Trecento Trattoria

Trecento sits at 300 Main Street (trecento is Italian for 300) in downtown Cincinnati, a wood-fired trattoria built around family roots and Bologna tradition. Chef Jason Leizert runs the kitchen while the bar turns out excellent craft cocktails. We arrived for lunch to a busy dining room and were seated immediately. Trecento also anchors Social House, a members-only club with its own dining room and a speakeasy behind a Murphy door.

The Vibe

It feels subtly trendy. It lands on the trattoria end of the spectrum. Somebody clearly thought about this room, dressed it up a notch past casual without tipping into fussy. Poppy wallpaper, tile, a proper bar, and good window light. Look up and make your guess what the room overlooking the dining area used to be. Then ask your server. 

The Food

We came for brick oven pizza and ordered three, all charred hard on purpose, because that is how I asked. The kitchen hit the char to spec on every pie, which tells you more than a stock bake ever would. The pepperoni was the quiet star: cups crisped and rendered, oil built up but never a pool you reach for a napkin to blot. The cheese pie came dusted with flaky finishing salt. One of us thought it was too much. I thought it showed a kitchen confident enough to season with conviction. Both opinions are fair. I come from the Joshua Weissman school that salt amplifies flavor, not covers up imperfections. That simple cheese pizza said a lot about the chef. The mortadella tucked whey onions under the folds for a second texture, pistachio crunch on top, and it passed the test for someone who already appreciates good mortadella and knows the difference.

Then the meatballs. Eckerlin's beef, pork and veal, a house red that stays measured and never turns acidic, parmigiano ground fine enough to melt into each bite as you cut rather than sit on top as garnish. And a pop of heat on the finish you don't see coming. That's the tell. A new kitchen can luck into a good bake. Building heat into the back of a meatball is a choice, and someone here is making choices. I am a meatball snob, and these rate.

Next trip was a build your own pizza and it also did not disappoint (look at pic, guest grabbed a piece as soon as it hit the table).

We also got the prosciutto and chips appetizer. Housemade kettle chips, 24-month prosciutto di Parma, and enough Parmigiano-Reggiano to cover the plate and keep going over the rim. The chips are some of the best I've had, hand-cut and they hold up under all that weight instead of going soft. That 24 months matters too: Parma DOP only requires about twelve, so a two-year ham on a snack plate is a deliberate spend. The parm is shaved so fine it feels like feathers.

I told my buddy Dave they have really good pizza here. He said, "It's pretty hard to screw up a pizza." True enough. But it's quite difficult to make a memorable one, and that's what this is. He got a few bites in before he said it out loud: this really is really good pizza.

The Bottom Line

Worth the Drive. Trecento would be easy to dismiss as another upscale pizza restaurant. It isn't. The pizza is excellent, but it's the details that separate it: char exactly as requested, thoughtful seasoning, restrained sauce, hidden texture in the toppings, and meatballs that belong in the conversation with some of the best around Cincinnati. The pizza got us in the door. The attention to detail convinced me to come back.