Downtown Chillicothe has a handful of decent restaurants concentrated on Main and Paint Streets — the kind of small-city eating where one or two well-regarded spots stand alongside diners, pizzerias and chain places. Schlegel's Coffee House on East Main does respectable lunches and local roasts; Old Canal Smoke House serves Texas-style barbecue in a former canal-era warehouse.
For something quintessentially southern Ohio, try goetta or Cincinnati-style chili at any of the family diners on the edges of town.