Category Archives: QuickBytes

Short, conversational mini-reviews that report on new sightings, updates on previously reviewed restaurants or other restaurant reports that may not fit the full-scale review format.

QuickBytes

The Sushi battle is joined!

Photo of Toki Masubuchi Huie
Toki Masubuchi Huie: Maido Essential Japanese co-owner and sushi-maker Toki Masubuchi Huie fashions “Dragon King’s Daughter Reborn” bites at Sushi in the City.

LEO’s Eats with Louisville HotBytes

By Robin Garr.

Gather ’round, young ‘uns, and I’ll tell you a story about days gone by. Way back in the dark ages … well, the 1980s … sushi was only a wild-eyed rumor here in Louisville, and most people didn’t believe it would be either appetizing or healthy to eat raw fish.

When this Japanese treat first hit town, it was available only as a Thursday special at a downtown luncheonette, sparsely attended by a small group of zanies (yes, I was one of them) who understood that 125 million Japanese can’t all be wrong. Soon the proprietor went off to start the city’s first real sushi bar, Sachicoma. But it was years before Louisville worked up enough of a sushi craze to support more than one.

Continue reading The Sushi battle is joined! →

QuickBytes

Hot? Not.

Boombozz
A Skyline Chili five-way topped with “Extreme Habanero” cheese.

The currently trendy Habanero pepper, meaning “guy from Havana,” is said to be one of the hottest peppers on Earth, or at least one of the hottest you can buy at your average grocery store. Food scientists measure its heat in the range of 300,000 Scoville units, which is 10 times the strength of a Cayenne pepper, 100 times that of a jalapeño and a gazillion times that of a green bell pepper. Or, in less technical terms, “Wooooeeee!”

Naturally when I saw an advertisement for Skyline Chili’s EXTREME Habañero cheese – inscrutably spelled with a tilde over the “ñ,” an affectation not known in the pepper’s Cuban homeland – I had to try some right now. Continue reading Hot? Not. →

$ Budget (under $30), BBQ, Burgers & Down-Home, Frankfort Ave., Clifton, Crescent Hill, QuickBytes

A moveable feast: Barbecue brothers land in Clifton

Israel Landin
Kentucky Bar-B-Cue Co., successor to Bourbon Bros., has moved into Cafe Lou Lou’s former home in Clifton. Photo by Robin Garr.

(Kentucky Bar-B-Cue Co., Voice-Tribune, Dec. 31, 2007)

The Bourbon Brothers have moved on down the road again, towing their big black smoker to a new home in Clifton and hoisting a new moniker – Kentucky Bar-B-Cue Co. (“KBC”) – outside the freshly painted quarters that had housed Cafe Lou Lou before that local eatery’s recent move to St. Matthews.

The new setting, like Baby Bear’s porridge, may be just right for the barbecue joint that had started in a tiny building, a one-time neighborhood bakery on Brownsboro Road, that was a little too small. Then it moved across the road for a very short stay in a looming Moorish-look building, once Shariat’s, now Red Pepper Chinese, that seemed by a fair margin too large.

Now, settling comfortably into this ancient, drafty yet homey old Clifton saloon that still bears evidence of its long life as a tavern, it may have found its niche.
Continue reading A moveable feast: Barbecue brothers land in Clifton →

QuickBytes, World Food

Looking for the source of the Nile

Thai Taste
Thai Taste in Clifton had a full contingent staffing its WorldFest booth. From left, Ratunaporn Sangrung, Hammarach Nuangkhamma, Malai Nuangkhamma and Samorn Thanawattako. Photos by Robin Garr.

LEO’s Eat ‘n’ Blog with Louisville HotBytes
(Seven worthy ethnic eats)

Dr. Livingstone, I presume?

At some point during the colorful WorldFest celebration over the weekend, I started to feel a bit in common with Dr. David Livingstone, the 19th century British explorer famous for his dogged quest for the source of the Nile River in Africa’s deepest jungles.

Like Livingstone but on a much smaller scale, I spent a good bit of time and energy during the two-day event on the Belvedere in quest of The Nile.

The Nile Restaurant, that is. This mysterious reference turned up on WorldFest’s list of more than two dozen food booths run by local restaurants, social and civic groups, a worldwide array of mostly ethnic goodies that even extended to a couple of corn dog and funnel cake vendors. A Sudanese restaurant! In Louisville! Always eager to add another ethnic eating experience to my list, I made a beeline to Booth 144.
Continue reading Looking for the source of the Nile →

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

Forumites check out baseball and ballpark fare

Slugger Field

A crowd of LouisvilleHotBytes.com Forum participants took over a luxury box at Slugger Field for a Louisville Bats game Tuesday evening. The Bats nearly blew an early 9-1 lead but hung on to win 9-8 over the Toledo Mudhens, and the happy foodies worked their way through a sampling of ballpark fare from nachos and dollar hot dogs to fish sandwiches and more.

Our Forum is the online gathering place for food lovers and food-industry professionals throughout the region. If you aren’t already a “regular,” we hope you’ll start taking part in forum conversations – and real-world activities – today. Just click to the Forum home page to get in on the fun. Registration is free and easy, but please read the rules about using real names before you sign up.

$ Budget (under $30), Baxter, Bardstown, Highlands, Hurstbourne, Middletown, Jeffersontown, Mexican, Cuban, Caribbean, QuickBytes, St. Matthews, Westport Village, and environs

Chef Dan seeks out the little donkey

Salsarita's
Salsarita’s chicken burrito with black beans, medium salsa, guacamole, lettuce, cilantro, red onions and cheese. Photo by Robin Garr.

LEO’s Eat ‘n’ Blog with Louisville HotBytes
(Qdoba, Moe’s, Salsarita’s)

When a top chef takes a break from cooking for other people and ventures out to dine on someone else’s fare, what goodies is he likely to choose? Ethereally trendy foams and smears and other cutting-edge num-nums of molecular gastronomy?

Well, maybe.

But if you ask Chef Dan Thomas, sous chef at Big Spring Country Club and late of City Café, Café Metro and Equus, about the casual snack that smacks his piñata, a fond, distant look comes into his eyes and he literally licks his chops.

“Burritos,” he said. Continue reading Chef Dan seeks out the little donkey →

$ Budget (under $30), Chinese, QuickBytes, St. Matthews, Westport Village, and environs, World Food

It’s fast … it’s casual … it’s Asian!

Lettuce wraps
The lettuce wraps at Yang Kee Noodle (top) and I Ching Asian Cafe are similar, but Yang Kee provides more lettuce and goodies on the side. Photos by Robin Garr

(Yang Kee Noodle, I Ching Asian Cafe, Voice-Tribune, July 12, 2007)

If you like the fresh, healthy and enticing flavors of the colorful cuisines of East Asia, but feel a little wary about dining at ethnic eateries where the menu is printed in a language you can’t speak, then fast-casual Asian dining may be just right for you.

Coming from the West Coast, as so many modern food trends do, this spreading development is largely carried by franchise chains like Pei Wei (P.F. Chang’s little brother), Rice Boxx, Pick Up Stix Fresh Asian Kitchen, Chef Martin Yan’s Yan Can and Tokyo Joe’s.

Like the similarly swelling wave of “fresh burrito” chains, competition is keen in this niche, and the concepts are so similar that sometimes the only way to tell where you’re dining is to look at the corporate logo.

None of the Asian chains have reached Louisville yet, but the concept is going strong in the East End, with two independent properties competing from shopping-center venues just a mile apart on Shelbyville Road.
Continue reading It’s fast … it’s casual … it’s Asian! →

$ Budget (under $30), Downtown, NuLu and Butchertown, Frankfort Ave., Clifton, Crescent Hill, Italian (and Pizza), QuickBytes

Pizza: The all-American snack?

Luigi's
Ready to fold and eat: Four sizzling NYC-style slices at Luigi’s. Photo by Robin Garr.

LEO’s Eat ‘n’ Blog with Louisville HotBytes
(Primo, Tony Boombozz, Luigi)

Pizza, as I’ve pointed out before, traces its roots to Italy, specifically to the seaport city of Naples in the shadow of Mount Vesuvius. In the American melting pot, though, pizza has become as all-American a dish as, well, chow mein or sauerkraut.

From the American Northeast, where immigrant families still turn out a respectable variation on the Neapolitan original, pizza evolved as it moved across the nation in the postwar years. It gained a little here, lost a little there, and has gifted us with offshoots that range from the thick, casserole-like Chicago deep-dish pie to Wolfgang Puck’s California inventions with their wacky toppings of smoked salmon, sour cream and caviar.
Continue reading Pizza: The all-American snack? →

Baxter, Bardstown, Highlands, QuickBytes

Keeping things balanced on Bardstown

Ballyhoo's Baja Grill
A fish taco (top) and a shrimp taco (with optional jalapeños) at Ballyhoo’s Baja Grill. Photo by Robin Garr.

LEO’s Eat ‘n’ Blog with Louisville HotBytes
(Ballyhoo’s Baja Grill, Just Fresh)

Bardstown Road has been established as Louisville’s primary “restaurant row” for so long now that things seem to have achieved a sort of natural balance: If one eatery closes, chances are something similar will be along soon to fill its niche.

So, when the short-lived Baja Fresh closed after only a few months of vending fast-food-style fresh burritos out of a shiny new glass building, and a similarly ephemeral branch of Bazo’s came and went from the old building that once housed Jupiter Café and is now home to Nio’s, no one really expected that Bardstown would be long bereft of fish tacos. Or, for that matter, that Qdoba and La Bamba would dominate the boulevard’s burrito market without challenge.

Sure enough, now comes Ballyhoo’s Baja Grill, a new spot that looks a lot like a franchised chain operation but that’s actually only the smallest of chains, being the third property of a Nashville-based outfit whose eateries at the other end of the old L&N line bear the trademark name “Chile Burrito Co.”
Continue reading Keeping things balanced on Bardstown →

Commentary, QuickBytes

Does wireless come with that shake?

James Browdy
James Browdy, who’s retired from his job at Audubon Hospital, says he visits the Heine Bros. at Eastern Parkway and Bardstown Road four or five days to check out jazz videos through a Wi-Fi connection. Photos by Richard Meadows.

LEO’s Eat ‘n’ Blog with Louisville HotBytes

While I’m over here in Italy checking out the wine and food and trying to find a WiFi hotspot so I can call home, Eat ‘N’ Blog contributor RICHARD MEADOWS has been toting his notebook computer around Louisville, checking out the state of the wireless Internet art at local eateries and watering holes.

Richard, a foodie and computer geek with plenty of opinions about both, has been surfing the WiFi waves since the ‘Net first went wireless. Here’s his irreverent report:

Sitting at Heine Brothers Coffee in the Highlands one cold, blustery evening, I looked up from my laptop and realized that the place was chock full of WiFi users, all gazing at their own laptops. Continue reading Does wireless come with that shake? →