Category Archives: BY PRICE FOR TWO

$ Budget (under $30), Pacific Rim, Southern Indiana

Asian adventures, New Albany style

The Onion
The Onion Restaurant and Tea House has built quite a following since it opened in New Albany a few years back. LEO photo by Nicole Pullen

LEO’s Eat ‘n’ Blog with Louisville HotBytes
(Onion Restaurant and Tea House, Tran Japanese Steakhouse)

It’s been a great pleasure, in recent years, to see such a surge of restaurant-related activity on the north side of the Ohio. The arrival of a growing variety of eateries in Southern Indiana is good news for “foodies” on both sides of the river.

In addition to the obvious – the boomlet of chain eateries on the riverfront and across the Clarksville strip – the region has been gifted in recent years with interesting, locally-owned independent restaurants that range from taquerias and Asian spots to casually sophisticated dining rooms. We’ll have more on that, and a deeper look at the New Albany restaurant renaissance in particular, coming soon.

One of the many epicenters of Southern Indiana eats activity, perhaps just a bit out of sight and out of the way for Kentucky diners, lies along Grant Line and Charlestown roads near I-265 on New Albany’s north side. Continue reading Asian adventures, New Albany style →

$ Budget (under $30), Mexican, Cuban, Caribbean, New and noteworthy, South End, West End

Mexican hat trick: tacos three ways

Jay Denham
Lining up for lunch at Taco Tico. LEO photos by Nicole Pullen

LEO’s Eat ‘n’ Blog with Louisville HotBytes
(Taco Tico, Taco Bell, El Zarape)

Way back at the dawn of time (oh, all right, during the 1970s), back when most people in Louisville thought “nacho” was just a cool way of saying “righto” and even the cognoscenti pronounced “taco” as “tack-oh,” indeed even before the first Taco Bell rang the region’s chimes, there was Taco Tico.

(Actually, for the sake of historical accuracy, the first Taco Tico was founded in Wichita, Kan., in 1962. Glen Bell opened his first eponymous taqueria in Downey, Calif., that same year. Louisville, however, slow during that era to embrace culinary change, failed to embrace the fast-food taco for a while.)

Taco Bell, of course, prospered and grew. Now a property of Louisville-based Yum! Brands, it boasts about 6,000 outlets around the world. Taco Tico, on the other hand, topped out in the ’80s with about 120 outlets before falling off to about half that peak. It’s in just eight states, the lion’s share in Kansas and nearby states, with a handful in Kentucky.

But now, after a 10-year hiatus, Taco Tico is back in Louisville Continue reading Mexican hat trick: tacos three ways →

$ Budget (under $30), Bistros, Downtown, NuLu and Butchertown, Frankfort Ave., Clifton, Crescent Hill

Jarfi’s artful fare now at two centers

Wings To Go
Also featured this week: Wings To Go, a small chain spot in New Albany that makes a credible version of the original Buffalo chicken wing. Photo by Robin Garr

LEO’s Eat ‘n’ Blog with Louisville HotBytes
(Jarfi’s @ Mellwood; Wings To Go)

One of Louisville’s more striking dining venues has to be Jarfi’s Bistro, which makes stylish use of its space in the Kentucky Center, the big, black modern building on West Main Street that suffered the tragic loss of its useful subordinate clause “… for the Arts” in a marketing decision a while back.

Jarfi, born in Morocco but international in his culinary inspiration, presides over a broad bill of fare at his eponymous eatery, a comfortably upscale place that’s equally well suited for an indulgent, lingering dinner, a quick pre-theater repast, or even an artful plate of sushi.

And now he’s branching out, quietly opening another, much more casual venue in an attractive if lower-profile center for the arts. Regular Eat ‘N’ Blog correspondent KEVIN GIBSON picks up the beat from the new Jarfi’s @ Mellwood in the Mellwood Arts & Entertainment Center. Here’s Kevin’s report:
Continue reading Jarfi’s artful fare now at two centers →

$ Budget (under $30), BBQ, Burgers & Down-Home, Hurstbourne, Middletown, Jeffersontown, Southern Indiana

Butterburger better?

Some pals with roots in Wisconsin (let’s not call them “cheeseheads”) were all but agog with delight when the Culver’s Butterburger chain came to town early this year, and I have to confess that the very idea of a butterburger intrigued me, too. Butter … burger … fat cooked in fat! What’s not to like?

It’s a pretty little fast-food place, too, a sizable cottage in blue and white, neat as a pin, with little square-paned windows that give it a sort of corporate faux-Colonial style.

The signature Deluxe Butterburger was thin and irregularly handformed, not unlike the burgers my mother used to make when we were young. It had a good beefy flavor but was too thin to make rare or juicy, and if there was any butter in it, I sure couldn’t tell by tasting it. The “deluxe” model came with a thin layer of bland yellow cheese, iceberg lettuce and pale tomato and pickle chips, perched on a large, boring white bun that dwarfed the burger.

A side of “cheese curds,” a Wisconsin specialty, proved to be balls of bland cheese, breaded and greasily fried. Frozen custard was the hit of the meal, properly creamy and smooth, although the chocolate flavor was very mild, more like cocoa than dark chocolate. Hmm … Butterburger, breaded-and-fried cheese and rich custard … I don’t think I should get my cholesterol checked today.

My wife’s choice, the Wisconsin Swiss Melt, was an even thinner burger topped with a paper-thin slice of bland white cheese and a ration of limp, greasy fried onions, grilled on rye until the rye was crunchy (and greasy, too). It came with limp and uninteresting fries.

With two soft drinks, all this came to $19.06, a bit spendy for a fast-food burger. I’d certainly choose it over Mickey D’s or Burger King, but it’s not worth a return trip to its suburban locale for me. Next time I want a burger, I’ll get the real thing at Granville Inn or maybe W.W. Cousin’s.

Culver’s of Louisville
4630 Hurstbourne Pkwy.
671-2001
http://www.culvers.com/
(There’s also a Culver’s in Corydon, Ind., at 240 Federal Drive, 812-738-6464.)

$$ Modest ($30-$50), Downtown, NuLu and Butchertown, World Food

We like smut. It’s good.

Bruce Ucan
After a brief hiatus, former Mayan Gypsy chef Bruce Ucan is back at it with Mayan Café, in the East Market location where Mayan Gypsy started out. LEO Photo by Nicole Pullen

LEO’s Eat ‘n’ Blog with Louisville HotBytes

Smut. Corn smut. It’s a nasty name for a nasty-looking thing, a black, disgusting fungus that turns corn kernels into swollen gray blobs that look like an alien mutation, a sight so gross that the ancient Aztecs named the stuff “cuitlacoche” or, literally, well, “black turds.”

Although cuitlacoche may look like something the dog dragged in, it tastes really, really good. So, while North American farmers curse and destroy smut-afflicted corn, Mexican growers are more inclined to praise Lord Quetzalcoatl, peel off the pillowy black fungus and serve it for lunch. Or put some in cans and ship it north to savvy restaurateurs.

Selling it to Anglos can be a challenge, though, so the few eateries around the United States that serve cuitlacoche (pronounced “wheat-la-COH-chay”) generally describe it with more appetizing euphemisms. “Mexican caviar,” for instance. Or, at Louisville’s excellent Mayan Café, “exotic mushroom,” appended to the Aztec “cuitlacoche” without the literal translation.
Continue reading We like smut. It’s good. →

$ Budget (under $30), Seafood & Water's Edge, St. Matthews, Westport Village, and environs

Something’s fishy at Seafood Connection, and we like that

Seafood Connection
Seafood Connection’s salmon taco (left) is topped with peach salsa; fried capers light up the flavor of the fish taco. Neither is your grandmother’s Tex-Mex. Photo by Robin Garr

(Voice-Tribune, June 14, 2007)

Travel around the Mediterranean and through the Latin countries, from Greece past southern Italy, Provence in France, Spain and on around Gibraltar to Portugal, and you’ll find wonderful seafood and fish restaurants in just about every port.

To my mind, the best of these places are the most informal, and it just doesn’t get any better than when the “menu” is a pile of fresh fish and shellfish, still briny from the ocean, piled on ice near the entrance. Pick the fish that appeals to you, point to it, and someone will whisk it away, soon to return it sizzling on your plate.

Louisville is a long way from the Med. Indeed, we’re about 600 miles from the nearest seacoast. But you can eat like this – or a little bit like this anyway – in the heart of St. Matthews at Seafood Connection in Chenoweth Square.
Continue reading Something’s fishy at Seafood Connection, and we like that →

$$$ Upscale ( $50 - $80), Downtown, NuLu and Butchertown, White tablecloth, deluxe

We take Rivue for a spin

Rivue
On the 25th floor of the Galt House, the hotel’s former idiosyncrasies have yielded to the elegant furnishings of Rivue, a brand new upscale restaurant with an amazing 360-degree view of the city. LEO Photo by Nicole Pullen

LEO’s Eat ‘n’ Blog with Louisville HotBytes
(Rivue; Caffe Classico’s new pizza)

The late developer Al J. Schneider, never a man to pay much attention to negative counsel, pretty much went it alone when he built the Galt House on Louisville’s then-moribund waterfront in 1973.

Schneider lived long enough to enjoy vindication as a vibrant redeveloped downtown scene rose around his venture, which bore the name of a historic 19th century hostelry where Charles Dickens once stayed.

But if the truth be told, a lot of people are still chuckling at the combination of hard-headedness and wacky design sense that inspired him to create the place in a style that can only be described as “idiosyncratic.”

Shocking pink met pukey green, and plaid introduced itself to paisley in an odd high-rise that used to boast the simple letters “H-O-T-E-L” running vertically down its river facade, surmounted by a pair of oversize, revolving view restaurants that from the outside resembled nothing so much as bulging bullfrog eyes.
Continue reading We take Rivue for a spin →

$ Budget (under $30), Downtown, NuLu and Butchertown, Frankfort Ave., Clifton, Crescent Hill, Italian (and Pizza), QuickBytes

Pizza: The all-American snack?

Luigi's
Ready to fold and eat: Four sizzling NYC-style slices at Luigi’s. Photo by Robin Garr.

LEO’s Eat ‘n’ Blog with Louisville HotBytes
(Primo, Tony Boombozz, Luigi)

Pizza, as I’ve pointed out before, traces its roots to Italy, specifically to the seaport city of Naples in the shadow of Mount Vesuvius. In the American melting pot, though, pizza has become as all-American a dish as, well, chow mein or sauerkraut.

From the American Northeast, where immigrant families still turn out a respectable variation on the Neapolitan original, pizza evolved as it moved across the nation in the postwar years. It gained a little here, lost a little there, and has gifted us with offshoots that range from the thick, casserole-like Chicago deep-dish pie to Wolfgang Puck’s California inventions with their wacky toppings of smoked salmon, sour cream and caviar.
Continue reading Pizza: The all-American snack? →

$$ Modest ($30-$50), Frankfort Ave., Clifton, Crescent Hill, Italian (and Pizza)

Indulgent brunch at classy Volare

Shrimp and grits
Shrimp and grits: This Italian-accented variation on the Low Country standard is a brunch standby at Volare. Photo by Robin Garr

(Voice-Tribune, May 31, 2007)

It’s hard to believe that Volare has been around for only three years.

In those short years, this classy Italian dining room has shed its original Chicago-based connection; brought in the savvy Majid Ghavami as general manager, and hung on to Chef Dallas McGarrity, who cooks Italian as if he had a vowel on the end of his name (and hey, he does!)

With a recent expansion increasing the seating area and kitchen, there’s more of Volare to love than ever. It’s a personal favorite, my No. 1 choice among Louisville’s Italian restaurants for food, mood and service.
Continue reading Indulgent brunch at classy Volare →