Robin Garr's LOUISVILLE Restaurant Reviews

** Bahama Breeze
104 Oxmoor Court
(502) 423-9040
Company Website: www.bahamabreeze.com

It's a mighty long way from the pasteurized-homogenized suburbia of Oxmoor Center to the Bahamas or the Florida Keys; but to its credit, Bahama Breeze does about as good a job as a franchise-chain outfit can to bridge the gap, offering us a slightly Disneyfied beach-joint experience with the ocean view replaced by acres of parking lots.

It opened in Louisville last year as a local outpost of a fast-growing new venture by Orlando-based Darden Restaurants, which also runs the Red Lobster and Olive Garden chains. Bahama Breeze is a bit more upscale than its corporate siblings, however, and to be candid, the food is a little more interesting.

The venue, clustered in a trio of franchise eateries alongside the Watterson Expressway behind the Oxmoor mall, evokes Florida and Bahamas beach eateries on a scale writ large.

Fake palm trees rise to the peak of a towering galvanized-iron roof over a massive bar and open kitchen, with two dining rooms (smoking and non-smoking) with rows of windows shaded by Caribbean-style white louvered shutters and glass panes to keep the air-conditioned air inside. There's also a substantial open deck, which may emulate the Caribbean on a steamy Ohio Valley summer evening but will probably find few takers as autumn turns into winter here.

In a move that's either commercial or tongue-in-cheek - or maybe both - the entry to the restaurant features a substantial gift shop with exactly the kind of bright tropical shirts, voluminous beach dresses and tacky tropical-theme junque that you'd find in many a gift shop along the International Highway down to Key West.

The dining rooms are furnished in mahogany and wicker, attractive and comfortable tables and chairs that look exactly as if the place was furnished by The Bombay Co.

The large menu offers a vast selection of small bites and large plates. A dozen "samplers" (appetizers) are $3.95 to $8.95 and feature such assorted goodies as roasted Cuban bread with tomatoes and basil ($3.95), coconut-breaded "island" onion rings ($6.95), conch and shrimp fritters ($5.45) and ceviche ($8.95). Sandwiches are $7.45-$8.95 and salads $3.25 (for a small green or Caesar salad) to $12.95 (for a Caribbean seafood salad with grilled shrimp, scallops and portabello mushrooms).

Nearly two-dozen entrees "from the Caribbean grill" are subdivided into pastas, seafood-and-chicken and beef-and-pork, and range in price from $10.95 (for Latino ropa vieja shredded beef or Chicken Rocio with olives and sausage over angel-hair pasta) to $17.95 (for a thick-cut fliet mignon served with a grilled portabello. Most entrees are also available in half-size portions from $5.95 to $13.95.

The beverage menu is no mere wine list but a complete drinks book, a hefty volume listing dozens, maybe hundreds of bar specialities, from beers and wines to just about everything in the mixologist's handbook. From a wine-fancier's standpoint, it's unimpressive, frankly, with mostly mass-market wines offered at a high markup. But good draft beer made up for it in the form of hearty pints of Bass Ale, malty and rich, and the house beer, "Aruba Red," which the server disclosed is made by Anheuser-Busch and is "similar to Killian's Red." This wasn't particularly reassuring, but we gave it a try for science's sake and found it passable if middle-of-the-road, a crisp reddish-amber brew with nothing to offend.

I'm generally suspicious of any restaurant with a bar bigger than the dining room, based on my experience that when drinks are a priority, management rarely pays as much attention to the food as the booze. Bahama Breeze exceeded expectations, though, with no real disappointments and several pleasant surprises.

Fresh ahi tuna ceviche ($8.95) was quite good, cubes of pristinely fresh marinated raw tuna garnished with shredded coconut, piled on a pineapple round and watercress, plated on three golden slices of mango dotted with spicy surprises of green and red hot sauces.

A tossed green salad ($3.25) featured crisp lettuce and a sprinkle of pumpkin seeds, lengthwise-sliced cucumbers and fresh tomato wedges, and slices of toasted herb baguette in place of croutons.

A signature Key West and Bahamain dish, conch chowder ($4.45 and be sure to say it "conk") was well made, a pleasantly spicy tomato-vegetable broth with plenty of fine-chopped conch meat, chewy but not rubbery as this Carribean shellfish should be.

The kitchen's timing was a little speedy at this point, with our entrees coming out while we were still working on our salads, but that was the only occasion where we felt rushed.

A substantial slab of "West Indies" pork ribs ($15.95) were coated with a sweetish but flavorful sauce billed as "caramelized sweet guava glaze." Slow-roasted Dominican style, according to the menu, they were so tender that the meat literally fell off the bone. A huge portion of thin-cut, crisp "wow fries" were fried crisp and grease-free.

Cheryl's Palomilla steak, ($13.95) was butterflied before cooking, making for a very thin cut, marinated with sweet-hot fruit flavors and grilled, was served medium-rare as requested, idiosyncratically presented by being rolled into a cylinder and set upright atop a mound of chunky, rich mashed potatoes with sugar snap peas in the pod and just a hint of black beans. It was flavorful but surprisingly tough.

We couldn't resist ending the meal with a slice of Key lime pie for an authenticity check, and it came pretty close to the real thing, properly sweet and tart, with a crispy, brown-sugar-flavor crumb crust and delicate meringue; the hefty portion was plenty for two to share.

Dinner for two, with espresso to finish, was a pricey but not breathtaking $65.96, plus a $11.04 tip for our outgoing but unfailingly polite server. $$$