Columbus Monthly’s 10 Best Restaurants: Rooftop-Based Goodale Station Impresses at No. 7

We love hotel restaurants, but they often ask chefs to play within the confines of a certain sandbox. Not so at Goodale Station, the independent rooftop restaurant and bar that tops the Canopy by Hilton hotel on Nationwide Boulevard. Here, veteran Columbus chef Jonathan Olson has the creative freedom to go where his imagination and seasonal ingredients take him. 

There’s nowhere to hide on this super-tight, New American menu of five starters, six shareable plates and six mains, which is intentional. “The vast majority of our items, even some of the breads we’re making in-house, pretty much everything’s made from scratch. I’m really just trying to focus in on ingredients, locally as much as possible,” Olson says. 

This fall, the menu includes a salmon tartare inspired by Olson’s Swedish heritage, featuring his mom’s limpa rye crisps. But you’ll also find a Korean garlic bread, aloo masala with serrano naan and roasted XO pork belly, featuring Hong Kong’s beloved savory-spicy-sweet condiment, XO.  

One fall standout is Goodale’s coffee-rubbed, braised short rib, which spends time wrapped in smoked tobacco leaves. The smoky, fall-apart short rib brings a tingling sensation to the tongue, thanks to the coffee-tobacco combo, and is enlivened further with a bright cauliflower tabbouleh. 

And that’s just the food. Goodale could easily stand alone as a cocktail bar, boasting a sexy interior space, a rooftop patio with fire pits and excellent (if pricey) cocktails and wines by the glass. Better yet, pay a visit at happy hour, when a handful of cocktails, wines, draft beers and snacks are 40 percent off. Just be sure to save room for dinner. 

Goodale Station

77 E. Nationwide Blvd., Downtown, 614-227-9400, goodalestation.com

This story is from the “10 Best Restaurants” package in the November 2022 issue of Columbus Monthly.