Mita's

From the floor to the pass

Jose Salazar learned timing before he held the pass at Mita's in Cincinnati, working the floor and bar at Bellini in New York before moving into the kitchen. At Jean George in 2001, the discipline narrowed. At Per Se in 2003, as chef de partie, repetition became part of the station: the same cut, the same pickup, the same restraint when service began to move. By 2006, at Bouchon Bakery in New York, he was Executive Sous-Chef inside a system where small deviations carried weight.

That path matters at Mita's because Jose Salazar is not cooking from a single borrowed vocabulary. He is Chef and Proprietor here, with Cincinnati as the place where the work became his own. In 2008 he moved into the Executive Chef role at the Cincinnatian Hotel and Palace restaurant, and since 2013 his Cincinnati work has included Salazar alongside Mita's. The line runs from front of house sequencing to kitchen command, from New York rooms built on precision to a Midwest restaurant where Spain and Latin America give the menu its field of reference.

Tapas, ceviche, paella, and the discipline of range

The program at Mita's asks for control across scale. Tapas need quick definition: salt, acid, fat, heat, each held in a small frame. Ceviche depends on timing and cut, with the fish carrying the first read before citrus, chile, and garnish enter the plate. Paella moves differently, more communal, more patient, with rice as the measure of the kitchen's attention. The menu also makes room for cured hams, cheeses, traditional preparations, and modern ones, keeping Spanish and Latin American references in conversation rather than in separate lanes.

Salazar's cooking here is eclectic and farm-inspired, with seasonality doing structural work rather than decorative work. That matters in a tapas restaurant because range can become noise. Mita's holds the range through familiar forms: the small plate, the shared pan, the cold cure, the bright raw preparation. The wine program sits beside that food, curated for a table that may move from ceviche to ham to paella in a single meal. The task is not volume of choice. It is sequence.

A 130-seat room with a working bar

The room gives the kitchen space to breathe without making the work disappear. Mita's is a 130-seat restaurant with a large bar and lounge area, a setting built for movement rather than ceremony. Plates travel in clusters. Glasses gather at the pass. The counter has its own rhythm, especially in a restaurant where small plates and family-style eating change the usual cadence of a table.

The atmosphere is lively, relaxed, and polished enough to hold a serious wine glass beside a plate of ceviche without making either feel out of place. That is part of Salazar's hand here: the restaurant can be elegant without stiffening, current without losing the bench-side logic of the food. The large bar matters because the beverage program is not an accessory to the room. It helps carry the meal from first pour to shared pan.

Cincinnati as the working ground

Mita's belongs to the Cincinnati chapter of Salazar's work, not as a footnote to earlier training but as a place where that training has been put to use. The restaurant has carried James Beard-nominated cooking through Spanish and Latin American forms, while his wider recognition includes People's Choice Best New Chef in 2011. Those facts sit best when kept close to the food: cured ham, cheese, ceviche, and paella in a room where the pass has to keep pace with 130 seats.