$$ Modest ($30-$50), Bistros, St. Matthews, Westport Village, and environs

60 West Bistro & Martini Bar

BBC
The 5-year-old Cafe Emilie reinvented itself with a new name and image as 60 West Bistro and Martini Bar.

Cafe Emilie, the comfortable eatery in the Burdorf Center (the former Bacon’s department store in St. Matthews) has won quite a few fans – including me – since it started out as a simple lunch spot just over five years ago. We’ve watched it mature into a cozy neighborhood bistro and bar through a couple of chef and staff changes, and it has earned its popularity the old-fashioned way.
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$$$$ Luxury ($80 and up), Hurstbourne, Middletown, Jeffersontown, White tablecloth, deluxe

We put on that ole Southern drawl at Limestone

Michael Cunha
Limestone Restaurant chef and co-owner Michael Cunha dresses up Southern fare in a city suit. The suburban restaurant remains up there with the top spots in town. LEO photo by Nicole Pullen.

LEO’s Eats with Louisville HotBytes

Louisville, it is said, is the only Northern city that chose to declare itself “Southern” only after the South had lost the Civil War. This odd decision, some say, led directly to 100 years of stagnation, no major-league sports teams and a slow decline that eventually took us to the bottom of the nation’s top 50 media markets.

It was a hefty price to pay for the privilege of adopting an affected drawl and adding fatback, grits and greens to our culinary tradition.

I don’t know about you, but our family never ate that stuff at home. Ours was a steak-and-potatoes, spaghetti-and-meatballs, braunschweiger-and-kuchen urban household, and we liked it like that.

Nevertheless, Southern, aka “country,” fare dressed up in a city suit has become a staple in some of Louisville’s finest upscale eateries, and chefs Jim Gerhardt and Michael Cunha have been among the leaders in making it so.
Continue reading We put on that ole Southern drawl at Limestone →

$ Budget (under $30), Downtown, NuLu and Butchertown, World Food

Flat wallet, round tummy? Try these great cheap eats

LEO’s Eats with Louisville HotBytes

Okay, we’re into 2008 now. The holidays are over. Your wallet is flat but your tummy is not. Fine dining and wretched excess are not in the picture, but we’re not really ready for a diet of raw carrots and soda water.

Let’s scout out some great cheap eats, the kind of fare that offers a quick and tasty meal that may not be diet food but isn’t a multi-course banquet, either.

To celebrate the New Year (if in fact there’s much to celebrate about a bleak Ohio Valley January), let’s take a quick look at a potpourri of recent quick and affordable discoveries on the local dining scene.
Continue reading Flat wallet, round tummy? Try these great cheap eats →

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

Shiraz settles in at Holiday Manor

Ramin and Cheryl Akrami
Ramin and Cheryl Akrami at Shiraz Mediterranean Grill in Holiday Manor. Photo by Robin Garr.

(Shiraz Mediterranean Grill, Voice-Tribune, Dec. 13, 2007)

If you love a good success story, consider Shiraz Mediterranean Grill. It would be hard to find another modest restaurant in Louisville that started so small and grew so fast.

It seems much longer than just a year and a half since Ramin Akrami opened the first Shiraz, a tiny, four-table eatery almost hidden in a row of frame huts on lower Brownsboro Road. It quickly outgrew those quarters, and within six months Akrami moved to more spacious modern facilities in the new Clifton Lofts complex on Frankfort Avenue. Now Shiraz has come to the East End, with a shiny new branch in Holiday Manor Walk, an expansion that Akrami hopes will be a link in a growing chain.
Continue reading Shiraz settles in at Holiday Manor →

$ Budget (under $30), Mexican, Cuban, Caribbean, Southern Indiana

More cheap eats: La Rosita

Israel Landin
La Rosita owner Israel Landin opened a second New Albany location a few months ago. Along with the familiar fare, La Rosita is vegetarian-friendly. LEO photo by Nicole Pullen.

LEO’s Eats with Louisville HotBytes

I love Mexican food, and I mean real Mexican food, the kind that challenges gringos to enjoy true ethnic flavors and preparations, even if you have to muddle through with awkward Spanglish and pointing at the picture of the dish you want. To my mind, one of the happiest trends of recent years in Louisville dining has been the arrival of dozens of tiny taquerias that take us a long step past Americanized “Tex-Mex.”

La Rosita in New Albany, run by the affable and thoroughly bilingual husband-wife team of Israel and Lidia Landin, has been a favorite since they first landed in a space the size of a walk-in closet nearly hidden inside a produce market on Charlestown Road a few years ago.

Continue reading More cheap eats: La Rosita →

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

And still more cheap eats: Breakfast at the Meridian Cafe

LEO’s Eats with Louisville HotBytes

The metro area is blessed with a surprising number of first-rate spots for a casual, comfortable soup, salad or sandwich lunch, and I try to make my way around to all of them regularly. One of my favorites is Meridian Café, and I’m apparently not the only person thus smitten – this place almost always has a big crowd.

Continue reading And still more cheap eats: Breakfast at the Meridian Cafe →

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

South India to West China: two hot new ethnic spots

Royal India's masala dosa
Indian brunch: Masala Dosa, a South Indian vegetarian treat, is the large lentil crepe at lower left, folded around curried potatoes; also pictured are three white rice-based idlys, a cup of spicy sambar lentil soup, and a pool of green coconut chutney. Photos by Robin Garr.

LEO’s Eats with Louisville HotBytes
(Royal India; Red Pepper Chinese Cuisine)

You don’t have to be as old as the (Tuscan) hills to remember the days when “Northern” Italian fare first became a local craze, serving dishes like fettuccine alfredo and veal piccata. Before long, “Northern” was in, “Southern” was out, and to this day, as much as we may still love pizza and spaghetti with meatballs and other hearty red-sauced Italian comfort food, we don’t think of it as, well, upscale anymore.

Now get ready to broaden your culinary horizons with a couple more ethnic compass points. Two fine new restaurants are breaking new ground for Louisville with exotic, spicy South Indian and West Chinese cuisine.
Continue reading South India to West China: two hot new ethnic spots →

St. Matthews, Westport Village, and environs, World Food

Rising trend for ’07: fine dining comes to suburbia

Veal at Corbett's
Plated on a seductive, creamy puree of house-smoked sweet potatoes, the butter-tender Sonoma veal cutlets at Corbett’s “An American Place” are a work of culinary art. Photo by Robin Garr.

LEO’s Eats with Louisville HotBytes
(Seviche – A Latin Bistro; Corbett’s “An American Place”)

Here’s a vignette that captures the year 2007 on the local dining scene for me: I’m enjoying lunch in the new Seviche – A Latin Bistro on Goose Creek Road. The room is packed, but I’m the only male in sight, and I’m the youngest person in the place except for the servers. I’m enjoying a wonderful Chinese-Latino “fusion” seviche … and all the ladies lunching around me are having guacamole and quesadillas and talking about what a marvelous new Mexican place this is.

In fact, the year 2007 has seen a lot of action on the Louisville restaurant scene, including some disappointing closings (Bistro New Albany, Azalea, Diamante, Harper’s) and some exciting openings (Mojito, Basa, Varanese, Wild Eggs, Original Impellizzeri’s), not to mention a closing-but-reopening (Nio’s at 917) and even a closing-opening-closing-opening-again-then-really-and-truly-closing (the ill-fated Oscar Brown’s/La Rouge/Bobby J’s).

Perhaps the most intriguing developing local restaurant trend, though, is the first shaking of a seismic shift: The arrival of Seviche and other top-echelon, locally owned and independent white-tablecloth restaurants in the chain-rich East End.
Continue reading Rising trend for ’07: fine dining comes to suburbia →

$$ Modest ($30-$50), Italian (and Pizza), Southern Indiana

Take that short drive to Stratto’s

Jerome Pope
Jerome Pope is now the chef at Stratto’s in Clarksville. Look for his new menu after the first of the year. LEO Photo by Nicole Pullen.

LEO’s Eats with Louisville HotBytes

If you’ve been meaning to check out some Southern Indiana dining spots but worried that it’s a little too far, consider this: It took me just 11 minutes to drive from my house in Crescent Hill to Stratto’s in Clarksville on a rainy Saturday night.

OK, maybe I couldn’t have made it that fast during a weekday rush hour, but it’s still a quicker trip for me than a ride out to The Summit or Brownsboro Crossing in endless suburbia.

What’s more, the comfortable historic-house setting and hearty Italian-accented comfort food at Stratto’s makes it well worth the short trip across the finally repainted Kennedy Bridge.
Continue reading Take that short drive to Stratto’s →

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