LEO’s Recession-Proof Dining Guide

LEO’s Eats with LouisvilleHotBytes.com

LouisvilleHotBytes.com is proud to be associated with LEO’s 2008 “Recession-proof Dining Guide,” a local-restaurant guide like no other, with a tongue-in-cheek hard-times spin.

In addition to a comprehensive directory of LEO Dining Guide Listings 2008, many of them based on our weekly LEO/LouisvilleHotBytes reviews, we think you’ll enjoy all of these articles by LEO and LouisvilleHotBytes contributors:

One-stop noshing: Stuff your face at buffets, by Mat Herron.

Beyond chicken-finger purgatory: Dining out with the kids in tough economic times, by Andrea Essenpreis.

Full of it: How I survived 14 days of eating exclusively in west Louisville, and why just surviving is not enough, by Phillip M. Bailey.

A friend indeed: Soup Kitchens report hunger is on the rise in Louisville, by Kevin Gibson.

Champagne dining on a beer budget: A guerrilla guide to eating well in recessionary times, by Robin Garr.

On the cutting board: As the economy sucks, so too the restaurant business, by Marsha Lynch.

Small bites add up to fine dinner 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.
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Nibbles: Café Lou Lou, Slice of NY

Award-winning chili at Café Lou Lou

Chef Marsha and the trophy! Photo by Robin Garr

Café Lou Lou Pastry Chef Marsha Lynch and Sous Chef Mark Johnson whipped up a batch of chili for the eighth annual Phoenix Hill Chili Cookoff recently, and it impressed the judges so much that they gave it the grand prize.

Lynch (who also pens the monthly Industry Standard article within this column) said she can’t reveal everything that’s in it, but gave credit for its bodacious numminess to such goodies as house-made hot sausage from Frank’s Meats, plus dark red kidney beans and black beans, habanero chile powder, chipotles en adobo, roasted corn kernels, masa harina and more. But no spaghetti. Absolutely not. Lynch considers that local custom a perversion.
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Lunch and antiques, not necessarily in that order

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.
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Robot sommelier at Westport wine shop

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. (more…)

DakShin Indian: A taste of a different South

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.
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Industry Standard: Kitchen lingo

Insider Info For Those Who Dine Out
With Columnist Marsha Lynch

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.
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