With a wealth of independent restaurants gracing the regional dining scene, local foodies have a surfeit of prix fixe dinners to choose among. Last week, I counted at least five beer-paired multi-course dinners for Louisville Craft Beer Week, and it seems we are offered at least two wine or beer-paired multi-course dinners every month.
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Category Archives: Commentary
Robin Garr’s musings about food and restaurant matters that don’t fit neatly into the “review” category.
Mr. Pollo Restaurant offers a simple and safe taste of Peru
Ahh, the cuisines of Peru. Some of my most memorable food experiences occurred in this hospitable South American land.
Like the time we stayed over in Cuzco, high in the Andes, after a trip to Machu Picchu. Bored by our hotel’s American-style dining room, we went in search of something more authentic: pollo a la brasa — charcoal-roasted chicken, that is, modern Peru’s people’s fare. We soon found a cozy spot with a sign that read, simply, “Pollo” (“Chicken”).
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Breakfast gets even better at Meridian Cafe
I like breakfast. Eggs, bacon or ham, French toast or pancakes, hash browns, whatever, it’s all good to me. I can eat breakfast in the morning, I can eat it for lunch. I’ll even consider eating breakfast for dinner, or an omelet anyway.
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Boomin’ Cuban comes to New Albany: Meet Habana Blues Cuban Tapas Restaurant
A few weeks ago, reporting from El Rumbon, the Cuban street-food trailer near Oxmoor, I uttered this simple forecast: “Cuban food is starting to look like the next big thing on the Louisville culinary scene.”
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Cleavage Wars: Hooters vs. Tilted Kilt
Well, well, well — Hooters has some competition in its previously uncontested milieu. You know: laid-back environment, pub grub, cold beer, multiple TVs ablaze with sports. Oh yeah, and cleavage. Lots of cleavage.
After hearing the buzz about the Tilted Kilt, 6201 Dutchmans Lane (the former Ernesto’s building, Oldenburg before that), I considered checking it out. But hey, Hooters is like an old friend; I didn’t want to be disloyal.
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‘Crack-a-licious’ small plates at the Irish Rover
The Irish Rover has been my comfy neighborhood pub for a long time now. We moved back to town from exile in New York City in 1994, not long after the Rover had opened its authentically Irish digs in a historic Crescent Hill building that began life more than 150 years ago as a saloon.
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Big Ben swings like a pendulum do
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| Fish tacos at Big Ben Cafe |
Voice-Tribune review by LouisvilleHotBytes
England swings like a pendulum do.
Bobbies on bicycles, two by two.
Westminster Abbey, the tower of Big Ben …
Roger Miller’s memorably kitschy tune is one of those melodies that sticks in your head until you want to bang your skull on the wall to make it go away.
Louisville’s new Big Ben, happily, isn’t anything like that. But drop by during a busy lunch hour or balmy evening, and chances are you will find the place swinging.
Head for the village center of new-made-to-look-old Norton Commons, and you can hardly miss the busy scene of outdoor tables and red umbrellas set up across the front of Big Ben’s red-brick quarters. Within, it’s an independent eatery made to look a great deal like a franchise chain, a dream that I suspect the owners have in mind.
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Taste of Mesopotamia at Dejlah Bistro
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| Mezza Plate at Dejlah Bistro. Photo by Ron Jasin. |
LEO’s Eats with LouisvilleHotBytes
]More than 7,500 years ago, historians say, early hunter-gatherers started moving in small bands down from the mountains north of the Persian Gulf to settle along the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. They saved and planted seeds, domesticated farm animals, and eventually founded the world’s first cities, then its first empires, in Mesopotamia, the rich land “between the rivers.”
The ancient Mesopotamians invented writing, not to mention bread, wine and beer. Indeed, the need to provide a growing population with food and drink inspired the first civilization, the fertile soil to which we all trace back our cultural roots.
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Absolute zero tolerance?
We had a lively discussion on our local foodie forum at www.LouisvilleHotBytes.com recently. It began when one forum member posted a link to a blog post that tsk-tsked the bookstore chain Borders for implementing a policy that made her feel, well, sort of empty.
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El Rumbon Cuban Trailer gives new meaning to ‘road food’
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| Sandwich from El Rumbon |
LEO’s Eats with LouisvilleHotBytes
Fidel Castro is sliding into retirement, and anti-Cuba sentiment feels oh-so ’60s nowadays. We still can’t legally smoke Cuban cigars, but they’re not so hard to score. And Cuban food is starting to look like the next big thing on the Louisville culinary scene.
Havana Rumba broke the ice, earning instant popularity when it opened in St. Matthews almost six years ago; the owners quickly doubled down with sibling Mojito and, more recently, a second location in Middletown. Cocos Lokos added another quality option on the Hurstbourne corridor last year, and Cuba Libre, new in Jeffersonville this summer, is drawing crowds.
Now, an amiable Cuban chef named Reinold Febles has added yet another tasty dimension with Cuban street food. Febles, who’s worked in a number of kitchens around town, sets up his large, spic-and-span food trailer on auto-dealer parking lots around Oxmoor Center, serving Cuban food as well as some Mexican favorites (burritos, quesadillas) and Norteamericano fried chicken and hot dogs.
Continue reading El Rumbon Cuban Trailer gives new meaning to ‘road food’