One menu, done right

Bar Rosso is a steak friterie on Vine Street in Over-the-Rhine, and it makes one argument: that a single dish, done properly, is a better night out than a long menu done adequately. Steak frites was born in the brasseries of nineteenth-century Paris and Brussels. Bar Rosso serves one version of it, and has spent its time getting every part of that version right.

The steak frites dinner is $50 and it is the whole menu. It starts with sourdough focaccia and a chrysanthemum salad, then the prime tenderloin and the frites, and finishes, if you want it to, with a chocolate mousse for five dollars more. Everything on the plate is made from scratch: the bread is baked fresh, the sauces are made in house, the fries are cut by hand, and the tenderloin is butchered in the restaurant's own kitchen.

The bar is built on vermouth. Every classic cocktail on the list is built around it and balanced until the bar thinks it is the best version of itself — start with the signature Negroni or the Martini service. The wine list leans toward the lesser-known classic regions of France, Italy and the United States, and toward winemakers who farm with sustainability in mind.

The room is dark and warm: a neon sign over the dining room, red velvet booths, brass table lamps, a pressed tin ceiling over the bar and candle sconces along an arched, mirrored hallway. It suits a date, a celebration, or a drink at the bar before something else on Vine Street.

Dinner runs Wednesday through Sunday from 4:30, and the room is closed Monday and Tuesday. OpenTable books parties of up to six; private dining takes up to forty-five, and larger groups go through the Bar Rosso site, where menus and everything else live. This page is here to get you a table.