Okay, I am just going to come right out and say it: I am so over Food Network. Have been for years, really.
She’s like an old flame, full of bad memories of a romance that I try to suppress now that I’m no longer quite so young and stupid. Oh, I loved her back then, I truly did. It was late coming to Louisville, and I lusted after it in my heart when I read my friends’ stories online about her seductive wiles. And when she finally came to town, sometime around the turn of the millennium, as I recall, I was smitten, so smitten. Continue reading Food Network loves The Coach Lamp, but who loves Food Network?→
Sometimes I find myself getting cranky about the excessive bounty of vine fruits and root vegetables that seems to overload restaurant menus like a seasonal cornucopia this time of year. (I know it’s true because I just re-read my column from this time last year.) Continue reading Fall back→
“Degrees Brix (symbol °Bx) is the sugar content of an aqueous solution. One degree Brix is 1 gram of sucrose in 100 grams of solution and represents the strength of the solution as percentage by weight (% w/w). If the solution contains dissolved solids other than pure sucrose, then the °Bx only approximates the dissolved solid content.”
Right! I knew that! Well, I knew the gist of it, anyway. You see, “brix” is wine-geek talk of the highest order, viticultural trade jargon you don’t really need to know at all, unless you’re the boss of a vineyard. It’s the kind of word that separates insiders (who know it’s pronounced “bricks”) from the rest of us, who probably think it’s French and would say it “bree” if we thought about it at all. Continue reading What’s a Brix? Good chow and libations in the ‘burbs→
We live in the age of the chef-driven restaurant. Across the nation and around the city, chefs have become outside personalities, featured on stage, screen and TV. Louisville has been no exception to this principle, with our top chefs turning up on Food Network, competing in chefly combat and scrambling after awards, honors and, of course, sweet, profitable publicity for Louisville’s eateries and for the city. Continue reading Marketplace: Top Chef, No Hype→
Little things mean a lot. Even something as little as a grain of rice can mean a lot. Of course, it takes 7,200 grains of rice to fill a cup, or so sayeth the Google, but that’s not important right now.
Let’s talk about rice, and in particular the spectacular rice at Taj Palace. Trust me on this, folks. I love Indian food, and I’m a fan of Taj, which has survived a journey around three East End locations. I go there fairly often. But the other night, sampling a bite of simple, extra-long-grain basmati rice from a side platter, I suddenly experienced what philosophers call an epiphany, a sudden, almost spiritual insight into the deeper meaning of things. Specifically, rice. And Taj Palace. Continue reading It’s the rice, but not just the rice, at Taj Palace→
I can’t believe it’s Labor Day weekend already and I hadn’t made my annual (short) road trip across the Ohio to enjoy old-style roadside dining at two local favorites, A.J.’s Gyros and Polly’s Freeze.
We rectified this lapse today with a delicious lunch of gyros and falafel sandwiches and a plate of dolmades at AJ’s, followed by a soft-serve Brown Derby cone and a butterscotch shake at Polly’s. “This is what fast food was like before there was McDonald’s,” Mary mused over gyros. True. It’s fast food as our parents knew it, and our grandparents, too, before there were interstates. Continue reading Road food road trip!→
Okay, I have to admit, I was dubious at first about the idea of this new place in J’town bringing together mussels and burgers as its signature dishes.
When I heard that Cristina and Fernando Martinez and his cousin, Yaniel, were going to build a bill of fare around two such disparate edibles, my imagination pushed back: “One of these things is not like the other.” Continue reading Mussel & Burger (& Elotes) Bar→
I can’t be the only one who’s noticed that Louisville keeps making the national and international news lately for its chefs, restaurants and foodie scene. Maybe I’m just noticing more because we cut the cable umbilical at home a couple of months ago, but I don’t really think so – a lot of these recent articles and mentions are in other media besides television. In the last six weeks alone, it’s as if the national culinary media were astronomers discovering Planet Louisville for the first time, orbiting along deliciously at the other end of their telescopes. Continue reading Critical mass→
As I write this, I am still faintly aquiver with the sensory memory of a childhood pleasure, the s’more — that classic combination of crisp, slightly sweet graham cracker set with a couple squares of Hershey bar, topped with the melty, sugary, caramelized joy of a fire-roasted marshmallow just hot enough to melt the milky chocolate … and then, the pièce de résistance, the crème de la crème, all this goodness squished between halves of a sizzling, seductively greasy grilled donut. Mmmmm, dooooonuts.
