Photograph by Catherine Grace
The door is easy to miss at Abigail Street, but the experience is hard to forget. The place keeps food fun, which seems counterintuitive when broccoli is one of its bestsellers, but that isn’t the contradiction you may imagine.
Heavily inspired by Mediterranean flavors, techniques, and ingredients, the tapas-style menu is full of surprises. When was the last time you had broccoli fried and dressed with Moroccan spices and elevated with notes of miso and tahini? It’s devastatingly good.
Each small plate is a picture of decadence. Scallops are served on a bed of spectacularly seasoned maftoul, the stuffed dates are swaddled in bacon, and the woodfired octopus plays in a hummus garden. The “Well Provisioned” hummus draws diners on its own. The dish changes daily, featuring incredible imported olives, seasonings, fresh herbs, and more. It’s a regular exercise in creativity for the team and a revolving excuse to stop in for guests.
There’s no pressure to stop for a full meal, which is a big part of why the hummus draws so many. Enjoying fresh pita and drinks is a brilliant way to start an evening out without committing past cocktail hour. Abigail Street’s relaxed atmosphere welcomes such informal approaches to dining, and this isn’t the only trick up the menu’s sleeve.
There are as many ways to enjoy a visit here as there are items on the menu. If hummus can start an evening, then the baklava and Turkish coffee welcome stragglers at the end of the night. There’s no reason you couldn’t stop in at any hour to catch up with a friend over dessert, of course, and the housemade pistachio baklava could be a meal of its own. Like the broccoli, it defies expectations. In this case, the expectation is a ratio. Traditional baklava is mostly pastry with a thin filling of walnut, pistachio, almond, or hazelnut. Abigail Street packs a good inch of pistachio mix between sandwich-sized triangles of pastry, and the servers cackle in delight at diners’ gobsmacked reactions.
1214 Vine St., Over-the-Rhine, (513) 421-4040, abigailstreet.com
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