While the menu does feature a coffee-braised Ohio short rib and a $28 seafood pasta which boasts no fewer than three varieties of shellfish, its standout just might be the guacamole, which is made with only three ingredients. It’s clear in every element of an evening spent at The Sycamore that the restaurant takes its humble heritage quite seriously. The Sycamore is, essentially, The Sycamore Cafe 2.0––and not just because of the name change. The impulse to self-categorize as a “tavern” is not without its logic after all, The Sycamore was once The Sycamore Cafe, a German Village institution described as “a crusty dive bar.” When Columbus restauranteur Chris Crader (founder of Harvest Pizza and Cosecha Cosina, among others) revamped the space in 2013, he imagined an elevated menu, a reinvigorated craft-beer program, and a lively wine list existing dynamically among the Cafe’s old comfort- and bar-food standards, and elegant banquettes and a spacious patio interacting with the original painted-tin ceiling and cherrywood bar. A grubby pub this is not, but one of Columbus’s best––and best-preserved––dining and drinking hotspots. Rather, The Sycamore is an enlivened, inviting, intimate space featuring unique cocktails, worldly epicurean offerings, and a ubiquitous crowd of young and good-looking patrons.

The Sycamore, the petite New American bistro nestled on the cozy corner of Sycamore and East Sixth deep in German Village, fashions itself something of a neighborhood tavern, but the reality of the restaurant is a little more sophisticated––and a lot more sumptuous––than the plastic pitchers of Bud Light and dented dartboards that that distinction usually brings to mind.

Harvest pizza german village