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→
With all the justified uproar these days about mountaintop removal, miner safety and other issues surrounding Kentucky’s beleaguered coal industry, it may seem a bit odd to have something nice to say about coal.
But damn! A coal-burning oven makes one fine pizza. What’s more, the good folks at Coals Artisan Pizza, recently arrived in the Vogue Center, are burning re-mined hard anthracite coal, which is about as environmentally friendly as coal can be. Continue reading Coals Artisan Pizza is burning hot→
Think back to the days when Oriental House was new. One of the first Chinese restaurants in Louisville, it’s getting on toward 50 years old now. St. Matthews was just starting to sprawl when Oriental House settled in to its colorful quarters on Shelbyville Road back in the ’60s. The St. Matthews mall still had that new-mall smell, the Watterson Expressway had just inched around to US 60, and there were still plenty of potato fields around. Continue reading Oriental House looks mighty good for its age→
When I first heard about plans for Ghyslain on Market, I was really excited. A French (well, Québécois) chocolatier opening a bistro in a sort-of historic building on East Market. What’s not to like? Continue reading Ghyslain: Bistro or deli? Does it matter?→
I will gladly pay you Tuesday for a hamburger today. Actually, not to be wimpy about it, I would gladly pay daily for a gourmet-style hamburger at Bluegrass Burgers. And when finished, I wouldn’t at all mind running a few blocks down the street for a daily Vietnamese bánh mì sandwich at NamNam Café. Continue reading Burger or bánh mì? New cheap eats abound at Bluegrass Burgers & NamNam Cafe→
Breakfast places come and go. Some last for just an eye-blink; some earn landmark status; some hang around long after they should have hung up the spatula.
Bardstown Road’s latest addition to the fast-breaking genre, Highland Morning, crept in quietly. After a bustling grand opening, last week the café had settled into a relaxed pace serving comfort food — with a bountiful twist. Continue reading Don’t think twice — Highland Morning’s all right→
I’ve liked Simply Thai ever since it opened in 2006. Since the beginning I have ranked it high among the city’s Thai eateries for food quality and presentation of standard Thai dishes – plus a short but appealing selection of Japanese delights and sushi.
But I didn’t go to Simply Thai very often, frankly because its popularity swamped its tiny quarters in a one-room hut at Wallace and Wilmington avenues. With maybe eight small tables crammed into a space meant for six, and a line of hungry diners elbowing through the middle of the crowd in search of take-outs, Simply Thai’s ambience fell simply short of simply comfortable.
Charcuterie plate. PHOTO: Ron JasinIt has been well over a decade now since baker Bob Hancock and his wife, Kit Garrett, came back home to Louisville from the Pacific Northwest with a bucket of natural bread starter bubbling in the back of their van. They installed a 45,000-pound, $50,000 Llopis (“YO-pee”) oven from Barcelona in the back of a red brick Frankfort Avenue storefront and proceeded to raise the bar for artisanal European-style crusty breads to new levels.
Now their Blue Dog Bakery is a local culinary landmark. Blue Dog breads appear on the tables at many of the city’s top restaurants, but Hancock, while still overseeing all this bready goodness, is turning his creative spirit to another delicious food: pig meat.
He has been raising heirloom swine on a farm near Louisville while learning the art of making ham, bacon and charcuterie. Though Blue Dog has usually been open only for breakfast and lunch, last winter the café started opening for dinner three nights a week as Red Hog Tapas. After a short break, Red Hog is back.
Almost the entire, enticing menu of creative, nicely crafted small plates features some version of pig flesh, much of it the result of Hancock’s own agricultural pursuits.
Red Hog has been slammed every night it’s been open: Thursday from 7-10 p.m., Friday and Saturday from 7-11 p.m. Expect a wait, which you can spend standing around a high-top in the front room, sipping a glass of interesting wine or artisanal beer from the short but well-chosen lists. If you don’t mind early dining, we’ve had good luck getting an immediate table when we show up right at 7 p.m. or a little before.
Blue Dog’s smallish dining room relies on classic lines, undraped wood tables and simple art, letting its turn-of-the-previous-century space and big plate-glass windows overseeing the Frankfort Avenue scene set the tone.
Service is generally smiling, friendly and conversational, and the food … well, let’s just say Hancock’s meats, Blue Dog’s breads, and the Blue Dog/Red Hog kitchen’s skills come together in a combination that rarely miss the mark.
Counting specials, you can usually choose from about 30 selections. Most assemble a table full of small plates for noshing and sharing. Individual item pricing is reasonable, from $4 for a variety of bruschetta; $6.50 to $8 for sandwiches (“panini and bocadillos”); $6 to $13 for “other stuff” that doesn’t quite fit into the previous categories; and $12 for pizzas, fired until crisp in that massive Llopis oven.
We tried a lot of the menu in two recent visits.
• The charcuterie board ($12) is the place to go if you want to sample a little taste of just about all of Hancock’s meats. A wooden board akin to a painter’s palette bears five rows of colorful, thin-sliced pork goodies: pepperoni-sized rounds of Hungarian sausage, blushing bright red with paprika and offering a balance of chewy pork sausage and spice; salami-style rounds of soppressata sausage, dotted with delicious pork fat; lardo — yes, lard-o, a thin edge of savory pork loin lined with a broad strip of pure, white pork fat, fresh and sweet. Yes, it’s delicious. Just don’t tell your cardiologist. Finishing up the plate is a thin-sliced ration of porky, textured coppa di testa, which I take to be Italian headcheese. It comes with three Chinese restaurant spoons bearing garlicky aioli, sweet-sour cornichons, and a translucent, gently spicy gelée — red-pepper jelly, perhaps. Grilled slices of Blue Dog baguette come alongside, making this not-so-small plate a dish in itself.
• Spicy tuna bruschetta ($4) is a two-bite tapa, or maybe four bites if you eat delicately. A chopped mix of tuna and egg with a hot-and-spicy bite is perched on a square of Blue Dog bread and topped with a silvery pair of fresh anchovies.
• A thick-cut pair of Berkshire pork ribs ($7.50) — oh, my. They weren’t “falling off the bone,” but were gently smoky, with the old-fashioned, distinctively pork flavor of real pastured meat, a pork experience that will put you off industrial pig meat forever.
• A salad-type entry, one of only a couple of items in the house suited for vegetarians, brought together the flavors of roasted red bell pepper, eggplant and mild goat cheese, roasted artichokes and peppery arugula in a symphony of flavor ($8).
We had to come back another night to try one of the pizzas. This one came sizzling from the 465-degree fire and smoke of the Llopis oven. Our choice, a breakfast-for-dinner pie topped with cut-up poached eggs, thick-cut house-cured bacon, cheese and arugula leaves on a puffy-edged rustic-bread base, ranked among the best pizzas I’ve ever eaten.
With a half-bottle of a Loire Valley red wine, the full dinner evening (with a creme brulée and espresso to finish) totaled $51.98 plus a $12 tip. The return visit for pizza and salad, with craft beers, was $29.82 plus $6.98 for the server.
Red Hog is a shining star on Frankfort Avenue. It’s going to be hard to resist the temptation to come back often.
Red Hog Tapas at Blue Dog
2868 Frankfort Ave.
899-9800
www.bluedogbakeryandcafe.com
Rating: 94
Exchange burger plate. PHOTO: Ron JasinWhat’s a gastropub? This is more than a trivial question, as more and more open up in the area. Counting eateries that embrace the title, and those that earn it whether they claim it or not, I immediately think of Blind Pig, Bank Street Brewhouse, Village Anchor and Eiderdown. I’m sure there are more.
Now NA Exchange joins the pack, prompting me to repeat the question: What the heck is a gastropub? Is it a neighborhood saloon that serves pickled ginger rather than pickled eggs, beef tartare instead of beef jerky? Or is it a fern bar with microbrewery beer?
Quality beverages are one sure criterion: craft beers, some of local provenance; artisanal wines, as likely to be from France as California; trendy cocktails, if licensure permits. Neither dive bar nor fern bar, the gastropub offers classy cooking and thought-provoking beverages in a comfortable, casual environment.
NA Exchange self-defines from the majestic Oxford English Dictionary: “gastropub, n. Brit. A public house which specializes in serving high-quality food.” OK, fine. So what the heck is a public house? “British. A tavern,” the “Random House Unabridged Dictionary” laconically reports.
We’re making some progress here, but these are murky waters. Perhaps it’s best to head straight over to a convenient gastropub and figure it out in person. With that in mind, the other night we shot across the Sherman Minton Bridge and up the hill above New Albany.
At the time of our visit, the name of the place appeared to be “Grand Opening,” but more informative signs may be on the way. It’s not hard to find if you know your way to New Albanian Brewing Co., formerly known as Rich O’s and Sportstime Pizza. Stay in the same shopping center, then proceed south through a maze of parking lots for maybe 100 yards, and you’re there.
Formerly MyBar, a neighborhood saloon with no gastropubbish pretensions, NA Exchange has undergone a thorough interior renovation that confers a more upscale look, but the bones of a friendly tavern remain, and that’s a good thing. Chef David Clancy, formerly of Bistro New Albany and other good local spots, is in the kitchen, and that’s an even better thing.
On Tuesday evenings there’s generally a $2 special, recently taking the form of “Bells and Burgers,” with a draft beer selection from the excellent Bell’s Brewery of Kalamazoo, Mich., and a slightly downsized version of the Exchange burger going for $2 each. That was enough to bring us in. We immediately ordered two-buck glasses of hoppy, crisp Bell’s Two-Hearted Ale and examined the menus.
Subdivided into Starters, Salads, Light Fare and Specialties of the Chef, the evening bill of fare was substantial and varied, ranging from fairly traditional bar food to more upscale gastropub grub; but even the basics generally came with a tasty twist. For example, wings ($7.95) arrive in a generous order of 10, tossed with Vietnamese Sriracha sauce and served with Gorgonzola in place of the usual domestic blue cheese. Hummus ($5.95) adds a dose of smoky chipotle-pepper heat, plus pretzel bread toast in lieu of pitas. Nachos ($6.95) are topped with bison chili, and so it goes.
Four light-fare items were affordably priced from $7.50 for a chicken sandwich made blackened and with smoked cheddar, to $9.95 for the locally beloved fried cod, here dredged in a porter batter. Seven chef’s specialties start at $12.95, including pappardelle pasta with peppers in a spicy tomato cream sauce, with chicken or shrimp. (Enjoy a vegetarian version for $10.95.) The menu tops out at a still reasonable $17.95 for a black-and-blue sirloin, made from grass-fed, natural Virginia beef from Davis Creek Farms, blackened and topped with crumbled Gorgonzola.
We started with a shared order of fried green tomatoes ($5.95), which were just about as good as it gets. Five tangy, crisp thick slices of pale-green tomato were tightly cloaked in perfectly fried batter, golden brown and grease-free, neatly composed on a bed of spinach and artfully decorated with a subtly flavored lemon-dill aioli.
The spinach salad ($6.95) was elevated with toasted walnuts, wedges of hard-boiled egg and, considering the season, a surprisingly juicy tomato. Bacon bits, crumbled Gorgonzola, marinated onion slices and crunchy croutons topped it off.
Mary’s Exchange burger, reasonably diminished in size for $2 night (it’s normally $7.95 for a half-pounder), was excellent — a hand-formed burger, perhaps a bit past the requested medium-rare but still juicy and tender, garnished with the standard lettuce-and-tomato and, for a 50-cent surcharge, crumbled Gorgonzola. The burger was fine and so was its bakery-style bun, and fresh chopped dill tossed with crisp house-made potato chips made them something special.
My more substantial entrée, seafood risotto ($12.95), was a bowl of tender short-grain rice in a fennel-and-lemon scented broth, loaded with tender medium shrimp and fresh mussels in the shell. It wasn’t quite a traditional risotto but a delectable seafood-and-rice dish all the same.
The benefits of $2 night held the toll down nicely: A dinner that surely would have set us back $75 in a Frankfort Avenue or Bardstown Road bistro rang up a $36.47 price on the register in Southern Indiana, and careful, courteous service earned a $9 tip.
NA Exchange
3306 Plaza Drive
New Albany, Ind.
812-948-6501
Rating: 88
If you like seafood and fish, dine in a city that’s close to the water. This seems like good advice, but for reasons lost to history, Louisville has always been an exception to this rule.
The city is, and has been, crazy for seafood – particularly fried mild white fish – and we reportedly rank second only to Boston in cod consumed per capita, even though we must look hundreds of miles farther than the muddy Ohio for our source of supply. Continue reading The Fishery satisfies in Lent and all year ‘round→
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