INDUSTRY STANDARD by Marsha Lynch (November 27, 2013)
Waiting for a table: How long is too long? A recent spirited discussion on the LouisvilleHotBytes.com forum prompted me to think deeply about how long it’s appropriate to wait for a table in Louisville, and what circumstances might change the answer to that question. The short answer for most...Read more
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VOICE-TRIBUNE Review by Robin Garr (November 14, 2013)
When a kid, I looked forward to road trips as an occasion for fried pie, a rare culinary treat that seemed to exist only in those exotic places where people lived among cornfields and tobacco patches and spoke in a slow drawl. Fried pie! We never had anything like...Read more
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LEOs Eats with Robin Garr (November 13, 2013)
My pal the Bar Belle is also the boss of me when it comes to this column, but that sure doesn’t stop me from calling Bullwinkle when I just have to. So, yo, Bar Belle! You’ve got it all wrong when you go hatin’ on El Camino! How did...Read more
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LEOs Eats with Robin Garr (November 6, 2013)
Good eats make good neighbors in ‘restaurant clusters’ Birds of a feather flock together, it is said. And now it appears that maybe restaurants do, too. For many generations, after all, the dining scene that our parents and grandparents knew required a trip downtown for that special dining-out occasion....Read more
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VOICE-TRIBUNE Review by Robin Garr (October 31, 2013)
Ahh, it finally feels like autumn, and I’m thinking of comfort food. This nostalgic meme rarely attaches itself to the light, low-calorie and cooling dishes of summer. “Comfort” means stews and hearty soups, spaghetti and meatballs or maybe a thick pan of lasagna – the kinds of warming, stick-to-your-ribs...Read more
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INDUSTRY STANDARD by Marsha Lynch (October 30, 2013)
Foodies are constantly on the prowl for inspiration, often from the Internet. I have a friend whose disorganized “food bookmarks” folder on her computer is at least a thousand entries long. To qualify for inclusion in the folder, a recipe needs little more than a stunning photograph attached, or...Read more
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VOICE-TRIBUNE Review by Robin Garr (October 24, 2013)
Okay, let’s run the numbers here. Vietnam Kitchen has been open for about 20.5 years, six days a week. That’s roughly 6,500 days of serving the public since Alex and Kim Lam brought this lovable institution to town in 1993. Thinking out loud, that means that if every day...Read more
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Robin Garr (October 23, 2013)
“Je vais avoir le canard,” said my friend Anne, summoning a French teacher and one-time expat’s easy fluency. Our server looked puzzled, though. “Maybe you could point it out on the menu,” he said, blushing a little. “I’m still learning the dishes.” I’m not picking on the guy, though....Read more
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LEOs Eats with Robin Garr (October 16, 2013)
Somewhere out there in this wonderfully diverse world, there is bound to be at least one human who truly loves, loves, loves brussels sprouts. I have not yet met this person. Let’s face it, a brussels sprout is nothing but a tiny cabbage, with all of the faults that...Read more
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LEOs Eats with Robin Garr (October 9, 2013)
I’d like to sing the praises of Shady Lane Café, but I expect that café owner Susi Smith, an outstanding professional singer, could warble it far better than I; and her husband and co-owner Bill Smith, who’s not only a mean hand on the short-order grill but also a...Read more
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VOICE-TRIBUNE Review by Robin Garr (October 3, 2013)
Hey, Chihuahua? What kind of a name for a restaurant is that? With a wacky Señor Gonzales accent? Really? Are they talking about the state of Chihuahua in Mexico, or calling a little dog? Or maybe, just possibly, poking a thumb in the eye of “Yo quiero Taco Bell“?...Read more
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LEOs Eats with Robin Garr (October 2, 2013)
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...Read more
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INDUSTRY STANDARD by Marsha Lynch (September 25, 2013)
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.) I’ve taken a break...Read more
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LEOs Eats with Robin Garr (September 18, 2013)
When Village Anchor Pub & Roost and its companion watering hole, The Sea Hag, opened three years ago this past summer, I thought they were pretty cool. But I wondered if they would stick. They were bright, bold and edgy, featuring perhaps the city’s best semi al fresco patio...Read more
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LEOs Eats with Robin Garr (September 11, 2013)
So, what’s a Brix? Let’s ask the Intertubes! “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...Read more
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VOICE-TRIBUNE Review by Robin Garr (September 5, 2013)
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...Read more
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LEOs Eats with Robin Garr (September 4, 2013)
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...Read more
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Robin Garr (August 30, 2013)
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...Read more
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VOICE-TRIBUNE Review by Robin Garr (August 29, 2013)
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...Read more
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INDUSTRY STANDARD by Marsha Lynch (August 28, 2013)
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...Read more
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LEOs Eats with Robin Garr (August 21, 2013)
What doesn’t go better on a donut? 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,...Read more
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LEOs Eats with Robin Garr (August 14, 2013)
Maybe this is just my wacky imagination talking, but I’ve always thought Dragon King’s Daughter sounded like a good name for a really intense online role-playing game. It would be a game full of samurai warrior avatars, of course, but it would have to have moustachio’d bandidos too, as...Read more
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VOICE-TRIBUNE Review by Robin Garr (August 8, 2013)
Who doesn’t like a table full of tapas? These days, when just about every eatery from diners and dives to classy upscale joints offers small plates to tickle the taste buds, tapas are just about everywhere. But that word may not mean quite what you think it means. Tapas...Read more
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LEOs Eats with Robin Garr (August 7, 2013)
Gather ’round, youngsters, and I’ll tell you about a time when fish tacos were unknown in our town. It wasn’t all that long ago, really — as recently as the ’90s — when the idea of putting fish on a taco pretty much struck everyone as weird and unappetizing....Read more
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INDUSTRY STANDARD by Marsha Lynch (July 31, 2013)
A couple of weeks ago, a new sheriff rode into town: Eric Flack, WAVE 3 Troubleshooter. Mr. Flack spent most of an afternoon (at least!) gathering the information for a regular expose of the seedy underbelly of local food truck sanitation practices. The shocking footage was shot at multiple...Read more
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VOICE-TRIBUNE Review by Robin Garr (July 25, 2013)
It’s noisy, casual and fun. Located in a historic building in a historic neighborhood, its food and music and liquor celebrate the folk culture of Bakersfield, gritty capital of the south end of California’s agricultural Central Valley, where Chicano and Okie ways met and mingled in a zesty ethnic...Read more
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LEOs Eats with Robin Garr (July 24, 2013)
I learned in grade school that America was a melting pot, a vast cultural amalgam made up of gifts from national and ethnic groups around the world, molten into sturdy steel to which every group contributed its special strength and character. I thought that was pretty cool back then,...Read more
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LEOs Eats with Robin Garr (July 17, 2013)
“Wake up! Wake up! Come on! Come on! The Game is afoot!” WTF? There I was, enjoying a restorative after-work power-nap, and here’s Mary shaking me awake with some kind of weird Holmes-and-Watson shtick. “GAME!” she yelled. “We’ve gotta get over to Game while we can still get a...Read more
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LEOs Eats with Robin Garr (July 10, 2013)
Lolita’s Tacos, a bright spot in the culinary landscape of Poplar Level Road near the Watterson, is a great place for lunch, but it’s a good idea to show up early. The other day, the tiny eatery’s handful of tables were already filling up by 11:30 a.m. Many of...Read more
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