“I scream, you scream, we all scream for ice cream.” Once a popular ditty of the “Roaring Twenties,” this folk wisdom has grown into a simple truth.
Who doesn’t like ice cream? As Mary’s father used to say, even after an ample meal, “There is always room for ice cream.” And with Spring belatedly breaking after one of the most relentless Winters in recent memory, the signs of the season include, in addition to green buds, bright flowers and insane allergy-pollen levels, long lines of hungry supplicants forming around just about every ice-cream shop in town. Even the perennial ice cream trucks have brought their clangy rendition of “Camptown Races” back to the streets of our fair city. Continue reading Comfy Cow growing into a herd→
After nearly four years serving its gigantic New York-style pizza and other goodies to hungry hordes on the Baxter Avenue night-life strip, Papalino’s NY Pizzeria opened its second location in the somewhat less frenzied environs of the sprawling Springhurst center out in the East End. Continue reading Papalino’s Settles in at Springhurst→
Okay, Taco Luchador, we get the “taco” part. But what the heck is a “luchador”?
Simple, señoras y señores! The luchador is a skilled artisan, a practitioner of lucha libre (“free fight”), the manly art of self-defense. In other words, luchadores are Mexican pro wrestlers. But trust me on this, lucha libre makes the overweight, steroid-pumped thespians of the WWE look like a bunch of slow-moving sissies. Continue reading We wrestle and win at El Taco Luchador→
If there was ever any doubt that pizza has truly become an all-American treat, it was surely put to rest with Pizzagate this week, when New York City’s new mayor Bill de Blasio provoked screams of outrage when he attacked a gooey pie at a Gotham pizzeria with – the horror – a knife and fork. “Blasphemy! No one would ever do such a thing in Italy,” the angry hordes shrieked.
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 this debate work out? Well, our conversation went something like this:
Your Humble Critic: We checked out El Camino the other night. It’s the new place with the Cali-Mex surfer/tiki-bar vibe that’s run by the Silver Dollar peeps in the old Avalon space on Bardstown. It is truly awesome.
The Bar Belle: I went the other night and wasn’t impressed.
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 stupid. Oh, I loved her back then, I truly did. It was late coming to Louisville, and I lusted after it in my heart when I read my friends’ stories online about her seductive wiles. And when she finally came to town, sometime around the turn of the millennium, as I recall, I was smitten, so smitten. Continue reading Food Network loves The Coach Lamp, but who loves Food Network?→
North End Cafe has just about become a Louisville institution, and it didn’t take all that long to do so. Co-owner and Chef Christopher Seckman celebrated the 10th anniversary of the original North End Cafe on lower Frankfort Avenue last spring – it’s a place of enduring popularity. Now the second North End Cafe, located at the Douglass Loop in the former Club Grotto location, appears to be going strong after a year and a half. Continue reading North End Cafe: Now a local institution→
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, caramelized joy of a fire-roasted marshmallow just hot enough to melt the milky chocolate … and then, the pièce de résistance, the crème de la crème, all this goodness squished between halves of a sizzling, seductively greasy grilled donut. Mmmmm, dooooonuts.
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 DKD (as its fans abbreviate it) manages to fit both Japanese and Mexican flavors — and a lot more, too — into a single menu, and somehow it works. Continue reading Pick your avatar at Dragon King’s Daughter→
“Sitar.” Sounds like “guitar,” a little, and sort of acts like one, too, this oversize Indian guitar-equivalent that the Beatles loved. It’s a stringed instrument that plays eerie, sinuous music that can’t be duplicated on a keyboard because it slides into the spaces between the keys.
