Gahanna's Newest Restaurants Skipped Creekside for Hamilton Road

"We found hot pot in Dublin and around the Bethel Road area, but we didn't find any in Gahanna." That's how Kristen Kidder explained her decision to open Gold Cudgel, a Sichuan-style hot pot restaurant, on North Stygler Road this spring instead of anywhere else in Central Ohio.

If you've read a Gahanna guide this year, it probably walked you straight to the fountain at Creekside, the mixed-use plaza where Nostalgia Brewing pours pints next to Big Walnut Creek and a summer concert series pulls a thousand people a night. That guide isn't wrong. But it's also not where most of Gahanna's new restaurant openings actually happened in 2026. Three separate owners, working independently on three different concepts, all picked the same stretch of North Hamilton and North Stygler roads instead, a corridor a few minutes' drive from Creekside that most visitor-facing content skips entirely.

Three Openings, One Reason

Between April and May of this year, that corridor added a Korean fried chicken counter, a Sichuan hot pot spot, and a soul food kitchen, none of them affiliated with each other, all landing within a few blocks.

The pattern underneath those three rows matters more than any single opening. DHC Chicken is run by husband-and-wife owners Jinsoo Kwak and Hyunjin Kang, who had already proven the concept in Pickerington before betting on Gahanna as their second market. Soul 2 Go is a Hightower family operation, brothers Will, Kevin, and Keith along with longtime collaborator Jerome Ross, expanding a Columbus-born concept for the third time, this time into Gahanna specifically. And Gold Cudgel's owners scouted existing hot pot options around Dublin and Bethel Road before concluding Gahanna simply didn't have one.

None of these are chains parachuting in because a real estate broker found them a vacant pad site. Each is an operator who had already built something elsewhere and looked at Gahanna as an open gap for a specific cuisine.

"Food is a big part of Korean culture, and we just thought it would be a cool and fun experience and a nice way to share our culture," Kwak said of the decision to bring DHC Chicken's tteokbokki and imported garlic-spice sauce to Hamilton Road.

Why Hamilton Road, Not the Plaza

Creekside was built to be walked, not driven. Its retail lineup, Nostalgia Brewing Company and Barrel and Boar among them, sits around a plaza designed for lingering, and the Creekside Outdoor Refreshment Area lets patrons carry a drink between participating spots. According to reporting from WCMH, that designated zone runs from Big Walnut Creek to the east side of High Street and from North Street to Granville Street, active Monday through Wednesday from 3 to 11 p.m. and Thursday through Sunday from 11 a.m. to 11 p.m.

Hamilton Road and Stygler Road function differently. They're a drive-to commercial corridor, closer to John Glenn Columbus International Airport, built around counter service and quick turnaround rather than an evening spent at a table. Rusty Bucket has held a spot at 73 N. Hamilton Rd. for years, proof the corridor could support a full-service tavern, but the newer wave leans toward exactly the kind of format Gold Cudgel, DHC Chicken, and Soul 2 Go all share: order at the counter, eat fast or take it home, come back next week. That's a different customer trip than a Friday night at Creekside Live, and it's a trip these three owners were betting Gahanna residents were already making without a destination to make it toward.

Creekside Isn't Going Anywhere

None of this means the plaza is fading. The Creekside Blues and Jazz Festival ran its 27th year this June, still drawing acts across three stages the way it has for nearly three decades. Creekside Live kept its usual pace through the summer, with crowds of 1,000 to 2,000 people turning out for free outdoor shows on the Rotary Stage. The annual Creekside Hops and Vines fundraiser, benefiting Gahanna Parks and Recreation Foundation programs, ran again in late August.

What's changed isn't Creekside's pull, it's that Creekside stopped being the only story. For most of this year, if you wanted to know what was new to eat in Gahanna, the answer wasn't at the fountain. It was two minutes away by car, on a corridor built for parking lots instead of plazas.

The Corridor's Pull Extends Past the City Line

The same Hamilton Road logic is showing up just outside Gahanna's boundary, too. A retail center called the Commons at Hamilton Quarter, sitting off Old Hamilton Road in the stretch between New Albany and Gahanna, is adding a Wild Eggs location, described as Columbus' first, along with a Milkshake Factory and an independent, family-owned Mexican restaurant called Braseros Bar and Grill, according to WCMH's reporting. That's not a Gahanna address, but it's the same corridor logic playing out one exit further east, more evidence that the pull toward Hamilton Road isn't a one-time coincidence of three unrelated owners. It's a strip that keeps attracting operators looking for a gap to fill.

What Actually Changed

Gahanna now runs on two food identities that don't compete with each other so much as serve two different errands. Creekside is where you go to spend an evening. Hamilton and Stygler roads are where you go to solve dinner on a Tuesday, and this year, that stretch quietly picked up a hot pot spot, a Korean fried chicken counter, and a soul food kitchen, none of which existed in Gahanna a year ago.

Knowing that distinction is the difference between circling the fountain looking for parking and knowing exactly which counter to walk into on a weeknight.

Kim Kovacs and Partners spends as much time tracking what's new in Central Ohio's commercial corridors as we do tracking the housing market itself, because the two rarely move independently of each other. If you're curious what a corridor like this means for home values nearby, or you'd just like a free home valuation to see where your own Gahanna property stands, Kim Kovacs and Partners is glad to walk you through it.