$$$ Upscale ( $50 - $80), Baxter, Bardstown, Highlands, BY LOCATION, World Food

Small bites add up to fine dinner at De la Torre’s

Tapas at De la Torre's
The grilled lamb with a spicy sauce is one of the many tapas available at De la Torre’s. Photo by Robin Garr

LEO’s Eats with LouisvilleHotBytes.com

The next time you settle down to a selection of tapas and find yourself feeling grateful for small-plates dining, you might want to pause for a moment of silence in memory of King Alfonso the Wise of Castile.

Legend says that Alfonso, the 13th century monarch known for his smarts and taste for good eats and drink, invented the tapa as a get-well snack to be taken with good Spanish red wine when he was under a nasty illness. When he recovered, it is said, King Alf was so delighted with this healthy diet that he ordered taverns throughout the kingdom to serve it.

Another story traces the tapa to Andalusia, where Sherry bars developed the custom of serving glasses of the strong, sweet local wine with a slice of bread to serve as a cover or lid (“tapa” in Spanish) to keep the fruit flies out of one’s beverage. Soon a cagey entrepreneur dropped a few olives atop the bread; his competitor countered with a slice of Serrano ham, and before long, tapas had evolved.
Continue reading Small bites add up to fine dinner at De la Torre’s →

$$ 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 →

Commentary, New and noteworthy

Robot sommelier at Westport wine shop

Enomatic
Chris Zaborowski, proprietor at Westport Whiskey & Wine, demonstrates the new Enomatic. Photo by Robin Garr

A welcome new arrival for East End wine lovers is Westport Whiskey & Wine, run by wine-industry veteran Chris Zaborowski in the booming Westport Village shopping center.

Last week they unveiled a new high-tech, self-service wine dispenser: The Italian-made Enomatic dispenser automatically serves 1-ounce, 3-ounce or 5-ounce tastes from eight selected bottles of wine, keeping them in top shape by filling the empty space with inert argon gas.

Is it a wine shop or wine bar? It’s licensed as both, making it possible for consumers to enjoy a tasting, pick up a few bottles or both. Continue reading Robot sommelier at Westport wine shop →

$$ Modest ($30-$50), Hurstbourne, Middletown, Jeffersontown, Pacific Rim

DakShin Indian: A taste of a different South

Buffet at DakShin
A closer peek at just one portion of DakShin’s expansive daily lunch buffet. Photos by Robin Garr

LEO’s Eats with LouisvilleHotBytes.com

Step into DakShin’s spacious, almost cavernous quarters, blink until your eyes adjust to the dim, and you might think you’ve found your way into an oddly named barbecue joint. Square, rough-hewn log walls frame heavy booths of oak; atop a wall at the back, looming above a large-screen television, rests the biggest canoe you have ever seen.

But take another look, and then a sniff. Elusive, aromatic scents of curry direct your palate away from barbecue. Check the television and you’ll find Bollywood-style MTV, piped in straight from India. The art on the walls is Indian, and so are the massive, colorful, Tiffany-look light fixtures that dangle from the high ceiling.
Continue reading DakShin Indian: A taste of a different South →

Industry Standard

Kitchen lingo

Since switching careers five years ago from banking to cooking (which has begun to look like the luckiest accidental bullet-dodging ever), I’ve learned a new language: KitchenSpeak.

Recently I wrote about how controlled but chaotic a busy, successful commercial kitchen is. KitchenSpeak helps simplify our duties and interactions. It’s a weird, hopefully efficient, sometimes crude amalgam of verbal shorthand, hallelujah choruses, superstitions and private jokes. Every restaurant has its own particular patois and dialect – while sharing other KitchenSpeak terms and definitions with other restaurants everywhere.
Continue reading Kitchen lingo →

$$ Modest ($30-$50), $$$ Upscale ( $50 - $80), St. Matthews, Westport Village, and environs, World Food

Sophisticated Mojito goes platinum

LEO’s Eats with LouisvilleHotBytes.com

Mojito
Mojito Tapas Restaurant in the Holiday Manor center features small-plate Spanish tapas with a Cuban vibe. Chef-owner Fernando Martinez recently traveled to Europe and brought much of what he learned back home to kick Mojito’s menu up a notch. Photos by Robin Garr

When Mojito Tapas Restaurant opened in the Holiday Manor center early in 2007, it almost instantly turned golden. A stylish, upscale-but-affordable eatery run by the good folks who brought us Havana Rumba, featuring small-plate Spanish tapas with a Cuban vibe: What’s not to like?

And now it has gone platinum.

Chef-owner Fernando Martinez spent a couple of months in Europe last winter, taking a six-week intensive culinary program at Le Cordon Bleu in Paris and traveling to Barcelona and environs in Spain to visit tapas bars. He’s talking about going back for more, but in the meantime, he brought much of what he learned back home and used it to kick Mojito’s menu up a notch … or several.
Continue reading Sophisticated Mojito goes platinum →

Commentary, News announcements

Welcome Ryder Cup fans! Now, let’s have dinner

LEO’s Eats with LouisvilleHotBytes.com

Welcome to Louisville, Ryder Cup fans, and please excuse us if we accidentally misspell the name of your event. After all, in Louisville for the last 140 years or so, “Rider” has meant one of the little guys who captain those big horses around the track at Churchill Downs.

But we’re trying to get on board with the idea of folks who use long sticks to knock small white balls into tiny holes, and we truly do want to make you feel welcome.

Ryder Cup may attract more than 200,000 spectators (and another 1,500 reporters and photographers) to the Valhalla Golf Club during the five-day event (Sept. 16-21), and that puts it on par with Kentucky Derby season as a gathering likely to pack the town and make it mighty hard to get a table in some of our hottest eateries.

Valhalla, a gated, guarded greensward, is surrounded by endless suburbia, a scene that you may find a lot like home, whether you’re visiting from Atlanta, Ann Arbor or Greenwich. It would be all too easy for you to enjoy a pasteurized and homogenized dining experience, too, should you choose to take your meals at Olive Garden, Red Lobster or any of the many other corporate chains that dot that quadrant of our map.

But what a shame that would be! Louisville, a city where the locals allegedly dine out more often per capita than any other U.S. metropolis, is rich with fine, independently owned and operated eateries at a broad range of prices, styles and ethnic origins.

We hope you’ll make it a point to spend some time – and yes, some of your tourist dollars – getting to know our locals. We think you’ll see just why it is that we eat out so much.
Continue reading Welcome Ryder Cup fans! Now, let’s have dinner →

Industry Standard

Don’t get all your ingredients from one store

Foodie: Someone who cares about food, takes pride in the variety of his eating habits and enjoys getting quality ingredients for his home cooking. Did you know you can buy many of the products we use in the restaurant business without ever setting foot in a retail grocery store?
Continue reading Don’t get all your ingredients from one store →

Commentary

Voyage of foodie discovery at Worldfest

WorldFest
The “Food Village” at this year’s WorldFest. Photos by Robin Garr

LEO’s Eats with LouisvilleHotBytes.com

Another WorldFest, Louisville’s annual celebration of ethnic diversity, is behind us and as usual, that means I’ve spent another weekend stuffing myself with delicious and exotic food from many nations.

That’s the good news. On the other side of the ledger, it didn’t seem to me that there were quite as many ethnic restaurants represented at WorldFest this year as last. Asiatique was there as usual, holding down the high end of the local-restaurant spectrum with well-prepared goat-cheese crabmeat spring rolls, salmon egg rolls and beef kebabs ($2 each or all three for $5).

A number of other local ethnic favorites staffed booths offering samples of their fare, including India Palace, Los Aztecas, Mai’s Thai, Queen of Sheba Ethiopian, Safier Mediterranean Deli, Taste of Jamaica Cafe, Thai Taste, Valu Market and Yang Kee Noodle, not to mention sweet treats from Café Glace, Coco’s Bakery, Gelato Gilberto and Kizito Cookies. Even those wary of unfamiliar dishes could easily fill the inner person with such comfort foods as bratwurst, ice cream and funnel cakes.
Continue reading Voyage of foodie discovery at Worldfest →

$$ Modest ($30-$50), BBQ, Burgers & Down-Home, Frankfort Ave., Clifton, Crescent Hill

We kick back at Big Al’s Beeritaville

By Kevin Gibson

It’s no secret that Louisville has an excellent fine-dining scene, especially for a city its size. Still, sometimes you just want to kick back with a good sandwich and a beer.

Enter Big Al’s Beeritaville in Clifton. With a cozy bar, front patio with tables and an outdoor beer garden complete with a horseshoe pit and cornhole, it’s a fun, laid-back place to spend a Saturday afternoon or a weeknight happy hour. LEO Weekly’s own Bar Belle, Sara Havens, wrote earlier this year that the bar at the newly made-over Mac’s is “like hanging out in a friend’s basement,” which pretty much says it all.
Continue reading We kick back at Big Al’s Beeritaville →

Louisville's top spot for talk and reviews from the food and restaurant scene