Category Archives: Commentary

Robin Garr’s musings about food and restaurant matters that don’t fit neatly into the “review” category.

Commentary, QuickBytes

Shrimp and grits throwdown!

Windsor shrimp and grits
          LEO photo by Ron Jasin

LEO’s Eats with LouisvilleHotBytes.com

In the Old West, a throwdown was an invitation to come out and fight.

In modern culinary times, resurrected by Food Network’s popular Chef Bobby Flay, a throwdown has become something decidedly more civilized, but still with plenty of posturing and inflated claims.

Cooking throwdowns are a frequent occurrence among the foodies, chefs and restaurateurs whose online personas hang around the LouisvilleHotBytes.com Restaurants Forum.

Last week, the biggest throwdown yet brought chefs from 13 area restaurants together at Captain’s Quarters for a shrimp-and-grits throwdown, a competitive cooking event that attracted a capacity crowd of 250 spectators and raised nearly $5,000 for Families for Effective Autism Treatment (FEAT).
Continue reading Shrimp and grits throwdown! →

Industry Standard

Supper and the single diner

This week, a member of the LouisvilleHotBytes.com forum reported that she had been dining out alone early in the evening, and she’d been told at the host’s stand that certain tables were reserved, but she might be accommodated at one if she could finish before the reservation party arrived. It appeared that she was offended by this response and sought commiseration from the dining community.
Continue reading Supper and the single diner →

Industry Standard

Now comes the lean season

On my first day of culinary school, the Basic Skills instructor warned that when we worked in restaurants, we would spend our holidays with co-workers, not our families.

“Get used to turning to the guy beside you on the hot line at midnight … to say ‘Happy New Year,'” Chef Graham said. “Get used to taking your wife out for Valentine’s Day some other day in February … Tell your mom you will be cooking her Mother’s Day feast on some other day of the week … Forget about seeing Churchill Downs on the first weekend in May ever again …”
Continue reading Now comes the lean season →

$ Budget (under $30), BBQ, Burgers & Down-Home, Commentary, Downtown, NuLu and Butchertown

Mazzoni’s is gone, but the rolled oyster lives

Rolled oyster
The original Mazzoni’s rolled oyster, now available only at Flabby’s. Photos by Robin Garr

LEO’s Eats with LouisvilleHotBytes.com

With the regrettable closing of Mazzoni’s last month after 124 1/2 years in local business, Flabby’s Schnitzelburg in Germantown – under the same family ownership – is now the only place in the world where you can still munch on the original Mazzoni’s rolled oyster.
Continue reading Mazzoni’s is gone, but the rolled oyster lives →

$ Budget (under $30), Commentary, Mexican, Cuban, Caribbean, St. Matthews, Westport Village, and environs

Roll out the (taco) wagon!

Tacos from Tacos Toreados
A taco dinner at home from Tacos Toreados. Photos by Robin Garr

LEO’s Eats with LouisvilleHotBytes.com

East Enders who’ve been jealous of their Buechel and Fern Creek neighbors over Las Gorditas, the Mexico City-style taco wagon that pulls up weekend evenings in the Eastland Shopping Center (LEO Weekly, May 28), can now relax: They have their own taco truck, Tacos Toreados, where the amiable proprietor Juan Deleon offers authentic delights served out the window of a wagon parked in front of Choi’s Asian Food Market in Lyndon.
Continue reading Roll out the (taco) wagon! →

Industry Standard

Your table is now available

Before I joined the restaurant industry, I often felt awkward when I was being seated at a restaurant. Is it OK to request a specific table? Is it OK to ask for a four-top when there are only two of us? Would it be OK to ask to sit by the fireplace? Good news: It is, it is and it is! The key to getting the table you want is knowing the basics of how tables are assigned to guests in most dining rooms.
Continue reading Your table is now available →

Industry Standard

Become a regular

Do you get miffed when another table seems to be getting all your server’s attention? You stare hungrily at your empty table. They’ve already got their appetizer … and they were seated five minutes after you! Up comes their second round of cocktails! Guess what: They’re probably regulars.

Many diners believe an enduring myth that service staff “vet” guests as they come in, then decide to fawn over and spoil a lucky few based on their clothes and accessories, the technological elegance of their cell phones or the class of the vehicle they arrived in.

Nothing could be further from the truth. Continue reading Become a regular →

$$ Modest ($30-$50), Commentary, Pacific Rim, St. Matthews, Westport Village, and environs

Something old, something new … sort of

Sage Indian
Sage Indian, which replaces the short-lived India Palace on Oechsli Avenue, has mostly kept its menu – featuring standard Northern Indian dishes – the same. Photos by Robin Garr

LEO’s Eats with LouisvilleHotBytes.com

This week let’s make quick visits to a couple of St. Matthews-area eateries where you can fill the tank for a reasonable price and go away satisfied.

Shady Lane Café, a homey storefront nook in Brownsboro Center, qualifies as “old,” sort of, by local restaurant standards: Owners and cooks William and Susi Smith have been doing business in this location going on two years now, and they’ve built a following the old-fashioned way, earning loyalty through a savvy combination of high-quality, down-home fare at a price that’s right, even when there’s not a recession going on. (See my report in the post below)

Sage Indian makes the grade as “new,” sort of: It arrived last month in the quarters vacated by the amiable but short-lived Royal India, which put up the shutters well under a year after it opened last winter.
Continue reading Something old, something new … sort of →

Commentary

LEO’s Recession-Proof Dining Guide

LEO Dining Guide

LEO’s Eats with LouisvilleHotBytes.com

LouisvilleHotBytes.com is proud to be associated with LEO’s 2008 “Recession-proof Dining Guide,” a local-restaurant guide like no other, with a tongue-in-cheek hard-times spin.

In addition to a comprehensive directory of LEO Dining Guide Listings 2008, many of them based on our weekly LEO/LouisvilleHotBytes reviews, we think you’ll enjoy all of these articles by LEO and LouisvilleHotBytes contributors:

One-stop noshing: Stuff your face at buffets, by Mat Herron.

Beyond chicken-finger purgatory: Dining out with the kids in tough economic times, by Andrea Essenpreis.

Full of it: How I survived 14 days of eating exclusively in west Louisville, and why just surviving is not enough, by Phillip M. Bailey.

A friend indeed: Soup Kitchens report hunger is on the rise in Louisville, by Kevin Gibson.

Champagne dining on a beer budget: A guerrilla guide to eating well in recessionary times, by Robin Garr.

On the cutting board: As the economy sucks, so too the restaurant business, by Marsha Lynch.

$$ Modest ($30-$50), BY LOCATION, BY PRICE FOR TWO, BY TYPE, Coffee Shops & Desserts, Commentary, Downtown, NuLu and Butchertown

Lunch and antiques, not necessarily in that order

Goss Avenue Antique Mall
Lunch Lady Land: Exteriors of two Antique Malls each containing a new lunch spot – the new mall at Jackson and Broadway that has the resurrected Colonnade Café inside (below), and Olivia’s in the Goss Avenue Antique Mall. Photos by Robin Garr

LEO’s Eats with LouisvilleHotBytes.com

Ladies who lunch and go antique shopping (and men who do the same) have an unprecedented wealth of options these days, as a series of moves and changes has expanded the antique mall circuit from one popular eatery to three.

Let’s summarize: When the Louisville Antique Mall on Goss Avenue announced plans last year to move from its hulking 19th century brick industrial building to a different hulking 19th century brick industrial building on East Broadway, its critically acclaimed lunch spot, The Café, went off on its own to open a free-standing restaurant just east of downtown.

Then, not long after the Louisville Antique Mall made its move to East Broadway, a new luncheon establishment on its fifth floor revived the name of the old Colonnade cafeteria downtown. The move didn’t leave the old building on Goss vacant for long: Soon the Goss Avenue Antique Mall opened in slightly different but overlapping quarters. And sure enough, it has a lunch spot, too, dubbed Olivia’s Restaurant.
Continue reading Lunch and antiques, not necessarily in that order →