Category Archives: BY LOCATION

$$ Modest ($30-$50), Downtown, NuLu and Butchertown, Italian (and Pizza)

Treat your sweetie on the cheap: Share!

Halibut at Primo
Primo’s Ippoglosso di Ligure, mild white fish poached in olive oil with basil, is influenced by the cuisines of the Liguria region around Genoa. Photo by Robin Garr.

LEO’s Eats with Louisville HotBytes

Here’s a cheeky way to treat your sweetie to a Valentine’s Day dinner (or other romantic occasion) at a fancy restaurant, enjoying an expansive meal while keeping the price under control: Share dinner.

I’m talking serious sharing here, the kind you would only want to undertake in the company of someone close enough that you don’t object to taking food from the same plate.

This approach need not be cheap or sleazy, and any good restaurateur will gladly accommodate you in your plan. We tried it the other night at Primo, one of my favorite restaurants.
Continue reading Treat your sweetie on the cheap: Share! →

$ Budget (under $30), Baxter, Bardstown, Highlands, Downtown, NuLu and Butchertown, Seafood & Water's Edge, St. Matthews, Westport Village, and environs

Something fishy this way comes

LEO’s Eats with Louisville HotBytes
(Moby Dick, Cunningham’s, the Fish House, Uptown Café)

Last week in this space we celebrated Carnival, wrapping up the season of winter revelry with a gumbo party, tasty libations and all manner of Mardi Gras beads.

Today it’s Ash Wednesday, the music has stopped, and the repentant Lenten season is here. Even in this secular era when only the most devout observe Lent with fasting and abstinence, one religious ritual remains mighty easy to follow: fish sandwiches on rye!

To hail the season, we checked out four local spots known for fish sandwiches: the fast-food Moby Dick, historic Cunningham’s, the friendly Fish House and, for an upscale touch, Uptown Café.

Fish sandwiches
Continue reading Something fishy this way comes →

$ Budget (under $30), BBQ, Burgers & Down-Home, Frankfort Ave., Clifton, Crescent Hill, QuickBytes

A moveable feast: Barbecue brothers land in Clifton

Israel Landin
Kentucky Bar-B-Cue Co., successor to Bourbon Bros., has moved into Cafe Lou Lou’s former home in Clifton. Photo by Robin Garr.

(Kentucky Bar-B-Cue Co., Voice-Tribune, Dec. 31, 2007)

The Bourbon Brothers have moved on down the road again, towing their big black smoker to a new home in Clifton and hoisting a new moniker – Kentucky Bar-B-Cue Co. (“KBC”) – outside the freshly painted quarters that had housed Cafe Lou Lou before that local eatery’s recent move to St. Matthews.

The new setting, like Baby Bear’s porridge, may be just right for the barbecue joint that had started in a tiny building, a one-time neighborhood bakery on Brownsboro Road, that was a little too small. Then it moved across the road for a very short stay in a looming Moorish-look building, once Shariat’s, now Red Pepper Chinese, that seemed by a fair margin too large.

Now, settling comfortably into this ancient, drafty yet homey old Clifton saloon that still bears evidence of its long life as a tavern, it may have found its niche.
Continue reading A moveable feast: Barbecue brothers land in Clifton →

$ Budget (under $30), Frankfort Ave., Clifton, Crescent Hill, World Food

We laissez les bon temps roux-lez at J. Gumbo’s

BBC
To help you get into the Mardi Gras spirit, J. Gumbo’s offers a hint of Carnival flavor with its delicious Cajun-style gumbo, Louisiana beer and beads. Lots of beads. LEO Photo by Sara Havens.

LEO’s Eats with Louisville HotBytes
(J. Gumbo’s in Clifton; Sala Thai’s City Wok)

Want some “lagniappe,” an extra treat, a little freebie like the 13th donut in a baker’s dozen? Say “Lan-yop,” as Louisiana’s French-accented Creoles and Cajuns do, and you’ll be right in the spirit of Carnival, the month-long time of fun, festivity and wretched excess in Latin countries – and, of course, in old New Orleans and the Cajun bayous.

Carnival rules from Twelfth Night, the 12th day of Christmas, until Mardi Gras, “Fat Tuesday,” slams the door on deliciously sinful fun as the gloomy and repentant Lenten season begins.

If all this sounds a little bit like Derby time in Louisville, that’s more than coincidental, right down to the 24-hour party that ends the festivities with a bang.
Continue reading We laissez les bon temps roux-lez at J. Gumbo’s →

$ Budget (under $30), Pubs, Brew Pubs, GastroPubs, St. Matthews, Westport Village, and environs

Urbane renewal in the heart of St. Matthews

BBC
The 15-year-old Bluegrass Brewing Co. emerged from cosmetic surgery last week with a new look and an updated menu, including a hot bacon and spinach salad and fried polenta fingers. Photos by Robin Garr.

LEO’s Eats with Louisville HotBytes
(Bluegrass Brewing Co.)

With a history that dates to 1779 and bragging rights as one of Louisville’s first suburbs, St. Matthews owns a long-standing reputation as a quiet, family-oriented community, a safe and frankly conservative kind of place to bring up the kids.

Indeed, the community signaled its social conservatism way back in 1850, on the fateful day when its upright burghers decided to change the town’s name from “Gilman’s Point” (chosen in honor of the local saloon) to “St. Matthews” (in honor of a more “suitable” namesake, its then-new Episcopal church).

From that day to this, St. Matthews’ churches and watering holes have co-existed in usually comfortable harmony. So it’s no real surprise that you’ll find at least three bars, a brewpub and a martini bar within an easy crawl of the intersection of Shelbyville and Westport roads and Chenoweth Lane, the exact corner where Gilman’s Tavern once stood.
Continue reading Urbane renewal in the heart of St. Matthews →

$$ Modest ($30-$50), Bistros, St. Matthews, Westport Village, and environs

60 West Bistro & Martini Bar

BBC
The 5-year-old Cafe Emilie reinvented itself with a new name and image as 60 West Bistro and Martini Bar.

Cafe Emilie, the comfortable eatery in the Burdorf Center (the former Bacon’s department store in St. Matthews) has won quite a few fans – including me – since it started out as a simple lunch spot just over five years ago. We’ve watched it mature into a cozy neighborhood bistro and bar through a couple of chef and staff changes, and it has earned its popularity the old-fashioned way.
Continue reading 60 West Bistro & Martini Bar →

$$$$ Luxury ($80 and up), Hurstbourne, Middletown, Jeffersontown, White tablecloth, deluxe

We put on that ole Southern drawl at Limestone

Michael Cunha
Limestone Restaurant chef and co-owner Michael Cunha dresses up Southern fare in a city suit. The suburban restaurant remains up there with the top spots in town. LEO photo by Nicole Pullen.

LEO’s Eats with Louisville HotBytes

Louisville, it is said, is the only Northern city that chose to declare itself “Southern” only after the South had lost the Civil War. This odd decision, some say, led directly to 100 years of stagnation, no major-league sports teams and a slow decline that eventually took us to the bottom of the nation’s top 50 media markets.

It was a hefty price to pay for the privilege of adopting an affected drawl and adding fatback, grits and greens to our culinary tradition.

I don’t know about you, but our family never ate that stuff at home. Ours was a steak-and-potatoes, spaghetti-and-meatballs, braunschweiger-and-kuchen urban household, and we liked it like that.

Nevertheless, Southern, aka “country,” fare dressed up in a city suit has become a staple in some of Louisville’s finest upscale eateries, and chefs Jim Gerhardt and Michael Cunha have been among the leaders in making it so.
Continue reading We put on that ole Southern drawl at Limestone →

$ Budget (under $30), Downtown, NuLu and Butchertown, World Food

Flat wallet, round tummy? Try these great cheap eats

LEO’s Eats with Louisville HotBytes

Okay, we’re into 2008 now. The holidays are over. Your wallet is flat but your tummy is not. Fine dining and wretched excess are not in the picture, but we’re not really ready for a diet of raw carrots and soda water.

Let’s scout out some great cheap eats, the kind of fare that offers a quick and tasty meal that may not be diet food but isn’t a multi-course banquet, either.

To celebrate the New Year (if in fact there’s much to celebrate about a bleak Ohio Valley January), let’s take a quick look at a potpourri of recent quick and affordable discoveries on the local dining scene.
Continue reading Flat wallet, round tummy? Try these great cheap eats →

$ Budget (under $30), St. Matthews, Westport Village, and environs, World Food

Shiraz settles in at Holiday Manor

Ramin and Cheryl Akrami
Ramin and Cheryl Akrami at Shiraz Mediterranean Grill in Holiday Manor. Photo by Robin Garr.

(Shiraz Mediterranean Grill, Voice-Tribune, Dec. 13, 2007)

If you love a good success story, consider Shiraz Mediterranean Grill. It would be hard to find another modest restaurant in Louisville that started so small and grew so fast.

It seems much longer than just a year and a half since Ramin Akrami opened the first Shiraz, a tiny, four-table eatery almost hidden in a row of frame huts on lower Brownsboro Road. It quickly outgrew those quarters, and within six months Akrami moved to more spacious modern facilities in the new Clifton Lofts complex on Frankfort Avenue. Now Shiraz has come to the East End, with a shiny new branch in Holiday Manor Walk, an expansion that Akrami hopes will be a link in a growing chain.
Continue reading Shiraz settles in at Holiday Manor →

$ Budget (under $30), Mexican, Cuban, Caribbean, Southern Indiana

More cheap eats: La Rosita

Israel Landin
La Rosita owner Israel Landin opened a second New Albany location a few months ago. Along with the familiar fare, La Rosita is vegetarian-friendly. LEO photo by Nicole Pullen.

LEO’s Eats with Louisville HotBytes

I love Mexican food, and I mean real Mexican food, the kind that challenges gringos to enjoy true ethnic flavors and preparations, even if you have to muddle through with awkward Spanglish and pointing at the picture of the dish you want. To my mind, one of the happiest trends of recent years in Louisville dining has been the arrival of dozens of tiny taquerias that take us a long step past Americanized “Tex-Mex.”

La Rosita in New Albany, run by the affable and thoroughly bilingual husband-wife team of Israel and Lidia Landin, has been a favorite since they first landed in a space the size of a walk-in closet nearly hidden inside a produce market on Charlestown Road a few years ago.

Continue reading More cheap eats: La Rosita →