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It startedat his mother's stoveand never really stopped

Wes Davison has been cooking for thirty years, and it began the way it usually does: as a boy at his mother's side, watching, tasting, and eventually being handed the spoon. A love of food became a trade. He worked his way through more kitchens than he can count, in Indiana and in Florida, and the ones that stuck were Italian — kitchens where the sauce goes on before the doors open and the pasta is rolled by hand.

He spent those decades, in his words, “learning hands on from nationally renowned Italian chefs, gathering and creating delectable recipes.” In March 2025 he opened his own doors in a long, narrow room on Van Buren Street that had fed Columbia City since 1974, and named it the simplest thing he could. Cibo. Food.

Wes Davison in his chef's coat, leaning on the post outside CiBO Ristorante on Van Buren Street.
Mangiare bene!— Wes
A finished pizza on the counter in front of the wood-fired brick oven, with Wes and a cook working the line behind.
The oven, lit every day

What we cook

From scratch Italian restaurant serving authentic dishes from different regions of Italy. Offering a wide variety of appetizers, salads, soups, sandwiches, pasta, entrees and desserts that will delight your palate with flavors from old and new world Italy.

The menu is written in the Italian it came from — antipasti, primi, secondi, contorni, dolce — and the kitchen keeps it honest: house-made meatballs and meat sauce, pasta finished in the pan, vegetables of the day, a dessert list that changes before you can get used to it. The wood-fired oven does nine pizzas and whatever else Wes puts in it.

Every morning the day's lunch and dinner features go up on Facebook, and every post ends the same way he ends a meal: Mangiare bene.

See the menu

Wes cutting a pepperoni pizza at the counter, the oven and the front window behind him.
The CiBO Ristorante sign over the black storefront at 223 W Van Buren, stacked plates in the front window.

The room

223 West Van Buren Street has been feeding Columbia City for a long time. From 1974 until the summer of 2024 it was The Nook — coney dogs and comfort food, a counter down one side and booths in the back. Wes took the keys that fall and opened CiBO on the first of March, 2025.

It is still a long, narrow room. The kitchen is open, so you can watch the line while you wait; the bar pours Italian wine and Peroni on draft; and on a good night every seat is taken by seven. If you are bringing the kids, come in the back — the front room is the bar, and Indiana asks it that way.

The Italian Coney on the panini list is a wink at the old tenant.

The town

Columbia City is the seat of Whitley County, a town of about ten thousand a half hour west of Fort Wayne. The courthouse at Van Buren and Main went up in 1888, limestone and slate with a galvanized-iron dome, and the blocks around it have been coming back to life for a decade: coffee, a taproom, a bakery, a barbecue place, and now an Italian kitchen a block and a half down.

The downtown group, Columbia City Connect, runs First Fridays from May through October, a farmers market on the square on Saturday mornings, and the Old Settlers Festival in June. On those nights the sidewalk tables fill first.

Plan a visit

The pizza menu propped on the prep line, with pans of toppings behind it.