Chef Peng Looi.

Chef Peng Looi, of Asiatique and August Moon, has won this year’s Jefferson Evans Award, presented annually by the Black Culinarian Alliance to honor individuals “of color” who have shown excellence in the food-service industry. Peng Looi is of Malaysian heritage.

The award is named after chef Jefferson Evans, the first black graduate of the Culinary Institute of America.

A devastating fire destroyed Louisville’s Lava House (Louisville Assembly of Vanguard Art) on Jan. 26, taking the lives of resident Bill Christie and one of the house’s dogs.

Friends of Lava House are organizing benefits to help the three surviving residents and tenant studio artists. A major event at the Barret Bar, 1012 Barret Ave., kicked off a series of fund-raisers that continue through the month.

Fund-raising events and other information will be listed on the Website at http://www.thelavahouse.org/events.htm.
Continue reading Benefits aid Lava House survivors →

The sprawling riverside decks at Captain’s Quarters. Food & Dining photo by Dan Dry

The Summer 2007 issue of Food & Dining is now available, loaded with useful articles and stunning photos. You’ll find full-length articles on alfresco dining and the Southern Indiana restaurant renaissance … original reports on beer, wine, spirits and coffee … recipes, tips, humor, road trip reports, and much more.

You can pick up Food & Dining in area hotel rooms or at many shops and news stands (here’s a list), or subscribe at our special rate that, with free gift certificates for local restaurants, gives you a full year of Food & Dining for free! (Subscribe here!)

The full Summer 2007 Table of Contents is now online. You can view it here. Or read on for this excerpt from Food & Dining‘s quarterly report on local restaurant openings, closings and changes:
Continue reading Food & Dining Summer issue! →

A competition for commercially produced wines from Kentucky and Indiana joins the roster of Kentucky Derby Festival events this year.

A panel of experienced wine judges (including this writer) will sit in judgment on Tuesday, May 1, on an estimated 50 to 70 locally produced wines in eight categories, following the same 20-point American Wine Society rating scale used in the Kentucky State Fair competition for regional home wine makers.
Continue reading Derby Fest adds wine competition →

Oakroom chef Duane Nutter: Photos courtesy of the Oakroom.

LEO’s Eat ‘n’ Blog with Louisville HotBytes

The writer Calvin Trillin once famously observed that the quality of the food in restaurants tends to be inversely proportional to the elevation of the eatery. In other words, stay away from building-top restaurants with a view.

Many traveling foodies in the United States would propose another reliable rule: Steer clear of hotel restaurants, where you’ll likely get boring, overpriced food fashioned to take advantage of a captive audience of tourist families who’d really rather not go out.

But this simple rule – the one about hotels, I mean – doesn’t work in Louisville, where for a quarter of a century now, the Seelbach Hotel’s Oakroom has gone from strength to strength. Continue reading Oakroom chefs play with their food. Lucky us →

The Winter 2007 edition of our sister publication, Food & Dining Louisville Edition, the city’s leading print publication about food and drink, is now available at news stands and by subscription.

To give you a little taste of what Food & Dining is all about, we’ve placed its Contents Page online. It includes brief descriptions of all this quarter’s articles, including feature stories on pizza, seafood, Frankfort Avenue eateries and much, much more, with outstanding food photography by Dan Dry.

We hope this sample will inspire you to subscribe, a deal that’s a no-brainer for food lovers, since an $18 annual subscription will earn you back an $18 restaurant gift certificate; add $6 and get two years, or a subscription for a friend.

Taste a free sample of Food & Dining