Cumin — An Exotic Trip to the East Side

We dined at Cumin in East Hyde Park on a recent Saturday evening.  It was a par­tic­u­larly gor­geous night, as the tem­per­a­ture was con­sid­er­ing the change from Summer to Autumn. We decided to sit out­side and take advan­tage of the ideal weather.  There was a soft breeze that slowed us as we took some sweet time to peruse the menu.

Our first server greeted us and we liked her instantly.  We were to have two servers through­out the din­ner, both were excel­lent in their own right and both were knowl­edge­able and help­ful. We tasked the first with a cus­tom cock­tail request, our favorite:  a cer­tain grade of tequila, fresh grape­fruit juice, squeezed lime with a tiny splash of rose water.  They actu­ally had the nec­es­sary ingre­di­ents and the cock­tails were perfect.

Once served with what we con­sider to be the per­fect, non-sweet drink, we began to set­tle into the atmos­phere. The ethe­real Thievery Corporation hum­ming over can­dle­light set the tone for an easy evening out.

Taking it all in, the inte­rior of the space is pretty sharp, cer­tainly supe­rior to most local restau­rants in ambiance. The orange lighted Cumin brand­ing behind the wenge wood slats is dis­creet, yet effective.

We began the meal with the Mussels in coconut broth, ser­rano chili, and cumin with pop tart nan to split as an appe­tizer. It was a divine begin­ning to our meal. We will def­i­nitely be back for this dish alone.

Next, we each opted for a salad, one of us the “Summer” and the other the “Mediterranean”. Both were big­ger than we were expect­ing, a wel­come sur­prise. The Summer salad was light and refresh­ing and the Mediterranean was more savory but sur­pris­ingly good, per­haps due to a hint of truf­fle oil driz­zled on top. Both sal­ads were  inven­tive and fresh, and we thor­oughly enjoyed them.

We decided to split an entree, so we went with the spe­cial of the night, which was Halibut. Their spe­cials change daily.  Apparently, they have some very cre­ative heads in the kitchen. Our server rec­om­mended a white wine pair­ing that was lit­er­ally per­fect with the entree. We couldn’t have made a bet­ter choice.

In the end we slowly pol­ished off our wine, delighted by what we’d just expe­ri­enced.  We took in the jazz from the live band that had begun to play some­where along the way, chat­ted and passed the time know­ing that we had just been blessed with a per­fect evening.

Everyone we encoun­tered dur­ing our evening at Cumin, our two servers, the bar­tender, and the owner — was gra­cious and pro­fes­sional.  The food was fresh, fra­grant and sat­is­fy­ing and the drinks, refresh­ing. We rec­om­mend this as a gem for din­ing in Cincinnati and encour­age you to call, make reser­va­tions and dine.  When you call don’t for­get to ask if it’s a “live jazz night”.  The sul­try sound of the live instru­ments makes it all the more enticing.