Whatever might prompt two members of an indie rock band with a 17-year record and three songs on the Billboard 200 to leap from the world of music to the hard work of opening Lupo, an Italian restaurant that features pizza and pasta?
That’s just what vocalist and guitar player Adam Turla and cellist-keyboardist Sarah Balliet of the band Murder by Death have done, though. In August they joined Sarah’s brother Max Balliet, owner of the popular Holy Molé taco truck, to open Lupo, a fine, casual eatery in a nicely restored 19th century red-brick house on the far inner end of Frankfort Avenue where Clifton meets Butchertown. Continue reading Lupo’s pizza and pasta sing a fine Italian song→
I don’t know anybody who thinks that the world is in great shape nowadays, and all the saber-rattling going on over Iran and North Korea is just the beginning. Things haven’t changed much since the 1960s, when the Kingston Trio famously sang in The Merry Minuet, “The whole world is festering with unhappy souls. The French hate the Germans. The Germans hate the Poles. Italians hate Yugoslavs. South Africans hate the Dutch … and I don’t like anybody very much!”
And that’s before we even start talking about the tensions that tear at Southwest Asia, that region of seemingly never-ending wars: Iraq and Syria and Lebanon and Israel and Palestine, oh my!
Will the world ever know peace in our time? I’ve got my doubts. But, my imagination fired with a delicious, filling meal at Jerusalem Kitchen, I’ve got an idea: What if we all tried just a little harder to get to know our neighbors through food? Continue reading Delicious food and an idea for world peace at Jerusalem Kitchen→
A chef or kitchen manager has to juggle their many other daily tasks and also order fresh products and dry goods and front-of-the-house supplies. Sometimes deliveries don’t go as planned. Then it’s up to that person who’s in charge of ordering to call their purveyors and ask for corrections that will (hopefully) arrive in time to make service happen successfully. Continue reading The Highwire of Ordering→
Well, here we are again, another week that finds me torn between two new spots that feature cheap, delicious world cuisine: Bodega mi Sueño in West Buechel dishes out mouth-watering Cuban fare in oversize portions in the casual setting of a traditional bodega. Ngon Appétit in Clifton Heights offers a short but tasty list of Vietnamese fare with a hint of the French accent that a colonial empire left behind.
I’m afraid LEO Weekly’s Taste Bud writer, Kevin Gibson, who wrote fondly of Sam’s Hot Dog stand on Lower Brownsboro in 2015, is going to be sorry to learn that Sam’s has gone away. I expect his regret will be tempered, though, as it is for us all, by the recent arrival of Ngon Appétit, successor to the late and lamented Four Sisters, serving up Vietnamese-French crêpes, banh mi, and a worthy pho. Continue reading Ngon Appétit — worlds of delicious II→
I can’t think of a better way to get my attention than to tell me about a new eatery that serves world cuisine. Clue me in, and I’ll be there before you can drop a Salvadorian pupusa. Heck, even another Thai, Korean, Indian or Mexican joint will get my motor running.
So when I learned that a new Indian place, Himalayan Restaurant, had opened on Bardstown Road at virtually the same time as El Taco Luchador launched its new St. Matthews branch, I started spinning like a falling cat with buttered toast strapped to his back. Continue reading Indian at Himalayan makes us happy→
Meanwhile, over in St. Matthews, the old Meridian Cafe has been transformed and taken South of the Border in a substantial remake. The old house stands revealed in bold red-and-white colors and large murals, no longer concealed behind two large shade trees that had to be removed for safety and visibility, manager Rick Moir said. Continue reading Bye bye, Meridian Cafe: Bienvenido a El Taco Luchador→
“Some of our recent hiccups coupled with the recent limited recall though has caused us to reconsider our commissary strategy,” Comfy Cow co-owner Tim Koons-McGee tells us, referring to persistent product shortages that caused consumer irritation followed by a more recent recall of some contaminated product from the grocery-store supply. Continue reading Comfy Cow exiting commissary biz, outsourcing production→
We’ve been hearing complaints lately – more in sorrow than in anger – that Comfy Cow’s popular shops have been down to just a few basic flavors. A couple of weeks ago, co-owner Tim Koons-McGee apologized to the shop’s fans, saying that the bad luck of a broken ice-cream machine and a replacement part that was hard to replace coincided with warmer weather and their grocery retail business ramping up. Continue reading Comfy Cow bouncing back with new flavors→
