The Sleepy Bee is All About the Details

Brunch is not the time for dietary restrictions. Vegan? Nope. Gluten-free? Good luck. Eating local? Stay home. Unless you’re at Sleepy Bee, where Chef Frances Kroner’s extensive menu is engineered to accommodate anyone—and not just as an afterthought.

Take the restaurant’s signature Bee Cakes: Made with eggs (locally sourced, of course), almond milk, and a blend of quinoa, almond, and buckwheat flours, they’re pancakes for the celiac set. While they don’t pretend to be fluffy buttermilk confections (though she makes those too), they are an excellent option for when you’d rather not eat dessert for breakfast. On the meatier side, the Queen City Bee stacks goetta, apple slices, and a fried egg on ciabatta sourced from Over-the-Rhine’s Shadeau Breads. It’s almost like a slice of pie, but with goetta. And at lunch you can find salads, sandwiches, burgers, soups (get the ginger coconut sweet potato), along with a sweet little kids’ menu. Owners Sandra Gross and John Hutton—proprietors of Blue Manatee Book Store and Brazee Street Studio School of Glass—opened Sleepy Bee in 2013. The bright interior space is kitted out with a blown-glass chandelier and handmade wall tiles from Brazee Street. And the menu reads like a who’s-who of local farms and producers: Snowville Creamery, Carriage House Farm, Marksbury Farmers Markets. Plus plenty of coffee supplied by Coffee Break to help sustain you during the inevitable 40-minute wait on Sunday morning.

Sleepy Bee, 3098 Madison Rd., Oakley, (513) 533-2339, sleepybeecafe.com. Breakfast and lunch seven days.

Originally published in the April 2015 issue.

Photographs by Jeremy Kramer.