Sotto

The Restaurant

Sotto sits below street level beside Boca's red door on East 6th — the entrance is a narrow staircase that descends past hand-lettered chalkboards into a low-vaulted brick cellar of around sixty covers. The room is the differentiator: exposed nineteenth-century brick walls, hammered-tin ceilings stained dark, votive candles on every table, and acoustic-warm wood floors that absorb the sound of the room and leave a dining hum that never becomes loud. It is the closest Cincinnati comes to an authentic Roman or Florentine trattoria, and it has been the city's reference Italian room since David Falk opened it in 2012.

The kitchen — led for the last several years by executive chef Jacob 'Woody' Wood, with Falk in continuing ownership — focuses on hand-cut pasta and wood-fire mains in the central-Italian tradition. Signature plates include a tonnarelli cacio e pepe finished tableside in a wheel of aged Pecorino; a hand-cut gnocchi with twelve-hour Wagyu short-rib ragu; a wood-grilled branzino with lemon and chilli oil; and a bistecca alla Fiorentina for two from the wood grill — a fifty-six-day dry-aged porterhouse served with rosemary potatoes and a single grilled lemon. A la carte mains run $32-$58; pastas $24-$32; the antipasto-and-pasta progression with a shared dessert lands comfortably at $85 per person without wine.

The wine list — about three hundred and fifty references — biases heavily toward Italian regions (with particularly strong showings in Piedmont, Tuscany, and the Veneto), with a small but confident selection of Champagne and Burgundy. Glass pours rotate weekly; a half-bottle programme exists for serious wine drinkers ordering across multiple courses. The dining room sits at a deliberate tempo — three hours is not unusual for a Saturday-night table — and the staff understand the room's reputation: every proposal request, every birthday secret, is held in absolute discretion until the moment it is asked for.