Kathmandu: Even the sound of the name of Nepal’s historic capital, gateway to the Himalayas, evokes feelings of romance and exotic travel. The bustling, noisy city of 850,000 lies in a green valley at 4,500 feet above sea level. It’s not even as high as Denver, but on a clear day you can see Mount Everest from historic Durbar Square in the old city, home to seven Unesco World Heritage sites.
Want to go? It will take you maybe 26 hours including layover time to get to Kathmandu from here. The price? Don’t even ask.
But here’s an easy workaround: Head to Kathmandu Kitchen on Old Bardstown Road in Buechel, and you can enjoy a fantastic Nepalese meal without all the hassle of international travel.
A couple of weeks ago I devoted this space to a conversation about some of our town’s finest places to go for a special-occasion $200-plus blowout. I heard plenty of favorable comment from folks who filed the information for the next birthday or anniversary feast.
A few of you, though, appropriately cautioned me about this slide into territory usually occupied by oligarchs, day traders, and hedge-fund managers.
You probably didn’t even notice that I didn’t bother to talk about fried fish for Lent this year. Everyone else was doing it, it seemed, including our pals at LEO Weekly, so why add another voice to the chorus?
Plus, to be frank, with more than one-fourth of Americans now describing their religious affiliation as “nothing in particular,” and no more than one-tenth of the remaining religiously affiliated strictly observing abstinence from meat during Lent, it felt like the pressure was off.
The $200 dinner for two is no longer a treat that we must travel to larger cities to enjoy.
Indeed, if you wish to treat your partner or friend to a fancy evening out in Louisville – particularly with drinks, dessert, and an appetizer or two – you’d better make sure that your credit-card limit can handle a three-figure toll.
Here’s a good way to start a noisy debate among Louisville food lovers: Ask for opinions on where to get the best bagel in town. Want to kick it up another notch? Ask you can even get a bialy hereabouts.
What’s a bialy? See what I mean? A lot of us have so little exposure to this rarely seen cousin to the bagel that we’re not even sure what it is.
More about that shortly. First, though, let’s put our hands together and welcome our town’s latest bagel shop: Born2Bagel, which opened last autumn in a Middletown shopping-strip storefront at the corner of Shelbyville Road and Blankenbaker Parkway.
Your steak is too well-done for your liking. It’s dry, tough, and leathery. Your partner’s tenderloin is too rare for their liking. It’s dripping bloody juices that make them go “ick.” You find dirt in your dish. Mold in your dish. A hair, or several!
Grossed out by now? You haven’t heard anything yet. You find a dead cockroach in your potatoes. Or even a live parasite squirming in your swordfish.
And how about that time you told the server about your kid’s allergy and got a dish that triggered it anyway?
It was a chilly, cloudy Saturday morning in January. The temperature was hovering around 37º. Even so, the sidewalk tables in front of Frankfort Avenue’s beloved Blue Dog Bakery & Café were filling up just the same, hungry travelers clad in parkas and mittens, eagerly awaiting a steaming coffee drink and pastry treat.
Inside Blue Dog’s warm, cozy space was jammed with more eager supplicants. Counter service would begin any moment, and they were ready.
“It’s always like this,” Blue Dog’s new owner Libbie Ackerman Loeser said with a smile.
I felt pretty sad last month when I read El Mundo’s social-media post announcing management’s decision to “put the original, quirky, tiny Frankfort Avenue location on pause until the Spring.”
The good news was that El Mundo’s newer, larger Highlands shop, which opened during the Covid-19 pandemic, remains open. It has expanded service to seven days a week, and recently launched an impressive Saturday, Sunday, and Monday brunch.
Menus: Can’t live with ‘em. Can’t live without ‘em! You step into a restaurant, take your seat, and pick up the menu. How does this make you feel? Joy at anticipating a tasty meal, or fear that something is about to make you crabby?
Why must menus disappoint us in so many ways, from look and feel to organization and design to the way they communicate? The menu has just one job, and sadly, it doesn’t always get that job done.
