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.
Actually, that’s not really true. Continue reading Jet’s Takes Off With Detroit-Style Pizza
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.
Critic: Whaaa? Continue reading No, Bar Belle! El Camino is surfin’ good
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
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, 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.
I bet you think I’m at the State Fair.
Continue reading Tom+Chee does it on a donut … or not
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.
When you think about it, Indian food is kind of like that, too. Continue reading Sitar plays Indian music to our taste buds
In fact, the tenuous connection reportedly goes back to an old franchise agreement for a different location. The similar sign was not exactly welcomed by the original Fishery folks, or so I’m told.
But the argument has apparently abated, as the sign still stands. Live and let live. It takes plenty of fish to satisfy all the fish lovers in this fish-happy town, anyway, and that goes double when it’s Lent, the season when a lot of believers, in the spirit of sacrifice, switch over from delicious red meat to delicious fried white fish during the 40 days before Easter.
You don’t have to believe a thing beyond “I believe I’ll have me a fish sandwich” to enjoy the goodies here, though; and I’ll testify that Shahram Pouranfour (who also operates Sharom’s Fishery Station on Outer Loop) is a master of breading and frying. In a recent visit, we didn’t taste a fried item that wasn’t crisp, golden-brown and delicious. The offbeat venue only adds to Fish-Fry’s curb appeal: It’s located in the ‘20s-era gasoline service station that was lovingly renovated for restaurant use by the late, lamented Diamond Station.
The menu, as noted, depends substantially on frying, with fried Boston scrod, chicken, shrimp, chicken livers, oysters, salmon croquettes; even fried alligator tail and fried shark bites, along with a few tasty non-fried items such as oven-baked scrod, on a family-friendly menu topping out at $12.95 (for a fried oyster platter with choice of two sides). The bar is currently shut down, a sign on the door announcing that wine, beer and liquor won’t be available “until further notice.”
We made do with iced tea and filled up on a well-made fried scrod on rye ($6.50), an oversize rolled oyster ($5.75) that resembled a giant hush puppy with tiny fresh oysters baked in, and sides of outstanding fried green tomatoes, standard-issue green beans and, reflecting Pouranfour’s Persian heritage, Iranian-style dilled rice.
Our fried lunch for two, filling enough to set aside any plan for a serious dinner that evening, came to $27.78, plus a $6 tip.
Fish-Fry House
2280 Bardstown Road
632-2583
fishfryhouse.com
At least a few million megabytes of social media and a wastebasket full of old-media newsprint have surely been spilled over the recent startling and sudden demise of Lynn’s Paradise Cafe.
I don’t see much point in adding more to that flood, other than to note that we may yet be hearing more about the weird tipping and servers-vs.-management dispute that broke into public view a few days before proprietor Lynn Winter yanked the keys out of the restaurant’s ignition and shut ’er down.
But let’s not get into the who, what, when, where and why of all that right now. A larger question looms: “Where in the heck can we go for Sunday brunch now that Lynn’s is gone?”
Continue reading Where will we go for brunch now that Lynn’s is closed?
It’s no longer hip to claim colonialism was cool. Take it from one who spends entirely too much time in the groves of academe: In this post-colonial era, the dead white men who once strode the earth to plant a flag in distant lands in the name of president or queen are distinctly out of fashion. It isn’t even politically correct to brag about those exploits anymore.
But I’ll step up and proudly claim one great boon of civilization that may be even better as a result of having been taken around the world to meet and mingle and gain new ideas from exposure to other cultures.
Of course I’m talking about the sandwich. Continue reading Banh Mi Hero gets the Vietnamese sandwich right
