NA Exchange got a new name when it moved down the New Albany hill: Now it’s The Exchange Pub + Kitchen. It got a new look, which is actually an old look, as it makes creative use of a historic building in New Albany’s rapidly gentrifying downtown.
But it didn’t get new food, insists Chef Rick Adams, who swears that the menu he forged at the previous location — including his signature shrimp and grits — hasn’t changed a bit.You would have a hard time making some of the Exchange’s regular customers believe that, though. Adams says one gentleman in particular is adamant that the “new” shrimp and grits is much better than the “old.”
It says something good about Louisville’s dining scene, I think, that our town’s Latino dining experiences go way beyond just plain Mexican. Not that there’s anything wrong with traditional pan-Mexican/Southwestern/Tex-Mex, mind you, but an hombre can’t live on tacos, rice and beans alone. Continue reading Eat like a Mayan and love it at Mayan Café→
At least a few million megabytes of social media and a wastebasket full of old-media newsprint have surely been spilled over the recent startling and sudden demise of Lynn’s Paradise Cafe.
I don’t see much point in adding more to that flood, other than to note that we may yet be hearing more about the weird tipping and servers-vs.-management dispute that broke into public view a few days before proprietor Lynn Winter yanked the keys out of the restaurant’s ignition and shut ’er down.
But let’s not get into the who, what, when, where and why of all that right now. A larger question looms: “Where in the heck can we go for Sunday brunch now that Lynn’s is gone?”
The sun shimmers like a brass gong in the pale, washed-out desert sky. There’s not so much as a breath of cooling breeze. I can see a big cactus, but it’s not much good for shade. Thirsty. So thirsty. The sun beats down, baking, burning.
And then my eyes pop open, doing the familiar where-am-I blink, and hey! I’m home! In bed! And I have never been so thirsty. About four big glasses of cold water put that right, and soon I’m sinking back into a calmer sleep, thinking as I drift off, “I’ll bet it was the pad Thai.” Continue reading Simply Thai’s Middletown shop trails the original→
What the heck is a wine geek? A wine geek loves wine, can carry on an extended conversation about the stuff, knows a little about how it’s made, and plans trips around winery visits. He rejects labels like “snob” or even “connoisseur,” though, preferring to be recognized for a hobbyist’s passion. She loves wine, but understands that, after all, it’s really just grape juice — delicious, adult grape juice that goes great with food but is best taken in moderate doses. Continue reading Bistro 1860: a paradise for foodies, just not a wine geek bar→
I rolled north along Frankfort Avenue, on through Butchertown and down the hill toward the river, getting ready to hang a left on … hey! What fresh hell is this? I know I haven’t been around here for a while, but nothing looks right.
“Siri? Siri! Where am I?”
My iPhone’s robotic voice responded: “You are on River Road.”
“I don’t think so. This doesn’t look like River Road to me! It’s got four lanes, and it’s in the wrong place. So many new things! Strip malls! The front of an old house! And where is the Stop Lite?”
“I found 12 places matching ‘The Stop’ fairly close to you.”
“Never mind! Forget it! Just take me to Relish restaurant!”
“Sorry, Robin, I can’t do that. You’re not listening to the music app.”
“Aaagggh!”
Churrasco Steak at Relish. LEO photo by Ron Jasin.This wasn’t working out. So I put Siri back in my pocket and, adjusting to the radically renovated landscape of inner River Road, found my way soon enough to Relish, just down the road from the Big Four Bridge. Relish shares space in a short new strip mall with the reincarnated Stop Lite Liquors, which looks a lot more classy than its predecessor but, sadly, has lost its iconic traffic light.
“They didn’t want it,” the Stop Lite clerk said, cocking one eye toward the ceiling in the direction, I assume, of building management. This is a real loss. If the old Stop Lite’s flashing red, yellow and green beacon was still around, I wouldn’t have had to summon Siri in the first place. Perhaps we should start a Facebook movement to Restore The Historic Stop Lite?
Relish, however, needs no beacon. Word of mouth alone surrounded this new spot with a trendy buzz since it opened right after Thanksgiving. It’s hard to imagine how it could have done otherwise. It represents the re-entry into the Louisville dining scene of Susan Seiller, who owned and put her stamp on the popular Jack Fry’s restaurant from 1987 until 2008.
Seiller, who also ran the short-lived but much-loved Paloma on Brownsboro Road in the early ’90s before turning it over to Azalea, has brought the style that informed Fry’s and Paloma to infuse what could have been a bland shopping center space for Relish with cool, techno-industrial decor. Walls are pure white, as are the simple but stylish plastic chairs; tabletops are streaky black. No shortcuts were taken with glasses or silverware, and even the heavy paper napkins feel like cloth.
And that location amid River Road’s new look may prove foresighted, as it’s neatly situated to serve both business diners on lunch break or commuters who choose the River Road option on their way home from work. (Lunch service now ends at 4 p.m.; there’s no table service for dinner, but a prepared-foods deli loaded with delicacies from Chef Jack Beeson stays open until 7 p.m. Relish is also open 11 a.m.-4 p.m. Saturdays and may eventually add dinner hours, our server said, but don’t expect it soon.)
We dropped in before noon on a weekday, a lucky choice, as the place was slammed by midday. Service moved briskly, though, and we were in and out within an hour.
Beeson’s concise menu is affordable (nothing over $10) and focused on appetizing yet healthy fare from ingredients, a table card assures us, “sourced … from purveyors with sustainable practices. Some local. Some not.” I wish the menu named the sources. Was that Capriole goat cheese on the onion tart? I don’t know. The beef in the churrasco steak seemed to have the texture and flavor of grass-fed, but where was it from? This is not critical information, but 21st century foodies like to know these things.
We loaded up on lunch and took more deli dishes home, and I couldn’t find a nit to pick. The churrasco steak ($9) was perfect medium-rare as ordered, thin medallions over a Salvadorean-style arepa (corn cake) filled with grilled jalapeños and finished with spicy sautéed mushrooms and bright-green Argentinean chimichurri.
The onion and goat cheese tart ($7) was simple and flavorful, fine short pastry topped with sliced onions sautéed dark brown and sweet, garnished with mild goat cheese crumbles and plated with a pile of fresh, bitter arugula tossed in a gentle lemon vinaigrette.
Lentil chili ($3 for a cup, $6 for a bowl) was thick, spicy and rib-sticking. White runner bean soup ($3 and $6) was filled with beans the size of limas, bits of tomato and slivers of chard in a consoling beef broth. A side of roasted beet salad ($3) with thin shavings of ricotta salata cheese might tempt the most ardent beet-hater.
A hefty ration of coconut pound cake with caramelized pineapple and a scoop of Häagen-Dazs vanilla ice cream ($7) was really too much for one, or even two, but we finished it all the same.
Lunch for two exceeded the “budget” level but was worth it, with plenty of food but no alcohol still tallying $36.04, plus a $7.50 tip.
It’s no longer hip to claim colonialism was cool. Take it from one who spends entirely too much time in the groves of academe: In this post-colonial era, the dead white men who once strode the earth to plant a flag in distant lands in the name of president or queen are distinctly out of fashion. It isn’t even politically correct to brag about those exploits anymore.
But I’ll step up and proudly claim one great boon of civilization that may be even better as a result of having been taken around the world to meet and mingle and gain new ideas from exposure to other cultures.
Let me be frank: I’ve had a hard time understanding why so many of my foodie friends have been going ooh-la-la over the NuLu incarnation of Ghyslain. They’ve declared it “sophisticated,” celebrated its French accent, and hurried in to buy restaurateur-chocolateur Ghyslain Maurais’ fancy candies by the sack. Continue reading East End Ghyslain resets critic’s attitude→
When Tony Palombino opened AP Crafters over the smoking remains of the short-lived Indigo Joe’s in Westport Village a year ago last spring, I couldn’t help wonder what the guy who might rank as Louisville’s most innovative entrepreneur of good eats was up to now.
AP Crafters’ Vegetable Napoleon.After all, Palombino is the guy who built Tony Boombozz from a tiny pizzeria into a local chain of pizza-and-brew houses more than 15 years ago, while spinning off and incubating one new restaurant idea after another. Thatsa Wrapp, Benny B’s, Bazo’s … some flared then fizzled, while others have become local standards. Just last month, Palombino opened another new concept, Manny & Merle, in the Whiskey Row neighborhood, a hearty Bakersfield-style mix of Latino and Anglo food and music. I’ll head over there one of these days, but first, let’s see what’s going on at AP Crafters.
Anchoring a corner of the Westport Village shopping center, AP Crafters mirrors the evolution of Westport Village, a modern remake of the old Camelot center that has thrived on a base of local restaurants and indie businesses that make an attractive commercial magnet for its suburban neighborhood. AP Crafters fits right in, taking the place of a franchised sports-bar concept with 47 units in 10 states. Never mind that it seemed to cover much of the same sports bar ground as had Indigo Joe’s; there was a familiar face at the helm and clubby dark-wood paneling and antiques, and it was all good.
They called it a “gastropub,” which is OK, I guess, as this is a malleable term, although when I hear that trendy buzzword I think of something more like Butchertown’s estimable Blind Pig, which at first glance didn’t seem to have a lot in common with AP Crafters except for a very good beer list.
But AP Crafters is evolving, and during a leisurely dinner visit the other night, I was delighted to discover that, while it still executes pub grub very nicely, the place has also developed a more upscale persona featuring serious, well-executed entrees such as you might expect at a more trendy bistro on Bardstown Road or Frankfort Avenue or NuLu’s urban streets.
The menu begins, as it has from the start, with a good selection of soups, salads and munchies, offering a broad choice among healthy green salads ($7-$8) and delicious fatty and salty goodies, including charred wings ($8) or a platter of crisp beer-battered fried pickle chips with ancho dipping sauce ($7). Those who choose the gastropub route may be infatuated with a charcuterie plate ($11, and none dare call it “cold cuts”) or the chef’s weekly selection of hummus and olives with pita — whole wheat, of course.
Sandwiches, served with your choice of seasoned fries, slaw or fruit, are mostly $8 (for a griddled cheese sandwich, with 75-cent upcharges for tomato or bacon), to $11 (for a grilled chicken BLT). Burgers include a fancy Reuben burger ($11), a burger topped with pastrami, kraut and Swiss atop your all-beef patty. Or they’ll hold the patty on request and make it a plain Reuben. Another option: Schmear your burger with beer cheese, bacon and onions and serve it on a pretzel roll ($11). If a more traditional burger is your style, go for the Build Your Own option, which does burgers the way Boombozz does pizza: Start with the basic dressed patty ($7.50), then make it your own with a smorgasbord of toppings at 75 cents each: cheese, bacon, an egg, onions, sauce … just about anything but the proverbial kitchen sink.
More and more, though, diners are flocking to AP Crafters for the entrees, a short but interesting list of nine items from $10 (for chorizo and pulled-pork tacos or fish tacos) to $28 (for blackened beef filet medallions with blue cheese Mornay).
Twenty craft beers on tap plus shorter selections of bottled domestics for those who insist give Crafters a brewpub feel; there’s also a short but well chosen wine list and a good mix of creative cocktails.
We went with a group and enjoyed sharing bites, and not one of us uttered a discouraging word about crisp retro iceberg wedges loaded with blue cheese and BLT toppings ($8); bacon bruschetta ($7), toasted baguette rounds spread with bacon jam, caramelized onions, sun-dried tomatoes, arugula and more; or a tasty side bowl of broccoli florets ($3.50) flavored with garlic and Parmesan.
A trio of fish tacos ($10), served Baja-style with blackened fish, also drew praise, as did the bistro-style braised lamb shank ($22), long-simmered and very tender, served on a succulent slab of potatoes au gratin. Perhaps our favorite entrees were the smoked pork chop ($18), a good-size chop, bone-on, juicy and tender and very flavorful, coated with a tart-sweet sun-dried tomato-basil demiglace atop a rich pool of creamy, cheesy polenta; and the fire-roasted vegetable napoleon ($14), an artful stack of roasted veggie-polenta cakes sandwiched with fresh arugula, tomatoes, chunks of zucchini and mild goat cheese.
Dinner for two, with a couple Crafters-brand microbrews, came to a reasonable $58.28 plus tip.
AP Crafters Kitchen & Bar
1321 Herr Lane
Westport Village
690-5000 apcrafters.com
Rating: 88
Imagine, if you will, a really excellent, life-like diorama, one of those fascinating museum displays that you’ll find in New York’s Museum of Natural History or Chicago’s Field Museum. It’s a large, almost life-size three-dimensional display that re-creates a historical scene, freezing a moment in time for our intrigued inspection. Continue reading Pat’s Steak House is a retro diorama of good eats→
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