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 →

Following up on our Halloween trick-or-treatise on scary dishes, I’ve run into a much less fearsome way to introduce goat meat into your diet. Check out Wood City Grill, downtown in the longtime Pit Stop location at 612 S. Fifth St. (290-0518).

Along with more traditional smoked-meat goodies as pulled pork, smoked chicken and ribs (all $6 for an entree portion, sides extra a la carte), chef and owner Allen Sims – who boasts experience in the kitchen at Vincenzo’s – also smokes up mean versions of lamb and goat ($7 each).

It’s all good, and the smoky, dry-rubbed lean ribs are sensational. But we came for the goat and found it toothsome and not at all challenging: Lean and tender, with a thin purple smoke ring circling thin slices of tenderloin, it showed only a slight, appealing gamey character that played nicely off both Sims’ traditional original and spicy sauces and his more offbeat, hot-and-fruity Hawaiian and Szechuan sauces.

It’s an easy walk from most of downtown, and almost miraculously for the neighborhood, Wood City has a small, free lot so you can park off the street and bedevil the meter maids while you eat.