The results are in: USA Today readers voted Carmelo’s in Covington the second best new restaurant in the U.S.
The publication’s reader’s choice poll dubbed Carmelo’s second only to Koast in Wialea, Hawaii. Check out the entire list here.
“Located in an 1850s office building in downtown Covington, Carmelo’s is an intimate and stylish dining venue focused on Italian American comfort cuisine,” reads Carmelo’s contest entry.  “Carmelo’s is the first collaboration between owners Mitch Arens and Billy Grise, the latter of which named the restaurant for his Sicilian-born great grandfather.”
LINK nky sat down with Arens and Grise before the restaurant’s November 2024 opening, when Grise talked about growing up in an Italian eatery.
“I worked there,” Grise said. “It was also where I went before school started. It’s where I went after school started. I had a single mom, so that became my everyday daycare. I grew up in a restaurant.”
Arens and Grise had known each other for over 15 years when they worked together at Nada in Cincinnati. Arens said they became fast friends, trading ideas for different restaurant concepts back and forth. They envisioned opening their own restaurant one day, and Carmelo’s is the culmination of that dream.
Arens gave LINK a behind-the-scenes look at one of his favorite menu items, the eggplant parm.
The first time Arens ever had eggplant was when he was around 8 or 9 years old, and his parents took him to F&N Steakhouse in Dayton. F&NÂ closed in 2004 after operating for 75 years, and it was famous for its eggplant fries.Â
“So you would go in and get a big side of these eggplant fries, and they had the red sauce in the middle that you would dip it in,” said Arens. “And that was the first time I ever had eggplant, and I can still remember tasting it for the first time. It was something different, unique that I had never had before.”
When he started doing research and development for Carmelo’s eggplant parmesan, he said, “We wanted to do something different than the typical round circles.”Â
Learn more about the recipe here.
Kenton Hornbeck and Maggy McDonel contributed to this story.