Soul food favorite Modern Southern Table is ready to open a second Columbus location

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Modern Southern Table, whose fried chicken and catfish have been one of the top draws at Budd Dairy Food Hall in Italian Village, is opening a second, standalone location.

Owner Sadaya “Daisy” Lewis said her newest restaurant will open June 28 at 5179 N. High St. in Clintonville. Both places will serve the same core items — fried chicken, fried or blackened catfish, chicken and sausage gumbo, and traditional Southern sides — but each will have “different and special offerings” as well, Lewis said on her restaurant’s website.

Lewis, who learned cook from her grandmothers in Alabama, left a job at Morgan Stanley after winning the 2014 season of a Food Network competition series “Food Court Wars.” Her prize was a year’s rent at a shopping mall in Zanesville.

She reopened in Columbus at Budd Dairy when the food hall opened in 2021. Modern Southern Table was named one of Columbus Monthly’s best new restaurants in 2022 and was cited in a 2024 Essence magazine article that recommended Columbus as a destination for culinary travel.

“One thing about the Black community is we always celebrate with food,” Lewis told The Dispatch for a February article about soul food. “And so, the cooking is a way of us passing along our heritage, and we pass on our stories to our families like this.”

Dining reporter Bob Vitale can be reached at [email protected] or at @dispatchdining on the Instagram social platform.