Northstar makes its pizzas, the flour tortillas are stuffed with roasted corn, sweet potatoes and gooey smoked gouda, topped with pepitas and served with a side of smoky, spicy black beans grown in Ohio.
The opening of Northstar Cafe brings back something I haven't seen for some time in this suburban neck of the woods: Buzz. The fact that it's located inside the old Brooks Brothers space at a shopping mall makes that buzz all the more surprising.
Northstar Cafe, 7875 Montgomery Road, Suite 3112, Kenwood; 513-570-5570, thenorthstarcafe.com. Northstar's first Cincinnati-area location opened at Liberty Center in 2016 and is still open.
This article originally appeared on Cincinnati Enquirer: A first bite of Kenwood's buzzy new restaurant: Northstar Cafe
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