Cin Weekly1788

A reference on Cincinnati, Ohio — its buildings, trades and record, in order of date.

Across the River

Montgomery Inn at the Boathouse: the Ribs and the River, Together

Glazed rib bones with sesame seeds, potato wedges, and diced vegetables on a white plate

Montgomery Inn's Boathouse location on the Ohio riverfront in Cincinnati opened in 1989, extending a rib restaurant operation founded by Matilda Gracin in Montgomery, Ohio, in 1951;

Photo: Khải Huyền Trương / Pexels

A rib restaurant founded in a Montgomery suburb in 1951 put its second location on the Ohio riverfront in 1989, and the address became as much a part of the story as the sauce.

A Suburban Start, a River Finish

Matilda Gracin opened Montgomery Inn in 1951 in the Cincinnati suburb of Montgomery, Ohio, built around a barbecued-rib recipe and a roadhouse scale of hospitality that drew a regional following over the following decades. The operation stayed suburban and family-run through the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s, its original Montgomery location accumulating a reputation well beyond the immediate neighbourhood.

The Boathouse location, opened in 1989 on Cincinnati's Ohio riverfront east of downtown, repositioned the brand in a setting with a different order of drama entirely. The building sits at the river's edge with direct views across the water toward Covington, Kentucky, and the Ohio River itself becomes a material part of the experience — visible through large windows and accessible from the adjoining dock, where riverboat dinner cruises have historically departed. The physical relationship to the river is a deliberate architectural argument: Cincinnati grew from the Ohio and the Boathouse location restates that connection in commercial form.

The dock access also tied the restaurant into a longer history of the Cincinnati riverfront as a working, commercial and social edge rather than a purely industrial one. The Banks development that would later reshape the same stretch of shoreline had not yet been planned when the Boathouse opened; in 1989 the riverfront was still a transitional zone, and the restaurant's choice of that site ↗ was an early bet on the Ohio's recreational potential.

Suspension bridge tower viewed from below with cables and steel girders converging overhead

The Covington anchorage and approach to the Roebling Suspension Bridge present a different engineering reading from the Kentucky side.

Photo: Roebling Bridge, Covington, KY - 52280197590 · Wikimedia Commons

Montgomery Inn at the Boathouse seats several hundred guests across its riverfront dining rooms and has served documented visitors including multiple United States presidents, a fact the restaurant itself records. The founding Gracin family's sauce formula, developed by Matilda in the Montgomery kitchen, carried forward to the Boathouse without significant reformulation.

From the record

Chronology

  1. 1951Matilda Gracin opens Montgomery Inn in Montgomery, Ohio
  2. 1989Boathouse location opens on Cincinnati's Ohio riverfront

From the record

Setting details

  • Views across the Ohio River to Covington, Kentucky
  • Dock access with historic riverboat dinner-cruise departures
  • Riverfront siting predates The Banks development of the same shoreline

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