Let’s head over to New Albany for a London pub experience at Pints & Union! It’s the real deal: They’ve got great beers, ales, porters and stouts! They’ve got that dark and cozy British pub vibe! They’ve got great fish and chips! And they’ve got Indian tikka!
Wait! What?
Yes, you heard that right: The most characteristic British pub-style dish is not the fish and chips that I can hear you assuming, but chicken tikka, the spicy chicken curry dish that Indian immigrants brought to Britain and shared with the world. Continue reading Pints & Union, a London pub in New Albany→
It doesn’t seem reasonable to say that it’s hard to find good eats on Bardstown Road on a Sunday afternoon, but I was sure feeling that way the other day.
Trekking through this usually busy restaurant row on a sizzling afternoon, I struck out at three places before we got to Joy Luck. Success! Heck, I really wanted Chinese food anyway, or so I told my easily convinced self. Continue reading We find our way to good eats at Joy Luck→
One cloudy, stormy looking March afternoon last year, when lockdown had just begun and we all were starting to reckon with the scary reality that the pandemic was here to stay for a while, I got out and walked through a completely deserted Westport Village.
I walked up to the big windows at Wild Eggs and saw an eerie scene, chairs perched upside down on tables in the empty room, and a vacant expanse of empty parking lot reflected in the big plate glass windows.
Slowly, gradually, with some stutter steps, Louisville’s restaurant scene, like the nation’s, is edging back toward normal, and I for one am delighted to see that.
But even with widespread vaccination and declining positivity rates that mean many of us are pocketing our masks much of the time, it’s a new kind of normal. Some restaurants have been lost. A few new ones have arrived. Takeout, delivery, even curbside service seem likely to stick as more frequent options than ever before. Continue reading The restaurant critic ponders the new normal→
Let us take a moment to mark the virtual extinction of the all-you-can-eat buffet. Rendered terrifying by the pandemic and images of contagious hands dipping into communal pans, the restaurant buffet has all but disappeared from our lives.
I for one won’t mourn it much, with a solitary exception: I miss Indian restaurant buffets, and you should, too. My reasoning on this is simple: A lot of people are still discovering Indian food, and the buffet makes it easy. Even if you don’t know the difference between aloo and bhindi (all right, potato and okra), you can learn a lot by grazing the buffet. Try a little taste of this, a dab of that, and before long you’ve gotten to know the cuisine. Continue reading Clay Oven’s star shines in our Indian galaxy→
I’m not vegan, although I can see the argument against industrially produced dairy products, and I don’t even like milk. It would be hard for me to give up favorites like artisanal cheeses, pastured eggs, and ice cream, though.
But that ice-cream thing may be changing. The other day I noticed a case at Graeter’s promoting its new line of Graeter’s-branded Perfect Indulgence Vegan ice cream, animal free and lactose free in assorted flavors at $7.99 for a pint. Continue reading We scream, do you scream, for ice not-cream?→
Happy New Year! Anybody out there who isn’t happy to see 2020 go, raise your hand!
[Looking around]
I didn’t think so. This has been a strange, tumultuous, and downright scary year. Sure, it’s had some high spots. We’re looking at you, Joe and Kamala! But the arrival of a pandemic that none of us saw coming at this time last year turned 2020 into a swirling black whirlpool that didn’t make anyone happy. Continue reading 2020, we hardly knew ye. Now get out of here!→
The Louisville dining scene is facing a grim scenario as I write this, and we’ll be looking down the barrel of a disturbing deadline when you read this. Let’s talk about this, but first, as I’ve told you before: Get out there and order as much takeout food from local restaurants as you can, and tip ‘em as if you’re Scrooge McDuck. They need all we can do for them right now.
Here’s the heart of the problem: Restaurants and bars are perceived as potential pandemic hotspots, with reason: Even with social distancing, they attract people to gather indoors in crowds, and to make matters worse, it’s impossible to mask up for others’ protection while you’re eating and drinking.
If you’re the least bit interested in the Louisville dining scene, you know how many of our vibrant local restaurants have been struggling since the Covid-19 pandemic brought strict, but necessary, restrictions starting last March.
Things may have looked a little better during the summer when good weather invited patio dining and improving case rates fostered slightly loosened restrictions including resumed dining in with limited, socially distanced seating.
Halloween has come and gone, taking with it another piece of collateral damage from the pandemic: There was no Hillcrest Avenue halloween decoration extravaganza this year.
But there is still a doggone good reason to go to Hillcrest – or to be more exact, to cross the railroad tracks, turn left onto Frankfort Avenue, and drive a few blocks past Louisville Water Co. to Hillcrest Tavern.
