By Robin Garr
LouisvilleHotBytes.com
Napa River Grill enjoyed a very good run before it renovated and rebranded as Osteria Italian Seafood last month.
Its name recently foreshortened to just-plain Napa, the upscale Northern California-style eatery had endured for 24 years, a long life for a restaurant.
Continue reading From Napa to Osteria: Italian seafood in Westport VillageHomelessness – or houselessness, as many advocates prefer to call it since even a tent is still a person’s home – is an ongoing crisis.
The Coalition for the Homeless declared homelessness “one of the most pressing crises facing Louisville today” in a 2021 report that found 10,640 people without housing in the city in 2021.
Continue reading Feed Louisville’s food rescue growsBy Robin Garr
LouisvilleHotBytes.com
I’m going to come right out and say it: Meesh Meesh is one of the best new restaurants to come along in Louisville lately.
But wait! What’s with that repetitive rhyming name? The restaurant’s website explains it all for us: MeeshMeesh means “apricot” in both Arabic and Hebrew.
With the sad fighting going on in Israel and Palestinian Gaza right now, a restaurant that celebrates both of those cultures seems like a good place to be. Continue reading Meesh Meesh is good good
By Robin Garr
LouisvilleHotBytes.com
The abrupt recent closing of the beloved local restaurant Come Back Inn came as another worrisome note in what feels like an ongoing dirge for our fretful food-loving community: Who’s next? Is Louisville’s fame as a dining destination fading away in the post-pandemic age’s hard times? Continue reading Hard times come a’knockin’ at our door
LEO Weekly’s annual Readers’ Choice Awards went public this week. LEO staff tallied all the votes submitted by readers in scores of categories, and in this week’s edition let everyone know who you think is the cream of the crop in each category. Continue reading LEO Weekly 2023 Readers’ Choice Awards plus my picks: Choi’s and V-Grits
By Robin Garr
LouisvilleHotBytes.com
Here’s an existential question about the art of the food critic: Should a restaurant review stick to the simple basics of food, mood, and service? Or does a review gain texture and meaning by bringing in a broader range of history, culture, culinary arts and other trips down fascinating rabbit holes?
If you follow my food writing at all, you won’t have much trouble finding me sitting unobtrusively at a dinner table behind Door No. Two. I love those culinary rabbit holes, and I suspect it shows. Continue reading More thoughts from the critic’s table
By Robin Garr
LouisvilleHotBytes.com
I’m not great at small talk, but I love chaat. Okay, I can hear the chorus of boos from here. I’ll just show myself out.
Seriously, though, the Indian street food delight known as chaat appeals to me, so much so that a search on the word in the Louisville HotBytes archives brought up references at a dozen different local Indian eateries. I’ve eaten plenty of chaat, and I’ve spent plenty of words trying to describe it. Continue reading We chaat it up at Shreeji Indian
By Robin Garr
LouisvilleHotBytes.com
If you’ve long harbored a wish to go viral on social media but didn’t know where to start, here’s a modest proposal: Speak of your undying love for pizza topped with pineapple … and anchovies.
That should do it, and if it costs you a few lost friends and followers, well, that’s the price of fame.
What is it about pizza that makes it such a natural topic for conversation and even debate? Continue reading We just can’t stop talking about pizza
By Robin Garr
LouisvilleHotBytes.com
If you haven’t heard about Chef Edward Lee’s new Korean restaurant Nami by now, it’s probably only because you haven’t been paying attention. The news about this Korean-American top chef opening his first Korean restaurant since his 20-something youth in New York City has been all over the place.
Nami, which opened on May 2, has been jammed since the start. If you want a seat, especially on weekends, you should get a reservation will in advance or plan to arrive before 6 p.m.
Regardless, you should definitely go. Continue reading Nami: Korean-style fare with a side of Ed Lee
By Robin Garr
LouisvilleHotBytes.com
Refusing to eat a disgusting dish may be one of the first things that we as humans can do to claim our individual agency, our right to yell “No!”
“It’s broccoli, dear.” “I say it’s spinach, and I say the hell with it.” Carl Ross’ classic 1928 New Yorker cartoon captured the concept perfectly. We don’t like it. We say the hell with it. And more often than not, that childhood response evolves into a lifelong aversion.
Until it doesn’t. Continue reading Overcoming food aversions, restaurant-style
