Favorite New Dining Experiences: Gene's
Plus, Columbus Food Adventures and Prologue Bookshop team up for the holidays.
Dublin’s Bridge Park is undoubtedly a rousing success. Big investments. Ample parking. Walkability. And connectivity to historic Dublin via “the longest single-tower S-shaped suspension bridge in the world.”
Like the ambition of Bridge Park, many of Dublin’s newer restaurants are outsized, too. There’s Valentina’s at 6,300 square feet, Kitchen Social at around the same size and Urban Meyer’s Pint Room weighing in at 8,500.
What Dublin has been missing lately is an intimate neighborhood restaurant.
Gene’s, on the other side of the Scioto in historic Dublin, fills that niche, and I’d also argue that this New American restaurant is a worthy destination.
Open since July, Gene’s is the sibling restaurant to Coast Wine House, the handsome wine shop located just up the street from it on South High. Coast’s owner, Dustin Snow, says the idea for the restaurant sprouted organically after listening to his customers.
“It came out of a lot of the feedback that we got from guests at Coast and [them] wanting more food. We had Chef Bobby [Moore] at Coast, but we had a teeny, tiny, little kitchen. We gave it a shot [at Coast], and it just wasn't doable.”
Instead, Snow bought a historic building down the street–the kind that has had at least nine lives, including as a residential home, pizza parlor, the Dublin Village Wine Shop and a hair salon.
In many ways, Gene’s feels like a throwback. It shares the kind of ethos as, say, Basi Italia or the much-missed Alana’s Food & Wine. You get the feeling of dining in someone’s well-appointed home.
With its black and white checkered floors, burnt-orange velvet curtains, white beadboard walls, bentwood chairs, vintage art and U-shaped bar–Gene’s interior design by Liz Dutton Interiors is quaint and nostalgic yet contemporary. There are cute cafe tables on the patio, too.
Snow says he and executive chef Moore were inspired by the kinds of restaurants you might find in Boston or Charleston, South Carolina. “Homey taverns with a bit of polish,” Snow says. (He notes Vern's and Chez Nous, both in Charleston, as inspiration.)
At Gene’s, Snow wanted to create a wine-forward restaurant where you have the “opportunity to learn about wine pairings with food in an environment that isn't white tablecloths and a sommelier in a suit.” In a word: approachable.
“I think that's where my comfort zone was, as well as Chef Bobby's. We aren't going to create this, you know, 100-plus seat restaurant that is just pushing out volume. It was about: how can we create a space that's inspired by not only our favorite restaurants, but places that we've been to that were really memorable. [Where] every plate that came out had a special touch to it. You got to know the staff, and it felt cozy and well-designed.”
Indeed, when you dine at Gene’s, you get the sense that there’s real care for what goes onto your plate and in your glass.
There’s no burger on the menu—gasp. Instead, there are about 14 sharable plates that land in the space between tapas and traditional entrees, and the menu changes based on the availability of seasonal ingredients. There are usually fresh oysters on hand and some kind of Caesar salad, maybe a crudo, a dip with grilled bread and a pair of pork and steak options.
In the summer, there was a lovely compressed watermelon, brassica Caesar, whipped ricotta with singed bread and a nicely marbled NY strip. (Also a fresh tomato salad that reminded me of Alana’s famous Tomato Stack.)
Notably, vegetables are the star of several dishes, like the lightly fried eggplant tonkotsu with sumac yogurt, black lime, herbs & pickled onions. Snow points out another dish: chicken-fried wild mushrooms with black-eyed peas. It's a riff on Hoppin’ John and a nod to his wife’s grandfather Eugene Patterson, the Georgia-born journalist, civil rights activist and veteran. (Patterson is just one “Gene” in the family, in addition to a Jean and Eugenia, thus the restaurant’s moniker.)
So, what’s my ideal date night in Dublin? Start at Coast with a glass of wine before walking to Gene’s for a romantic dinner. Then, grab the hand of your loved one and venture across the Dublin Link bridge for a nightcap in, where else, Bridge Park.
Notes
Around the Columbus Food Scene
Prologue Bookshop and Columbus Food Adventures have teamed up for a gift-giving promotion benefiting Columbus Food Rescue. Here’s how it works: Bethia has selected five cookbooks she recommends this holiday season. For each of these cookbooks sold in-store and online, Prologue Bookshop and Columbus Food Adventures will each donate $5 to Columbus Food Rescue. You can learn more and see the list of cookbooks here.
Martini Modern Italian (445 N. High St.), which first opened in 1996, celebrated its grand reopening last week after an extensive makeover and a menu refresh. Gone are the cabernet red pillars and white high-back chairs, replaced with more sophisticated white pillars, darker accents and more modern furniture. The biggest change to the food menu is the addition of an à la carte "Steak & Chops" section, including a 16-ounce prime rib-eye and 16-ounce lamb chops. Martini's signature pasta dishes—like the lamb pappardelle and chicken carbonara—remain.
Marlow's Cheesesteaks will make its debut at North Market Downtown starting today, Nov. 12. The new vendor, located in the market’s northwest corner, will serve cheesesteaks with beef, chicken, salmon and veggie options, french fries and the Philly-style desserts known as water ice.
Clintonville’s Harvest Bar + Kitchen (2885 N. High St.) has reopened after suffering its second fire in two years. It has been closed since July after a lit cigarette thrown into a Harvest dumpster damaged the restaurant’s refrigeration unit.