If you’re trying to save on fuel during a summer that makes the case for global warming and when gasoline prices flirt with $4 per gallon, there’s a lot to like about a friendly food truck operator who brings lunch to your neighborhood. Across the country, a veritable food truck race is under way, with food truck “pods” growing in with-it towns like Austin, Texas, and Portland, Ore.
Continue reading Food truck fare hits the road in the Metro
All posts by LEOs Eats with Robin Garr
Addis Bar & Grill offers tastes of Ethiopia and more
Ethiopia is a historic East African country that most Americans probably don’t know much about, save perhaps for sad images of hungry children suffering from famines in that troubled region.
But Ethiopia is worth getting to know. The only country in Africa that largely escaped colonialism, it boasts a proud heritage as a monarchy with roots extending back more than 2,500 years. It has been a Christian center since missionaries from Carthage planted a church in the third century. Haile Selassie, its emperor from 1930 until 1974, is known not only for his long, stable reign, but for having been declared the second coming by the Rastafari, for whom ganja, perhaps not coincidentally, is a sacrament.
Fortunately, no ganja is required for the enjoyment of Ethiopian food; and we have a new place to enjoy it with the recent arrival downtown of Addis Bar & Grill, named after Ethiopia’s capital, Addis Ababa.
Addis, formerly Lunchbox, has had a name transplant to highlight the Ethiopian aspect of its eclectic cuisine. It appears to be a popular spot for downtown workers on a quick lunch break, doing a very heavy takeout and eat-in business on a recent weekday, and even the bar seemed to be selling a lot of Bud and Bud Light to workers whose job situation permits such midday indulgence.
The venue is attractive, bright and clean, tomato-sauce red with accents of cream, heavy blonde wood tables and comfortable chairs, paper napkins and plastic service ware.
I can’t briefly describe the scene any more effectively than the folks at Addis do themselves, in lovably accented Ethiopian English on their Website: “Addis grill is the vegetarian paradise, and our appetizer such as our hummus, Kabobs, freshly grilled Fajita or Burritos, curries and Ethiopian vegetarian are the most admired dishes, that why we become the second busy lunch place in few months.”
Sounds good to me! We met our pal Jerry, who works nearby, and settled in for a hearty, affordable lunch.
As you may have discerned from the reference to burritos and fajitas, the bill of fare here extends well beyond Ethiopian. In fact, at first glance, Middle Eastern dishes such as hummus with pita ($3.25), stuffed grape leaves ($4.35), tabbouleh ($4.25) and a falafel wrap ($4.95) seem to dominate the lunch menu, not to mention those burritos and fajitas (mostly $5.35) and a chicken quesadilla ($7.95). Obligate gringos can satisfy themselves, too, with such simple fare as a burger ($5.95 with or without cheese), a fried fish sandwich on a hoagie bun ($5.95): a Philly cheesesteak ($6.25), and a steak sandwich ($6.50).
A list of more expansive Mediterranean and American main courses are $12.95 (For chicken kabob with rice, hummus, pitas and salad) to $23.95 (for the Addis Special for two, including a skewer of shish kabob, another of chicken kabob, two ground-meat kufta kabobs, rice and salad).
You’ve got to drill down to the bottom of the menu to find the serious Ethiopian fare, though, but it’s well worth the dig: Colorful and prepared well, these dishes are delicious and offer a filling meal for prices that are still more than fair.
Ethiopian vegetarian entrees are all $7.95, all come served on thin, spongy injera bread, and include Misir Wot (lentil stew), Kil Alicha (split peas), Gomen Wot (sauteed collards) and Atkilt (fresh veggie stew). A combo of all four is $10 at dinner time, $7.95 at lunch.
Prefer something more meatful? Ten carnivorous choices are $9.50 (for Doro Wot, spicy chicken-drumstick stew with fiery berbere sauce and a boiled egg, an Ethiopian tradition) to $13.99 (for Kitfo, hand-chopped lean beef, fired up with spices and customarily served “mitmita.” raw or lightly cooked. If the idea of Ethiopian steak tartare doesn’t appeal, they’ll cook it to your preference. Lamb dishes, Yebeg Wot and Yebet Alicha, are $12.95, or you can pick a three-way meat wot (stew) combo for $14 for one, $25 for two. Pescavores might go for Ye-Assa Tibs ($11.95), cubed marinated fish sauteed with onion, tomato, pepper and garlic.
Mary’s choice, Kufta Kabob ($7.25) brought her three football-shaped, tender beef meatballs – one more than the menu had promised – lightly flavored with onions and spice and served with a pool of creamy hummus, a ration of excellent basmati rice, pickles, tomato and a simple side salad topped with crunchies that appear to be squares of fried pita.
Jerry asked for chicken kabob but got chicken curry instead, a small language-barrier issue that didn’t bother him at all. The replacement dish was delicious: A generous bowl of tender, boneless chicken chunks swimming in a savory bath of thick brown onion sauce with the distinctive hot-and-spicy flavor of berbere.
I was delighted with my Ethiopian veggie combo, a bright assembly of red and green lentil stews, fine-chopped collards and onions and a yellow grain, neatly arranged on an oversize injera round and three more rolls of the spongy bread for eating with the fingers, Ethiopian-style. Don’t mind if I do!
A filling lunch for three, with two fresh iced teas and a diet cola, was a very reasonable $26.26, plus a $6 tip.
Addis Bar & Grill
109 S. Fourth St.
581-1011
www.addisgrill.com
Rating: 85
Times are changin’ at Marketplace
In the spring of 1958, when Thomas Merton had his epiphany at what was then the corner of Fourth and Walnut in downtown Louisville, Fourth Street was a happening place. Crowds of businessmen in suits and fedoras and moms shopping in their best dresses scurried around the Starks Building and landmark Louisville department stores Stewart’s and Kaufman-Straus.
Continue reading Times are changin’ at Marketplace
Westport General Store rewards a short road trip
This mere half-hour trek through the meadows, farms, forests and tract mansions of northern Oldham County is well worth it — the reward at the end of the road is an exceptional meal that matches, or surpasses, just about anything you’d find in the city.
Chef David Clancy is back at the helm, and that’s good news. The combination of Clancy’s kitchen crew with Westport’s amiable proprietor, Will Crawford, makes this a destination that would be worth an even longer trip.
Westport bustled in its early years, when it was a steamboat stop upriver from Louisville, and Westport General Store still has a bit of the look and feel of a rural village’s favorite gathering place, although there’s a stylish bistro overlay. Local bands and musical groups often perform here. “Like” its Facebook page (on.fb.me/westportgen) to keep up.
Crawford describes the restaurant’s culinary style as “upscale Southern cuisine,” and that’s fair; props also to his commitment to use local produce, meats and poultry to support his community and local farmers whenever possible.
Signature dishes include a local bison steak (market price), produced just down the road at Goshen’s Kentucky Bison Co., grilled to order with “smashed” potato and seasonable farm vegetables; and “red eye” shrimp ($15.95) wrapped in country ham from Shelby County’s Finchville Farms, served with Weisenberger Mill stone-ground grits and fresh collards.
A half-dozen main courses mostly sell in the range of $14.95 to $16.95. Vegetarians are well served by a trio of well-crafted dishes including a tomato-topped farfalle pasta ($12.95), vegan black-eyed pea stew ($10.95) and a chipotle black bean “burger” ($6.95). Sandwiches top out at $8.95 for the bison burger or fried fish sandwich, crafted from an 8-ounce fillet of cod. A sizable selection of appetizers, soups and salads are mostly $5 or thereabouts; and the kiddos are well taken care of with a children’s menu of simple, child-friendly dishes under $5.
Adult beverages are available, too: Westport General Store was the first restaurant to take advantage of Oldham County’s entry into the 20th century early in the 21st with “moist” laws allowing liquor sales in restaurants. Now it offers a short but respectable selection of beers, wines and bar service.
We started a recent meal with a shared appetizer order of Baby Hot Browns ($6.95), a spiral of thick-sliced toast points cloaked in a thick, cheesy Mornay and topped with plenty of crisp bits of locavore bacon and diced fresh tomatoes. It was garnished with a pretty sprig of large, fresh sage. Appetizer? Hah! It was delicious but filling, a hearty way to start a meal.
Mary ordered the vegetarian pasta pomodoro ($12.95), farfalle (bow-tie) pasta with a subtle tomato and sun-dried tomato sauce — no heavy red “gravy” here, but plenty of garlic — garnished with thin-sliced basil chiffonade and two fresh basil leaves.
My dinner choice, the aforementioned red-eye shrimp, suited me just fine: A row of plump, tender shrimp were blanketed under squares of Finchville’s finest and painted with a dark, reddish-brown, sweet-tangy barbecue sauce. The contrasting textures and flavors hit the spot, and a bed of creamy Weisenberger Mill grits and mild-flavored collards made for a country-style meal fit for a city boy.
A shared portion of a first-rate blackberry cobbler made with seasonal fruit under chunks of pastry crust ended the meal on a high note, and the affordable tab, $48.55 for two, left plenty of change to cover gas for the short trip out. Polished service earned a $10 tip.
As Crawford famously warns, don’t count on MapQuest, Google Maps or even your trusty GPS to get you there. Westport may be a historic village with roots all the way back to the 1780s, but these modern resources can’t find it.
Technology is hardly needed, though: Simply head out U.S. 42, through Prospect, into Oldham County, then pass Goshen and Skylight until you see a gigantic radio tower piercing the clouds on your left. Just before the tower, turn left on KY 524 and drive down the scenic, winding forest road until you reach Westport. The restaurant will be the brown building on the right with the veranda and, most of the time, a crowded parking lot out front.
Westport General Store
7008 Highway 524
222-4626
www.westportgeneralstore.com
Rating: 87
Southern fare is just what the Doc (Crow) ordered
Amid all the recent angst about Louisville’s Whiskey Row on West Main Street and the arguments over whether these historic buildings are in danger of falling down, it’s instructive to step into Doc Crow’s impressive quarters.
Continue reading Southern fare is just what the Doc (Crow) ordered
Road trip to Rick’s White Light pays off in good eats
I settled in, craving a po’boy, and asked the gent behind the counter what seemed like a simple question: “This month doesn’t have an ‘R’ in it. How are the oysters?” The raspy-voiced guy in the ball cap shot me a grin. “Are you kidding? You’re thinking about Gulf oysters. These are from Chesapeake Bay, and they’re good all year ’round.”
Continue reading Road trip to Rick’s White Light pays off in good eats
It’s easy to ♥ this Clifton sushi spot
It should be no surprise, then, that there’s been a quick series of short-lived eateries in the Lower Brownsboro restaurant space that shares a small parking lot with an advance payday loan shop that guards its parking spaces with dire threats of immediate towing. A Middle Eastern spot, a Jamaican eatery, an excellent soul food shop — some of them have been quite good, but I don’t see how the grim surroundings can help.
The latest tenant, however, is worth checking out. If friendly, smiling service, appealing Japanese-Korean fare and, on the day of our visit, impeccably fresh sushi count for anything, then maybe I ♥ Sushi & Teriyaki can stick.
The dining room is small but shiny and well-kept, with nary a painting or any other decor to adorn the pale beige walls; floor-to-ceiling plate-glass windows afford a view of four tiny commercial huts across the road. An L-shaped bar at the entrance has been converted into a sushi bar with a half-dozen tall stools. Wooden benches and red dinette chairs provide seating for maybe two dozen more at large tables, which are set with paper napkins and wooden chopsticks (Western cutlery is available on request).
The menu is relatively brief, but it offers plenty of choices for everyone, with an abundance of cooked dishes for those who don’t ♥ raw fish. Dinner entrees come with rice, vegetables and salad and range in price from $11 (for “chicken and chicken,” boneless bites in teriyaki glaze) to $21 (for deep-fried lobster meat in honey almond-coconut sauce, or sauteed “scallop and scallop”). As mentioned, Korean flavors turn up amid the Japanese mix, with bulgogi (Korean marinated grilled beef, $15) and kalbi (Korean marinated beef short ribs, $15) among the goodies.
The usual extensive list of sushi rolls, nigiri sushi bites and sashimi is also available, of course, many at $3.50 or $4 for nigiri, and rolls starting at $3, rising to a still reasonable $12 for some specialty rolls.
If you’re on a budget, you can enjoy filling soba or udon noodle dishes for $10 or less, and fried rice for as little as $5 for the vegetarian version. About 18 appetizers are subdivided into vegetable and meat items, and prices in the $3 to $7 range for many items would make the grazing option an easy choice. There’s a short list of beers, wines and Japanese sake, plus Japanese green tea or soft drinks to wash it all down.
We took advantage of the 11 a.m.-3 p.m. lunch menu ($7 to $10) and some sushi and were quite satisfied with food and service.
Mary picked what appeared to be a Korean-Japanese hybrid dish, bulgogi teriyaki ($9), and was happy with her oversize white platter loaded with stir-fried veggies aromatic with wok hai, the characteristic smoky scent of food fresh from a well-handled wok, and thin-sliced, soy-marinated grilled beef. A generous portion of steaming white rice came alongside, and both lunches were accompanied by steaming, “meaty” miso soup and a fresh green salad with a tangy ginger-and-citrus dressing.
I chose Combo B ($10), which consisted of a plate of Yaki Soba (more of those great, sizzling stir-fried veggies and a dash of soy flavor atop a bed of thin, vermicelli-like wheat noodles), and an order of four nigiri sushi — chef’s choice of shrimp, salmon, tuna and snapper — following as a second course. We also summoned two sushi rolls, crispy salmon skin ($6) and sweet mild yellowtail and scallion ($5).
The sushi was very good to excellent — nothing fancy, but extremely fresh fish on a Tuesday, and as everyone who has read my rants about stinky, old fish in sushi will know — I’m a strict judge of this point as being key to a sushi bar’s success.
A filling lunch for two, with some Korean bulgogi beef left over for lunch the next day, came to $33.66, a mighty light toll by sushi-bar standards. I rounded up to $40 for enthusiastic service.
I ♥ Sushi & Teriyaki
2017 Brownsboro Road
893-8226
Rating: 84
Best gyros … where? Check out It’s All Greek To Me
CLOSED This establishment literally moved out in the middle of the night.
“Gyros” and “hubris” are both Greek words. “Hubris,” with its roots in Greek tragedy, means “excessive pride.” Declaring that one’s storefront Greek restaurant produces “the best gyros in the entire world” might be considered an example of this. “Gyros” is Greek, too. It’s the iconic Greek sandwich, best when the meat is sliced thin from a chunk of lamb that roasts while turning gently on a vertical spit in front of a burner. It’s served on a pita round with onions and tomato and a slather of thick, creamy yogurt-based tzatziki sauce. In the original Greek, “gyros” is a singular noun. One gyros, many gyroi. In this it follows the pattern of many other Greek words adopted into English: logos, ethos, kudos. Nobody earns just one kudo, and John didn’t write “In the beginning was the logo.”
But English is an evolving language. Just as we pronounce Versailles, Ky., as “Vur-SALES,” not the hoity-toity French “Vehr-SIGH,” and much as we mangle the Old Country original in foodie terms like “maitre d’” and, well, tartar sauce, we’re rapidly losing the singular “s” from “gyros” because, doggone it, it looks plural. One gyro, many gyros, and you can even pronounce it “jie-row” and the nice person behind the counter will still know what you want.
In any case, there is a bit of hubris in It’s All Greek To Me’s claim of world gyro dominance, but they do make a decent gyro. It’s not the best in the world, or even the best in town; but It’s All Greek To Me is a pleasant restaurant with good, affordable fare, and it got better with a recent expansion and makeover.
Originally a mostly take-out eatery in the Frankfort Avenue space that once housed the Wine Rack, it has grown into the next-door building vacated by Conez and Coneyz, now spruced up in bright Greek blue, with Corinthian columns, twinkling Christmas lights and Greek folk music.
It is, I believe, the fifth in a series of Greek restaurants owned and operated by Maria Bell, who started out in Radcliff, Ky., then moved in fairly quick succession to Louisville’s Butchertown, then Clifton, back to Radcliff and now to Crescent Hill.
The menu, in another act of mild hubris, brags that it is “the only Greek restaurant in Louisville,” a theory apparently built on the argument that all the other local places where you can buy gyroi, er, gyros, are run by Iranians, Turks, Palestinians, Lebanese or the random Englishwoman. Whatever.
The menu is centered, of course, on gyros. An oversize model goes for $7.50, and is available with the traditional Greek lamb or an international parade of other flavors: Italian sausage, Creole-Cajun, even Mexican-style fajita gyros. You can get chicken gyros, falafel gyros, fish gyros, vegetarian grape-leaf gyros (with yogurt-based tzatziki) or even vegan gyros (with hummus replacing the dairy). After 4 p.m. daily, the lunch lamb gyro turns into a gyro lamb sandwich ($9.99), a larger specimen attractively plated open-face, ready to attack with knife and fork.
We tried this gyro lamb sandwich and got a good portion of lamb, shaved thin from the cylinder, flavorful albeit a bit dry and salty. It was mounded on a rather thin and soft pita with a heavy slather of tzatziki as thick as sour cream, dressed with onions and chunks of plum tomato.
Choosing among other Greek entrees on the menu, I picked a favorite, moussaka ($11.99), which resembles Italian lasagna made with roasted eggplant slices in place of pasta, layered with cinnamon-scented Greek ground-beef sauce (which is the progenitor of Cincinnati chili, by the way) and topped with a thick, creamy layer of béchamel sauce baked golden. It was filling Greek comfort food, done well.
A Greek salad ($6.95) wasn’t bad, although it seemed a lot more Americanized than we used to get in Astoria, New York City’s Greek neighborhood. Romaine leaves were composed with tomatoes, Kalamata olives, cucumbers, onions and plenty of crumbled feta cheese, with a simple vinaigrette in a plastic tub on the side.
A small triangle of baklava ($2.50) fell a bit short of Astoria Greek standards as well; it was on the dry side, tough enough to be hard to get through with a fork; but its flavor was right on.
With a bottle of Greek Mythos Red beer, a dark reddish malty brew, a hearty dinner for two tipped the scales at a very affordable $24 plus change, with another five bucks for the tip jar.
It’s All Greek To Me
2716 Frankfort Ave.
895-0555
www.itsallgreektomelouisville.com
Rating: 78
More gyro or gyros
Speaking of Greek vocabulary, if you’re the kind of word pedant who considers language a great spectator sport, you can peek behind the curtains at Wikipedia to find an intriguing and lengthy debate over how the Interwebs’ encyclopedia of the commons should resolve the burning issue of “gyro” or “gyros”: http://bit.ly/gyrovsgyros.
Bringing in the Harvest on East Market
Looking for ramps in season? Garlic scapes? Fancy purple kale? Or maybe a tasty omelet fashioned from just-laid free-range eggs? You’ll find it all at the Bardstown Road Farmers Market where Ivor Chodkowski’s Field Day Family Farm booth is the place to go for what’s arguably the fanciest produce on the premises.
Continue reading Bringing in the Harvest on East Market
Gary’s on Spring has the ingredients for success
What does it take to turn a new restaurant into a sensation? Well, a cool venue is good for starters, and Gary’s on Spring certainly qualifies in that regard, settling comfortably into a stylish remake of the former Spring Street Meeting House in Irish Hill.
A creative chef with the chops to turn the ordinary into something special is another key criterion, and Harold Baker of Gary’s fits that bill, turning out an international menu that ranges from France to New Orleans while staying deeply rooted here at home.
Continue reading Gary’s on Spring has the ingredients for success