Category Archives: BY PRICE FOR TWO

$ 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 →

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

And still more cheap eats: Breakfast at the Meridian Cafe

LEO’s Eats with Louisville HotBytes

The metro area is blessed with a surprising number of first-rate spots for a casual, comfortable soup, salad or sandwich lunch, and I try to make my way around to all of them regularly. One of my favorites is Meridian Café, and I’m apparently not the only person thus smitten – this place almost always has a big crowd.

Continue reading And still more cheap eats: Breakfast at the Meridian Cafe →

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

South India to West China: two hot new ethnic spots

Royal India's masala dosa
Indian brunch: Masala Dosa, a South Indian vegetarian treat, is the large lentil crepe at lower left, folded around curried potatoes; also pictured are three white rice-based idlys, a cup of spicy sambar lentil soup, and a pool of green coconut chutney. Photos by Robin Garr.

LEO’s Eats with Louisville HotBytes
(Royal India; Red Pepper Chinese Cuisine)

You don’t have to be as old as the (Tuscan) hills to remember the days when “Northern” Italian fare first became a local craze, serving dishes like fettuccine alfredo and veal piccata. Before long, “Northern” was in, “Southern” was out, and to this day, as much as we may still love pizza and spaghetti with meatballs and other hearty red-sauced Italian comfort food, we don’t think of it as, well, upscale anymore.

Now get ready to broaden your culinary horizons with a couple more ethnic compass points. Two fine new restaurants are breaking new ground for Louisville with exotic, spicy South Indian and West Chinese cuisine.
Continue reading South India to West China: two hot new ethnic spots →

$$ 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 →