Frida 602

The Restaurant

Frida 602 opened in 2018 on Main Street in the Roebling Point district — a six-minute walk from MainStrasse Village and three blocks from the Roebling Bridge — in a restored brick storefront with a vivid colour-blocked interior of cobalt, magenta, and ochre that takes its visual cue from Frida Kahlo's Casa Azul in Coyoacán. The space seats about ninety covers across a main dining room, a long open kitchen counter, a wraparound bar, and a covered patio against the side wall. The room is intentionally bright — string lights, colour-saturated walls, hand-painted Day-of-the-Dead murals — and operates as the most photographed restaurant interior in Covington.

The kitchen, led by executive chef Carlos Galvez, runs a modern Mexican menu that takes the regional cuisine of Oaxaca, Yucatán, and central Mexico seriously and operates well above the typical Northern Kentucky 'Mexican restaurant' tier. Signature plates include hand-pressed nixtamal corn tortillas made daily from heirloom Mexican corn, a Oaxacan-style mole negro over chicken with twenty-seven ingredients ground in-house, cochinita pibil pork slow-roasted in banana leaf with achiote and bitter orange, tuna tostadas with chipotle aioli and pickled red onion, and a Yucatecan-style ceviche with habanero, lime, and roasted pineapple. The guacamole is made tableside on request.

The bar programme is the operating signature: more than a hundred and twenty mezcals organised by region (Oaxaca, Durango, Guerrero, Michoacán) and producer, a serious tequila selection focused on small additive-free producers, a margarita programme built around fresh-pressed citrus and house syrups, and a small but careful list of Mexican wines from Valle de Guadalupe. Service is neighbourhood-warm and bilingual; the kitchen will accommodate dietary needs and customise share platters with notice. Cincinnati Magazine named the restaurant Best Mexican in 2023 — the first time in the publication's history that the title crossed the river from Cincinnati to Covington.