Agni

Agni takes Bengali recipes and runs them through a Midwestern childhood, and the tasting menu argues that combination dish by dish. Chaat gets reworked as a Caesar. Seafood curry sits on the menu as an actual course, not a nod. The anellini with kofta meatballs plays as a straight-faced riff on canned pasta from a box, dressed up until it's fine dining. Named for the Hindu god of fire, the kitchen keeps a flame going through service to back it up — this isn't a theme, it's the mechanism.

The wine pairing earns its place at the table, and the sommelier treats the program with a sense of humor: sake shows up when it should, and so, apparently, does a can of cheap beer if the moment calls for it. That looseness inside a serious tasting menu is rare, and it works because the cooking underneath is exact.

The city has noticed. A James Beard semifinalist nod for Best Chef in the Great Lakes region, a spot on a national best-new-restaurants list, and a place on Columbus Monthly's own rankings all point at the same thing: there's nothing else in Columbus doing this, and it's doing it well.