A vintage hotel in the old Quaker town of Lebanon, the Golden Lamb is a unique place to stay (eighteen rooms), and a nice place to have a square meal for lunch or dinner. It is a popular destination on a well-trod antiques-hunters’ route, and during the summer you will compete with tourists for a table. But there are a handful of items on the menu that are worth the inconvenience.
Sauerkraut balls — a south Ohio favorite — have been a specialty of the house for decades, and they are wonderful. An appetizer is a huge portion: Ten spheres, each the size of a golf ball, deep-fried until dark crusty brown, surround a cup of cocktail sauce for dipping. The sauce is irrelevant, but the balls are delicious, their insides a creamy consistency reminiscent of potato filling, but with a nice pickly tang. One friend describes them like crab balls without the crab.
Entrees include Amish free-range chicken, prime rib, and braised lamb shank, and at lunch there are good hamburgers as well as lamb burgers. Desserts include banana bread pudding, lemon curd cheesecake, and fresh-fruit sorbets, but the mandatory one is Shaker sugar pie. It is a simple pastry, and rather homely – a thin layer of molasses-flavored custard that is sweet, faintly spicy, and impossible to stop eating.
Sunday | 12pm - 7pm |
Monday | 11:30am - 9pm |
Tuesday | 11:30am - 9pm |
Wednesday | 11:30am - 9pm |
Thursday | 11:30am - 9pm |
Friday | 11:30am - 9pm |
Saturday | 11:30am - 9pm |
Other Nearby Restaurants
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Blue Ash Chili
Blue Ash, OhioBlue Ash is one of Cincinnati, Ohio’s great chili parlors, serving bountiful layered plates of 3 to 5 way. Double-deck sandwiches are some of the best in town.
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Price Hill Chili
Cincinnati, OhioPrice Hill serves such Cincinnati faves as 5-way chili, Coney Islands, and double-decker sandwiches. A house specialty is a wiener bun — two dogs in one.
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Hathaway’s Coffee Shop
Cincinnati, OhioHathaway’s is a civilized urban coffee shop serving inexpensive lunch counter meals, including the scrumptious Cincinnati specialty breakfast meat, goetta.
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Avril-Bleh & Sons
Cincinnati, OhioA full-service Cincinnati butcher shop with a charcoal grill on the sidewalk in front of the store, Avril-Bleh cooks some of the best wursts anywhere.
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Herb & Thelma’s Tavern
Covington, KentuckyHerb & Thelma’s is a vintage Covington Tavern known for cold beer, hand-fashioned burgers, locally-sources wursts and welcoming good cheer.
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Pine Club
Dayton, OhioOne of America’s best steak houses, the Pine Club cuts and ages its own: glorious filets mignon, porterhouses & sirloins. And a sensational hamburger, too.