Category Archives: BY LOCATION

$ Budget (under $30), Baxter, Bardstown, Highlands, Hurstbourne, Middletown, Jeffersontown, World Food

Fat Tuesday Valentine at Joe’s OK Bayou

Joe's OK Bayou
Nothing says “I love you”: like a plate of gumbo, jambalaya and fried crawfish tails from Joe’s OK Bayou. Dig in! Photo by Robin Garr.

LEO’s Eat ‘n’ Blog with Louisville HotBytes
(Joe’s OK Bayou, Ramsi’s Cafe on the World)

It’s a long way from the Louisiana bayou country to the shopping centers that are rapidly replacing forests and fields on New Albany’s far north side, but once you step into Joe’s OK Bayou, the distance seems to disappear. Or some of it, anyway.

Like its Kentucky-side counterpart in Plainview, this relatively new edition of Joe’s (it opened the autumn before last) turns bland shopping-center space into a modest replica of a Cajun-country saloon. The walls are painted to resemble a fishing shack surrounded by cypress trees and subtropical birds. Zydeco music in the background and glowing Abita beer signs complete the Acadian ambience, and the food does a reasonably good job of evoking the bayou country, too. Continue reading Fat Tuesday Valentine at Joe’s OK Bayou →

$ Budget (under $30), BBQ, Burgers & Down-Home, Commentary, Southern Indiana

Travel back in time at Schuler’s

Schuler's
The crowded parking lot at Schuler’s in Henryville, Ind., signals a popular neighborhood establishment. Photo by Fred Schloemer.

LEO’s Eat ‘n’ Blog with Louisville HotBytes

Imagine a world without fast-food restaurants, with no golden arches beckoning hungry travelers. It’s almost unthinkable in this day and age, but if you can do it, you’re probably at least 50. For anyone younger, fast food has always been a fact of life.

So says local free-lance writer (and psychotherapist) FRED SCHLOEMER, who favors us this week with this reminiscence of Schuler’s Family Restaurant in Henryville, Ind., a veritable gustatory time machine that can whisk us back to the days when the Beatles were young and Elvis was still alive.

Tell us about it, Fred!
Continue reading Travel back in time at Schuler’s →

$ Budget (under $30), Coffee Shops & Desserts, Downtown, NuLu and Butchertown, QuickBytes

Coffee buzz

If we get many more coffee shops around this town, Louisville might just take over New York City’s reputation as the city that never sleeps, and the most audible Thunder Over Louisville may become a caffeine buzz.
The two latest entries – Blue Mountain Coffee House and Jackson’s Organic Coffee – both offer a truly splendid cuppa, but they differ dramatically in style.

Chris Stockton
Christopher Stockton is co-proprietor of Jackson’s Organic Coffee, a drive-through located next to the Sav-A-Step on Lexington Road near Payne Street. Photo by Robin Garr.

Jackson’s Organic Coffee is not even a coffee shop. There’s no sit-down or table service, only a drive-through window, at this little pumpkin-color building next door to the Sav-A-Step on Lexington Road near Payne Street.

Co-proprietor Christopher Stockton, an expatriate Brit, is an aggressive perfectionist about organic, sustainable and fair-trade coffees, sold through the drive-up window or canned on the premises for sale by upscale vendors like, so far, Rainbow Blossom, two of the Valu Markets and Mayan Café.

Coffee and espresso drinks range in price from $1.75 for a small drip coffee to $3.75 for a large cappuccino or latte. The drive-up window is open 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. weekdays except holidays; closed weekends.

The other recent and welcome arrival is Blue Mountain Coffee House Wine & Tapas Bar (400 E. Main St., 582-3220), where host Nicholas Arno adds a Jamaican accent as he vends Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee in sleek, sophisticated new quarters. Eat ‘N’ Blog correspondent LEAH STEWART declares it her favorite caffeine dispensary, and files this report:

Blue Mountain is a treat to the senses. A curved saltwater fish tank inset into the bar greets guests with colorful fish; tempered glass countertops are the color of island waters, and artfully contemporary tables and chairs look as though they leapt from the pages of a magazine. Jamaican art adorns walls painted in a sun-kissed gold and sapphire blue.

Blue Mountain coffee is some of the most expensive in the world, and there’s a good reason for that. The Blue Mountains of Jamaica have the perfect climate, terrain and rainfall to produce coffee. It’s as if the coffee gods touched the earth at this one spot and said, “Here!”

I tried it in a drink combined with cocoa and chunks of chocolate. It was smooth, unbelievably rich and pleasantly not sweet. Some mocha coffees are sweet enough to make your teeth hurt, but Blue Mountain’s coffee drinks are decidedly adult. Our daughter’s Submarino, a sophisticated hot chocolate, was a decadent, silky chocolate experience created for sipping, not guzzling. For lunch, a Blue Mountain Cheese Platter ($9.95) consisted of three finely crafted cheeses, sun-dried tomatoes, olives, grapes and two kinds of crackers. Friends enjoyed the Southwest chicken paninis ($6.95), declaring them crispy on the outside and chock full of savory chicken on the inside.

An evening visit proved that there are people downtown at night! Several groups of friends were discussing work, sampling and choosing wine at the wine bar and enjoying coffee and tea. A basic espresso drink, a decaf latte, was dark and rich, topped by a generous head of foam. A chai tea was deliciously different: Not sweet, and without any overpowering notes of clove and cardamom, the peppery chai was spiced delicately and perfectly.

$$ Modest ($30-$50), Downtown, NuLu and Butchertown, Pacific Rim

QuickBytes: Konnichi-wa at Caviar

Caviar

“Komban wa,” I told the sushi chef, bowing politely and doing the best I could to get out the Japanese words for “good evening” with at least marginal fluency.

He gave me a friendly but very puzzled look.

“I guess I just can’t speak Japanese,” I said, switching back to English.

“No,” he said. “I can’t speak Japanese. I’m from Korea.”

Whatever. He was a heck of a nice guy, and over the course of our first dinner at Caviar, the sleek new Japanese spot next door to the Seelbach on Muhammad Ali, he would fashion us more than $50 worth of sushi, all of it creditable and much of it splendid.
Continue reading QuickBytes: Konnichi-wa at Caviar →

$ Budget (under $30), BBQ, Burgers & Down-Home, St. Matthews, Westport Village, and environs

The Earl of Sandwich and his portable feast

Bootleg's Q
You can get mutton (on bun at lower right) and lots of other good Q at Bootleg Bar-B-Q. Photos by Robin Garr.

LEO’s Eat ‘n’ Blog with Louisville HotBytes
(Ole Hickory Pit, Bootleg Bar-B-Q, Jimmy John’s Gourmet Sandwiches)

Let us sing the praises today of John Montagu, Fourth Earl of Sandwich, who one day in 1762 decided to place his lunch between two slices of bread, creating the portable meal that to this day bears his name. “Sandwich,” I mean. Belly up to the bar and call for a ham-and-cheese Montagu, and people will just look at you funny.
Continue reading The Earl of Sandwich and his portable feast →

$$ Modest ($30-$50), Baxter, Bardstown, Highlands, Italian (and Pizza)

Lentini’s is back, again, and it’s better than ever

Three pastas
Lentini’s tris di pasta sampler: risotto con asparagi, thin and dense lasagna and wide tagliatelle in a light cream sauce with Portobello mushroom slices. Photo by Robin Garr.

LEO’s Eat ‘n’ Blog with Louisville HotBytes

The red neon sign out front of this Highlands landmark isn’t retro, it’s real. It takes us right back to the ’60s, still luring us in to Lentini’s “Little Italy” just as it did when it opened 45 years ago when JFK was president, Elvis was King and girls wore beehive hairdos and poodle skirts.

When the last Lentini (“Sonny”) retired in 2001, a partnership with a Vietnamese entrepreneur followed and we got banh mi and pho alongside lasagna and pizza. This strange experiment didn’t last long. Lentini’s closed, reopened under new management in 2003, then closed again. New owners tried again and promptly went bankrupt. Now it’s ba-aa-ack for a third try, or is it a fourth?

This time, though, the signs look good. Continue reading Lentini’s is back, again, and it’s better than ever →

$ Budget (under $30), Hurstbourne, Middletown, Jeffersontown, World Food

We belly up to the Indian buffet

Shalimar
Serving fine Indian fare for more than a dozen years, Shalimar is Louisville’s longest-lived Indian eatery. Photo by Robin Garr

(Voice-Tribune, Jan. 11, 2007)

I’ve loved Indian food ever since I first discovered it as a youngster during a long-ago trip to London, where I was instantly smitten by the curry houses around Victoria Station.

I came home with a lifelong love for this exciting, aromatic and sometimes fiery fare, but it took years before it would be easy to enjoy it in Louisville. Through the ’80s and into the ’90s, it seemed, our city simply wasn’t ready for such exotic cuisine, and a sad series of short-lived family-run Indian restaurants came and went.

Eventually, though, a few Indian spots showed staying power, and for the past few years we’ve enjoyed a choice of at least three good options – Kashmir in the Highlands, Shalimar on Hurstbourne near I-64, and India Palace, which moved last year from the Buechel area to Shelbyville Road near Hurstbourne.
Continue reading We belly up to the Indian buffet →

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

How can we miss Impellizzeri’s when it hasn’t gone away?

Impellizzeri's pizza
There’s nothing quite like an Impellizzeri’s pie. If the closing of the Highlands location made you cry, dry your eyes and head for the ‘burbs. Photo by Robin Garr.

LEO’s Eat ‘n’ Blog with Louisville HotBytes
(Tony Impellizzeri’s, Taste of Jamaica, Mayan Café and more)

Pizza may trace its culinary roots to Naples in Italy, but since this delicious immigrant-food treat exploded out of its ethnic enclaves in the Northeast to become a national phenomenon back when the first Baby Boomers were growing up, it’s become as all-American as, well, chow mein or frankfurters.

Over the generations in Louisville, a handful of Italian family names have become household words inextricably associated with the noble pie: Calandrino’s in Louisville, and more recently, Tony Boombozz; in Lexington, Joe Bologna’s. Some of the city’s big-name Italian eateries, including the off-again, on-again Lentini’s and the late, still-lamented Casa Grisanti, can trace their heritage, at least in part, to the humble pizza.

But one familiar Louisville pizza family name may carry more weight than all the rest, and we’re not just talking about its massive pies: For a full generation, one pizza maker remained the place to go for a filling ration: Impellizzeri’s.
Continue reading How can we miss Impellizzeri’s when it hasn’t gone away? →

$$$$ Luxury ($80 and up), Commentary, Downtown, NuLu and Butchertown, White tablecloth, deluxe

Has Vincenzo’s lost a step?

Chef Agostino Gabriele presides over Vincenzo's table at last summer's WorldFeast. Photo by Robin Garr.
Chef Agostino Gabriele presides over Vincenzo’s table at last summer’s WorldFeast. Photo by Robin Garr.
One of the toughest challenges that faces the long-term food critic is that, eventually, most of the players in the local restaurant business figure out who you are. Even when you keep a very low profile, it doesn’t take the sharper cookies long to figure out who’s covering the eats beat.
Continue reading Has Vincenzo’s lost a step? →

$ Budget (under $30), Chinese, Hurstbourne, Middletown, Jeffersontown

Get ready for the Year of the Pig, at Liang’s Café

Snow White Fish
Liang’s Snow White Fish is as pretty as its name and tastes even better. Photo by Robin Garr.

LEO’s Eat ‘n’ Blog with Louisville HotBytes

In Western culture, even those of us who’ve learned to prize the tasty joys of pigmeat can’t fully escape our Old Testament heritage: Calling an associate “pig” will not win you friends or influence people.

The Chinese, however, informed by nearly five millennia of pig-loving heritage, take a broader view: In the legend and lore of the mysterious East, the noble swine is considered loyal, chivalrous and pure of heart.

Lunar Year 4705, the Year of the Pig, is coming on Feb. 18, and I for one plan to enjoy plenty of Chinese food before, during and after the 15-day celebration.
Continue reading Get ready for the Year of the Pig, at Liang’s Café →