Sundry and Vice

Over-the-Rhine and the Drinks That Define It

Cincinnati's Over-the-Rhine neighborhood has spent the better part of a decade repositioning itself as one of the Midwest's more serious drinking destinations. The architecture still carries the weight of nineteenth-century German brewing culture, and that heritage has quietly shaped what the neighborhood's bar operators reach for: fermented things, bitter things, drinks that reward attention. Sundry and Vice is a bar at 18 West 13th Street in Cincinnati, and the program is the point, not the backdrop.

Where a decade ago the city's better bars leaned on imported credentials, the current generation tends to build outward from what the Ohio River valley actually produces, or from spirits and modifiers with documented provenance. That orientation is visible across the OTR corridor and situates Sundry and Vice within a recognizable regional pattern rather than as an outlier.

What the Sourcing Argument Looks Like in Practice

At the tier Sundry and Vice occupies on the Cincinnati scene, the question is no longer whether a bar uses local spirits or house-made syrups, but how far that commitment extends and how it reads in the glass. The bars that have earned sustained recognition in this format, from Kumiko in Chicago to Bar Leather Apron in Honolulu, tend to share a common discipline: sourcing decisions are made before menu design, not after. The drink is built around what is available and verifiable, not dressed up with a sourcing claim post hoc.

In Cincinnati's context, that means engaging with the state's distilling revival, Ohio's hop and grain agriculture, and the domestic amaro and bitters producers who have carved out genuine reputations over the past fifteen years. Bars operating at this level in OTR, including Sundry and Vice, occupy a different competitive register than the volume-forward taverns further along the strip. The comparison set is not local; it sits closer to ABV in San Francisco or Jewel of the South in New Orleans, where program depth and spirit selection are the primary differentiators.

The OTR Bar Scene in Competitive Context

Over-the-Rhine's bar corridor runs from the casual end, represented by spots like Bakersfield OTR's tequila-and-taco format and Gaslight Bar and Grill's neighborhood-pub register, through to the more program-driven operations where Sundry and Vice competes. Ghost Baby pulls a different crowd with its late-night positioning. Pepp and Dolores and Arnold's, the latter being one of Cincinnati's oldest continuously operating bars, anchor a historicist strand that values continuity over innovation. Arnold's Bar and Grill has operated since 1861 and represents the neighborhood's deep hospitality roots.

Sundry and Vice sits apart from all of these by prioritizing the kind of drinks-forward format that has defined serious cocktail bars in larger American cities for several years. The peer set within Cincinnati itself is limited. 1215 Wine Bar and Coffee Lab addresses a different beverage category entirely, while Alcove by MadTree Brewing represents the craft beer axis of the same broader quality shift. Arthur's occupies a hotel-bar format with its own logic. Among cocktail-specific operations, Sundry and Vice competes in a relatively uncrowded niche for Cincinnati.

That niche matters for travelers arriving with expectations set by comparable bars in other cities. The frame of reference for a drinker who has visited Julep in Houston, Superbueno in New York City, or The Parlour in Frankfurt will find Sundry and Vice legible within that international program-bar conversation, even if the city context is less obvious from the outside.

Approaching the Address and Planning the Visit

West 13th Street sits at the quieter western edge of OTR's main commercial activity, which gives Sundry and Vice a slightly removed quality from the busier stretches of Main Street and 12th. That positioning is worth factoring into an evening's logistics: it pairs naturally with a pre-dinner drink before moving east toward the restaurant corridor, or as a deliberate destination rather than a walk-in stop mid-crawl. The address is walkable from both the central business district and the denser OTR blocks, and the neighborhood's recent development means the surrounding streets are active most evenings.

For visitors building a full Cincinnati drinking itinerary, the full Cincinnati restaurants and bars guide maps the broader scene across neighborhoods. OTR alone offers enough variation across an evening that planning the sequence by format and category, rather than simply by proximity, tends to produce better results. Sundry and Vice fits most naturally at either end of that sequence, where its drinks-forward approach can be the focus rather than a hurried middle stop.

Walk-ins are welcome, and the bar’s hours are Mon: Closed; Tue to Thu: 4 PM to 1 AM; Fri: 4 PM to 2 AM; Sat: 2 PM to 2 AM; Sun: 2 PM to 12 AM. Comparable bars in the same tier across other American cities typically fill their prime slots by mid-week, and OTR's growing profile as a destination neighborhood has increased foot traffic enough to make that risk real.

Why This Address Matters for the Midwest Drinks Conversation

The emergence of program-serious cocktail bars in second-tier American cities has been one of the more significant structural shifts in the drinks industry over the past several years. Talent that once consolidated in New York, San Francisco, and Chicago has dispersed, and cities like Cincinnati have benefited from that redistribution. OTR's physical density and relatively low operating costs compared to coastal markets have made it a viable location for the kind of bar that competes on program quality rather than volume. Sundry and Vice represents that bet in concrete form at 18 West 13th.

For travelers who treat a city's serious bars as primary rather than incidental destinations, Cincinnati's current moment is worth attention. The same quality signals that made OTR a destination a few years ahead of wider recognition are now present in the cocktail category.