We get scrod, and haddock too, at The Fish House

Scrod and Haddock sandwiches at The Fish House

Voice-Tribune review by LouisvilleHotBytes
(published 2/11/2010)

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So what’s a scrod? I’ll spare you the notorious Boston cabbie joke (although if you’re desperate to hear it, email me.) Anyway … scrod – or “schrod,” an older variation that’s dying out – is a foodie term that’s hard to pin down. Its definition varies depending on where you look it up.
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Perfect pair: Hot Brown, meet pizza

BoomBozz’s Hot Brown Pizza

LEO’s Eats with LouisvilleHotBytes

The famous Hot Brown — allegedly fashioned as a midnight snack for Roaring Twenties revelers famished after a night of dancing in the Brown Hotel’s Crystal Ballroom — is just an open-faced sandwich of turkey, bacon and cheesy Mornay sauce. Nothing so inventive there, and it’s a cardiologist’s nightmare.

The inventive folks at BoomBozz Taphouse in the Highlands have put a new spin on the old tradition by marrying it in weird but delicious union with a pizza.

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Potstickers comes unglued

Potstickers closed Jan. 17, 2010, after the Jan. 20 edition of LEO had gone to print. This review appeared in that edition of LEO. We publish it here in memoriam, and to help explain why we think it didn’t last.

When I heard that Chef Edward Lee of 610 Magnolia was behind a new fast-food noodle shop that opened last autumn in the midst of the club zone on Baxter, I was excited. I’ve got a lot of respect for Lee and his work, and 610 has been one of my favorite Louisville restaurants for 25 years, under Lee and his predecessor, Ed Garber.

After a couple visits to Potstickers, though, I’m puzzled and bemused. If Lee is really behind it — and I have no reason to doubt that — it’s got to be a hands-off operation.
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Bosna-Mak: A trip to Bosnia without leaving town

Goulash and Mushroom Soups  Photo: Robin Garr

Voice-Tribune review by LouisvilleHotBytes

I’m not saying that I’m old, mind you, but I’m not the only one around here who can remember when Louisville’s idea of Mexican food was chili con carne, our take on Italian cuisine was pizza, we judged chow mein as the pinnacle of Chinese cuisine, and - except maybe for bratwurst - that was about it as far as ethnic fare was concerned.

But times have changed, and Louisville’s increasingly diverse urban family has been a good thing for us culturally, spiritually and, of course, in terms of a much wider variety of good things to eat.

Thanks to the work of organizations including Kentucky Refugee Ministries and others, Louisville has become one of the nation’s most welcoming cities for international newcomers. Since the 1990s, says the city’s Office for International Affairs, fully half of Louisville’s population growth has been counted in international residents. More than 80 languages are spoken by students in the Jefferson County Public Schools.

Quite a few of our new neighbors have opened restaurants, ranging from Mexico to countries farther south of the Rio; the Near East, Southeast Asia, China and Japan; more from Africa, and plenty of new arrivals from Europe.

Perhaps one of the most unexpected new ethnic communities comes from war-torn Bosnia, one of the many tiny Balkan countries that got back their independence when the Iron Curtain fell and took Yugoslavia with it. Fierce ethnic and religious rivalries brought Bosnia under the gun of “ethnic cleansing.” The United Nations eventually intervened, but only after a small flood of refugees headed toward the U.S., many of them bound for Louisville.

Which brings us around to a short review of Bosna-Mak, an interesting little Bosnian eatery in a short strip of Bosnian stores that lies perpendicular to the old Bardstown Road in Buechel.
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Comfort with Cajun accent at Coach Lamp

Coach Lamp’s fried chicken.

LEO’s Eats with LouisvilleHotBytes

The sturdy brown-painted brick building near the top of the hill where Vine Street rises from Broadway toward Breckenridge Street has been an east-of-downtown landmark since 1872. It has served as a saloon, a general store and then a saloon again.

Since around the time of Louisville’s 1937 flood, it has been a neighborly eatery and pub, known for cold beer and a signature roast beef-and-mashed-potato plate.

In 2000, under the guidance of new owners Gail and Billy Darling, it added an upscale component: Enter and stay on the right and you’ll enjoy the friendly bar, which really hasn’t changed much since the 1937 floodwaters receded. But walk to the back of the room, turn left, go down a small slope and you’ll pass — like Dorothy entering Oz — into a much more stylish room where the scene is casually artful and the fare upscale.
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Café Mimosa returns

By Kevin Gibson
LEO’s Eats with LouisvilleHotBytes

The familiar logo on the former Lentini’s reads “Café Mimosa,” but the sandwich board out front says it all: “We open now!”

A fire destroyed Café Mimosa’s former location — along with its partner Egg Roll Machine — in January. Owner Phat Le vowed to reopen; the former Lentini’s made sense since, well, he already owned it.

The new Mimosa, replacing recent tenant Jarfi’s, seems more upscale than the old, but food and prices are much the same.
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Tequila Factory manufactures fine Mexican chow

LEO’s Eats with LouisvilleHotBytes
(By Guest Critic Kevin Gibson)

Thank goodness it’s not another faux Irish pub.

Tequila Factory Bar and Grill is the latest tenant in the revolving-door location at 917 Baxter Ave., the former home of @tmosphere, Bazo’s and two or three iterations of Nio’s, among other short-lived concepts.

It’s all but surrounded by Irish-style pubs, where you’ll pay $6 for a pint of Guinness and enjoy such dubiously “Irish” staples as Jamaican jerk chicken and shrimp Alfredo pizza. This concept seems to be springing up everywhere in the Highlands and other neighborhoods around town (I’m looking at you, Fourth Street Live). But there’s been an unfortunate lack of new and interesting Mexican concepts.

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Bistro Le Relais: Still classy, a little less pricey

LEO’s Eats with LouisvilleHotBytes
(LEO photo by Ron Jasin)

The economy is still pretty much in the tank, local unemployment is soaring, and gasoline prices are crawling upward again. Who can afford fine dining?

Faced with this fiscal reality, a number of Louisville’s more upscale establishments have undertaken menu resets, seeking to meet a shaky market with quality cuisine that doesn’t take quite such a bite out of consumers’ flattened wallets.

Over at classy Equus, for instance, the fine-dining restaurant and its adjacent partner, Jack’s Lounge, now share a single menu, including a good choice of small bites under $10 and a main-course list that ranges from the teens into the high $20s. It’s hardly diner-style pricing, but it moves Equus from the special-occasion category into a fair choice for the impulsive diner.

We’ve seen a similar trajectory at Le Relais, which I’ve always rated among the city’s five top restaurants, and, on any given day, its best. Over the past year, without sacrificing a bit of its first-class service or art-deco look, it has subtly shifted from high-end modern French grand dining to something more in the bistro style.
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Dragon King’s Daughter gives sushi a new twist

LEO’s Eats with LouisvilleHotBytes
(LEO photo by Ron Jasin)

“I just can’t do sushi,” my Facebook friend Suzie in Arkansas posted. “It’s the redneck in me.”

Maybe. But even the most ardent sushi-hater could be rehabilitated at Dragon King’s Daughter, where Toki Masabuchi puts an international twist on the creative sushi delights that have built her a loyal following at Maido Essential Japanese in Clifton.

Take the “Italian Picnic” ($10, pictured). There’s no fish in this delight, which features pencil-thin asparagus, tempura-battered and fried, tucked into a sushi roll topped not with seafood but Italian prosciutto, fresh basil leaves and a dab of Japanese mayo topped with a few toasted pine nuts. Is it Japanese? Is it Italian? It’s both - and it is delicious.

Masabuchi, who continues to work her culinary magic at Maido, too, recently took over the Bardstown Road quarters left vacant by the abrupt departure of Karma Café.

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Fried chicken? Falafels? Captain Pepper Jack’s mixes it up

LEO’s Eats with LouisvilleHotBytes
(By Paige Moore-Heavin)

When my friend Lynn suggested Captain Pepper Jack’s Aero Bistro for girls’ night out, I was a little confused. This place, which opened near Bowman Field in May, was new to me. “It’s part Southern American and part Mediterranean,” she said. Well, that’s an odd combination. But, ever the foodie, I was willing to give this culinary mash-up a try.
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High-tech bar, award-winning fare lift Boombozz Taphouse

LouisvilleHotBytes.com in The Voice-Tribune
(Published May 13, 2009)

The Highlands carry-out branch of Tony Boombozz Pizza on Bardstown Road - once the location of an urban White Castle still remembered fondly by Baby Boomers - has re-emerged after a major renovation as a splendid pizzeria and high-tech beer dispensary, the East End mini-chain’s fourth property and perhaps its most exciting yet.

Curved banks of silvery metal tubes soar over the bar to pipe down a selection of more than 20 draft beers, most imports and microbrewery beers. What’s more, the region’s only “ice bar” features artificially made “snow” blanketing a strip at the back. Want your beer ice cold? Set your mug on the icy white line.
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Great Bunz, loaded with splendid burgers

LEO’s Eats with LouisvilleHotBytes.com

So we’re walking down Baxter just north of Highland Avenue, well into the city’s club zone, and suddenly a new hanging sign catches my eye.

“BUNZ,” it reads, like a hip-hop interpretation of a bread store specializing in … naw, can’t be. We swerved into the tiny quarters that had previously housed Omar’s Gyros and found a spiffy new shop specializing in hamburgers - fat, dense and beefy burgers, mounted, of course, on exceptional buns. Er, bunz.

Located just across the street from Derby City Dogs and a block or so north from the new Highlands branch of Lonnie’s Taste of Chicago, another hot-dog store, this recent arrival would seem to mark a new high-water mark for restaurant specialization in the neighborhood.
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