Category Archives: BY LOCATION

$$ Modest ($30-$50), Italian (and Pizza), Southern Indiana

Take that short drive to Stratto’s

Jerome Pope
Jerome Pope is now the chef at Stratto’s in Clarksville. Look for his new menu after the first of the year. LEO Photo by Nicole Pullen.

LEO’s Eats with Louisville HotBytes

If you’ve been meaning to check out some Southern Indiana dining spots but worried that it’s a little too far, consider this: It took me just 11 minutes to drive from my house in Crescent Hill to Stratto’s in Clarksville on a rainy Saturday night.

OK, maybe I couldn’t have made it that fast during a weekday rush hour, but it’s still a quicker trip for me than a ride out to The Summit or Brownsboro Crossing in endless suburbia.

What’s more, the comfortable historic-house setting and hearty Italian-accented comfort food at Stratto’s makes it well worth the short trip across the finally repainted Kennedy Bridge.
Continue reading Take that short drive to Stratto’s →

$ Budget (under $30), Italian (and Pizza), Southern Indiana

No Hoosier joke: Pie are square

Pizza King
Like most pizza in Southern Indiana, Pizza King’s classic pie is cut in squares, not wedges. LEO Photo by Nicole Pullen.

LEO’s Eats with Louisville HotBytes
(Pizza King, Arni’s Pizza, Uncle Tubby’s)

It happens anywhere that a state line crosses through a metro area: Folks on one side of the border tell rude jokes about the other, and vice-versa.

So there’s no use pretending that Kentuckians don’t tell Hoosier jokes. We laugh at their rumored penchant for turning left from the right lane and we’re still kicking around Coach Bobby Knight after all these years. And we can’t resist keeping alive the memory of the embarrassing moment in the Indiana State Legislature in 1897, when a few wacky Hoosiers tried to redefine the mathematical constant pi as a simpler number.

But here’s a Hoosier culinary constant that is no joke: Over there, pie are square.
Continue reading No Hoosier joke: Pie are square →

$$$ Upscale ( $50 - $80), Baxter, Bardstown, Highlands, Bistros

Eat the veggies first at Club Grotto

Club Grotto
Club Grotto head chef Mike Driskell doesn’t give the humble vegetable short shrift. And you don’t even have to be a vegetarian to appreciate their trademark all-vegetable dinner course, the aptly named “Vegetable Orgy.” LEO Photo by Nicole Pullen.

LEO’s Eats with Louisville HotBytes
(Club Grotto; Old Town wine totes)

Eat your vegetables!

This exhortation, so often directed at children, for many of us leaves lingering psychic echoes that ring down the years into adulthood. Veggies? Who needs them? Real men eat meat and potatoes … don’t they?

I count myself among the willing but vaguely reluctant vegetable eaters: I’ll force down a portion, knowing that I should, but rarely get the same kind of excitement out of it that I naturally derive from a great steak, shellfish or even a cheese or pasta dish.

Frankly, I think some of Louisville’s top chefs share this aversion. Too often, even at the city’s finest restaurants, I’ll get a great meal with a careless blob of reheated frozen veggies right out of the bag, tossed on the side of my dinner plate as an obvious afterthought.

This doesn’t happen at Club Grotto. Continue reading Eat the veggies first at Club Grotto →

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

Seviche comes to the East End

Crispy fish at Seviche
Seviche’s crispy fish was a deep-fried red snapper about a foot long, served head and tail on, set in swimming position atop a bed of subtly flavored macadamia-nut rice. Photo by Robin Garr.

(Seviche – A Latin Bistro, Voice-Tribune, Nov. 29, 2007)

When Anthony Lamas’s son, Ethan Diego, turned 4, Lamas and his wife, Samantha, made the same decision as a lot of young parents before them: They moved from the Highlands to the East End, seeking a quiet, suburban setting with good schools for the youngsters.

It wasn’t long before Lamas made another important decision: With the strong encouragement of his wife and his father-in-law, Dr. Bruce Gaddie – longtime Oldham County residents – he brought his workplace out to the suburbs, too.

Lamas, chef and owner of Louisville’s immensely popular Seviche – A Latin Restaurant – now presides over two restaurants, having opened Seviche – A Latin Bistro last month in the quarters vacated by the short-lived Cutting Board on Goose Creek Road.

With the exception of locally owned and operated Limestone on North Hurstbourne, Lamas said he was startled to discover how much the East End’s fine-dining scene has been dominated by corporate chain eateries.

The arrival of the new Seviche, though, coupled with Equus chef-owner Dean Corbett’s planned opening of Corbett’s An American Place in Brownsboro Crossing on Dec. 15 and Napa River Grill’s planned move from Dupont Circle to Westport Village early next year, may signal a coming tide.
Continue reading Seviche comes to the East End →

$ Budget (under $30), Bistros, Downtown, NuLu and Butchertown

Let’s do Lunch Today at The Café

Lunch Today
Lunch Today lures a lunch crowd to modern shopping center space in Jeffersonville’s Water Tower Square. The soup-and-sandwich combo is the way to go – pictured here is a grilled turkey panini and potato soup. LEO Photo by Nicole Pullen.

LEO’s Eats with Louisville HotBytes
(The Café; Lunch Today)

It’s been almost a week since Thanksgiving Day, and chances are most of us have eaten up the leftovers by now, or discreetly discarded the congealed remains. It may still be a little too soon to think about settling down to another expansive repast, though, so this week let’s do lunch.

In fact, let’s do two!

The Café, formerly known as the Café at the Louisville Antique Mall, has reopened in new quarters after losing its locational clause as a result of a move: The historic red-brick factory on Goss Avenue that housed the antique mall (and the Café) is going condo, prompting its long-time tenants to move. The Café now turns up in bright, sunny quarters in an attractively restored old warehouse building next door to Louisville Stoneware east of downtown.

Lunch Today, a pleasant shopping center spot in Indiana just minutes across the Ohio from downtown Louisville, lures a lunch crowd to modern shopping center space in Water Tower Square, an office park and shopping complex built around the 19th century American Car and Foundry Co.
Continue reading Let’s do Lunch Today at The Café →

$ Budget (under $30), Hurstbourne, Middletown, Jeffersontown, Italian (and Pizza)

Eating for two (or more) at Buca di Beppo

Buca di Beppo
Buca di Beppo is notorious for its zany, tongue-in-cheek New Jersey-style Italian-restaurant décor and its huge portions of Italian-American dishes. The restaurant recently launched a new “Buca Mio” (“My Buca”) menu that features smaller portions meant to feed a single diner. LEO Photo by Nicole Pullen.

LEO’s Eat ‘n’ Blog with Louisville HotBytes

My friends know me as the un-chained guy, an obligate foodie with a strong preferential option for locally owned and operated eateries, where you’ll find a distinct local flavor, and where you’ll find the host on the premises, working without strings being pulled by accountants and lawyers in a distant corporate office.

My reasoning should be obvious: While chains may provide consistency and a predictable experience, the heavy hand of the bean counter and the cold reality of the quarterly balance sheet almost invariably inspire corner-cutting, and this is as true in the restaurant industry as it is in, well, the newspaper business.

Still, it wouldn’t make sense to avoid chain dining entirely – heaven knows, it’s popular – and I might miss some good eats. Here and there around the Metro, and particularly in the chain-rich environment of the East End, there’s decent dining to be found in at least a few of the big-name brands.

One of the best bets, in my experience, is Buca di Beppo, Continue reading Eating for two (or more) at Buca di Beppo →

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

True grits and more at 211 Clover

Shrimp and grits
211 Clover offers a fancy version of shrimp and grits, a Southern specialty. LEO Photo by Nicole Pullen.

LEO’s Eat ‘n’ Blog with Louisville HotBytes
(Brunch at 211 Clover Lane)BZZZZT! Sorry, Bubba. This hearty Southern comfort food comes to us direct from South Carolina’s Low Country around Charleston. Continue reading True grits and more at 211 Clover →

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

Wild Eggs hatches breakfast … and lunch!

Wild Eggs

(Wild Eggs, Voice-Tribune, Nov. 8, 2007)

Who doesn’t love breakfast? The resounding success of a series of fancy yet comfortable breakfast and brunch spots around Louisville strongly suggests that most people in the Derby City do.

First there was Lynn’s Paradise Cafe, which has all but become a local institution in nearly 20 years of serving us pancakes, french toast and more. A couple of years ago, Toast on Market opened to rave reviews and has been packed ever since.

And now, in the East End, Wild Eggs seems poised to make it a morning trifecta.
Continue reading Wild Eggs hatches breakfast … and lunch! →

$ Budget (under $30), BBQ, Burgers & Down-Home, Downtown, NuLu and Butchertown

Ein Feste Burg: Beer and brats in Schnitzelburg

Check's
Check’s Café, an archetypal Germantown tavern, excels at the four Bs: brats, burgers, bean soup and beer. A recent renovation has freshened the interior without taking away any of the character. LEO Photo by Nicole Pullen.

LEO’s Eat ‘n’ Blog with Louisville HotBytes
(With Guest Writer Greg Gapsis: Check’s Café, Flabby’s Schnitzelburg, Germantown Café)

Have a beer. And a bratwurst. And how about a little sauerkraut? Have yourself a happy little German something, and know that you’re partaking of a heritage that runs long and deep in Louisville.

Our city has boasted a distinct German accent for nearly 200 years, since the first German-Americans (including the first arrivals in the Garr family) came down the Ohio from German-speaking enclaves in Philadelphia and Northern Virginia in the early 1800s.

Another boatload, literally – democratic German reformers fleeing the Habsburg Empire and dubbed “The Forty Eighters” – came along in 1849. Eerily foreshadowing the Hurstbournes and Polo Fields of the 20th century, they threw up rows of “shotgun” houses on fields that had been dairy farmland at the edge of the city south of Broadway and Beargrass Creek.

For a century, the loosely defined neighborhood was casually known as Germantown, or “Schnitzelburg” for yuks. Continue reading Ein Feste Burg: Beer and brats in Schnitzelburg →