Category Archives: Frankfort Ave., Clifton, Crescent Hill

Around the world on a dinner plate

Catching up with a bunch of items that have piled up in my critic’s notebook, let’s take a quick trip around the world on a dinner plate, stopping off at a trio of worthy spots for tastes of the Mediterranean, Korea and a Philadelphia treat — a surprisingly fetching “cheeze” “steak” that’s fully vegan.


Sampling the samplers at The Grape Leaf

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Caffe Classico: A classic in Clifton

You would think that everyone in town knows that Caffe Classico is far more than just another Frankfort Avenue coffee shop by now. After all, I’ve probably told about 80 percent of you personally! But for whatever reason this Clifton jewel remains undiscovered, at least by quite a few, so let’s say it again, this time to the whole group of you: “Caffe Classico is far more than just another coffee shop!” Continue reading Caffe Classico: A classic in Clifton

Volare continues the upscale Italian tradition

Volare, oh oh … Cantare, oh oh oh oh … Let’s fly way up to the clouds …” With Dean Martin’s classic rendition of the pop Italian ballad firmly planted in our ears, let’s talk about Volare and how it fits into the pantheon of Louisville’s top Italian tables.

It’s all connected, after all, and goes back to the 1970s, when, for a century or more, “Italian” food had meant the hearty, tomato-sauced American-immigrant fare that families brought through Ellis Island from Calabria and Sicily, Italy’s poverty-ridden deep south.
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Ramsi’s: It’s 24, 24, 24 restaurants in one!

Remember those old commercials for Certs? “It’s a breath mint!” “It’s a candy mint!” “It’s two, two, two mints in one!” And then there was the goofy spoof from the gang at “Saturday Night Live”: “It’s a floor wax!” “It’s a dessert topping!” I think the lesson most of us ultimately drew from this is that a product that tries to be two things in one ends up doing neither very well.

And Ramsi’s Café on the World, I regret to say, is kind of like that, too.
Continue reading Ramsi’s: It’s 24, 24, 24 restaurants in one!

Echoes of Bakersfield at The Silver Dollar

Back in the day, when I was young and stupid, I would often make the long drive down California’s agricultural Central Valley, burning up the Golden State Highway to visit a girlfriend at UCLA.

When I hit the dusty town of Bakersfield, surrounded by oil rigs and potato fields, I knew I was within 100 miles and a couple of fast-driving hours over the Santa Monica Mountains to my destination. Sometimes I would reward myself with a pit stop and a cold beer at some dark and noisy honky-tonk, where the dominant sound was invariably loud country music.
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Clifton awash in ice cream

Within one remarkable week in October, two familiar old Clifton buildings on opposite sides of Frankfort Avenue have turned into ice cream shops. Last week, Homemade Ice Cream and Pie Kitchen opened its ninth branch, a café-style shop featuring wine and beer and, of course, ice cream, in the old Longshot Tavern (2232 Frankfort Ave., 409-6111, www.piekitchen.com).

A week earlier, Mayor Greg Fischer cut the ribbon to open Comfy Cow’s third branch on the site of the old Genny’s Diner and in the beautifully restored Queen Anne house next door. You know, the one the guy from Genny’s had declared unsalvageable. (It’s at 2221 Frankfort Ave., 409-4616, thecomfycow.com.)

Of course I had to try a tasting: $2.76 for a single scoop at the Pie Kitchen, $3.15 at the Cow. Frankly, they both smelled and tasted very good, with a fresh, clean chocolate scent and pure flavor. I gave the Comfy Cow the nod based on superior texture and flavor, but it was a close race. Pay your money and take your choice.

Family dining at Cubana in Clifton

So where does a restaurant critic go out to dinner if he has family in town? This is not always an easy question. Go to the finest dining rooms, the places I love?

That’s easy counsel, and way tempting, but more often than not I’ve checked out the local favorites too recently to justify going back. Drag them along to the next place I have to go, whether they like it or not? That can be tempting, too, as any therapist who knows a thing about sibling rivalry can attest.

But in the real world of practical matters, the answer lies somewhere in between. Briefly stated, it’s something like, “Pick a place that’s due for review and that I think they’ll enjoy.”

And so it was when my brother, Matt, came through town recently on sabbatical from his job in Lima, Peru. Matt speaks Spanish like a Peruvian native, so an eatery with a Latino accent made sense. I’d been keeping an eye on Cubana since it opened in Clifton early this year anyway.

I’ve enjoyed lunch at Cubana several times, but for one reason or another had never focused on the place for a dinner review. Matt’s visit offered a good opportunity to catch up, and Cubana proved to be an excellent choice for the occasion.

That Spanish thing didn’t work out for us, though: The servers at Cubana spoke Louisville English as fluently as I do, although I’m sure there was a Cuban chef back in the kitchen. The building that houses Cubana boasts quite a local-restaurant heritage: It was briefly Danielle’s, an excellent but short-lived upscale bistro where Chef Allan Rosenberg plied his art, well before he achieved local fame as the founder of Papalinos NY Pizzeria. Further back, Baby Boomers will remember it as the home of the original Lynn’s Paradise Cafe; a Jamaican joint with great homemade ginger beer; and a pretty good Korean spot called Little Bit of Seoul. With such a diverse culinary heritage, a Cuban eatery fits right in, and newly painted walls in aqua and peach give it the sunny tropical look of a Havana plaza.

Its menu contains many of the Cuban standards that have become familiar to local foodies since the arrival of Havana Rumba in 2004 kicked off a Cuban boomlet. Even if you aren’t familiar with Cuban dishes, though, the menu makes it easy, subdividing the bill of fare into portions based on the main ingredient and helpfully offering an English translation. (Carnes is meat, puerco is pork, pollo is chicken, and so it goes.)

There must be a couple dozen main-dish choices, ranging in price from around $10 (for vegetarian dishes and meal-size sandwiches, including the classic Sandwich Cubano for $9.99) to the mid-teens: A hearty seafood casserole in Creole or cream sauce au gratin is $15.99. You’ll also find enough appetizers ($6.59-$9.59) to put together a tapas meal; and a lunch menu, available from 11 a.m.-3 p.m. Mondays through Saturdays, offers about 16 choices, including a sandwich and soup-or-salad choice for $8.99. I’ve enjoyed the Cubano on past visits and can testify that it’s a worthy example of the genre.

Cubana wasn’t terribly crowded fairly early on a Thursday evening, which made conversation easy. We started our dinner with a shared appetizer, Empanadas Vegetarianas ($6.59): A pair of flaky pastry pillows were stuffed with a mix of spinach, corn, chopped onions and bell peppers, and cheese. They were so grease-free that I almost wondered if they’d been baked, not fried; but their flavor was great, and if two empanadas required careful carving for three to share, that’s OK, as it made it easy for me to nip a little more than my share. They came with a dish of pink dipping sauce that was creamy and sweet, not hot, and went well with the veggie stuffing.

Matt’s pick, Pollo con Mojo ($12.99, described as “marinated chicken breast”), started with a flattened skinless, boneless chicken breast, a cut that can be mighty boring but that gained interest here from a tangy-sweet citrus marinade, a spell on the grill to add flavor and texture, and a tasty topping of grilled onions and Cuban-style mojo sauce, which is basically a garlicky citrus vinaigrette. All the main dishes were accompanied with exceptionally good white rice, tender black beans and a couple rounds of fried plantains.

Mary’s Cerno alla Parilla ($14.99) earned a thumbs-up: A mild, flaky grouper fillet was rubbed with a mojo-like mix of garlic and olive oil, with a blend of chopped parsley and aromatic cilantro to add herbal notes in place of the sour citrus.

My choice, Pincho Vegetarianas ($10.99), scored as the most colorful dish of the evening and was in competition for most flavorful. Literally “veggies on a spike,” it consisted of big, bright squares of yellow, red and green peppers, red onion and chunks of summer squash and zucchini, drizzled in garlicky mojo and grilled on a skewer until they were sizzling and irresistible.

Dessert? One flan ($4.99), please, and three spoons. Dubbed “Abuelita’s flan,” which means something like “Granny’s caramel custard,” it was creamy, smooth and rich, good enough to have come from a sweet grandmother’s kitchen, assuming we’re talking about a Cuban grandmother.

There’s a bar including a short wine list and some Latino bottled beers, but we went with water on this jaunt, bringing dinner for three to an affordable $57.61, to which I added a $12 tip.

Cubana
2206 Frankfort Ave.
409-4828
Rating: 81

A world of Mexican delights at El Mundo

You’ll find a lot of different kinds of Mexican eateries around town. “Mexican” dining experiences run the gamut from tacquerias so authentic that you’ll need to bring a Spanish-English dictionary (or at least a smile and a plan to point out what you want) to, well, Taco Bell, which barely qualifies as Mexican at all.
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Food truck fare hits the road in the Metro

If you’re trying to save on fuel during a summer that makes the case for global warming and when gasoline prices flirt with $4 per gallon, there’s a lot to like about a friendly food truck operator who brings lunch to your neighborhood. Across the country, a veritable food truck race is under way, with food truck “pods” growing in with-it towns like Austin, Texas, and Portland, Ore.
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It’s easy to ♥ this Clifton sushi spot

salmon skin sushi
Salmon skin sushi. PHOTO: RON JASIN
I have never quite understood why Lower Brownsboro Road, an avenue that traverses trendy Clifton and historic Crescent Hill on its way out to classy Mockingbird Valley, is punctuated with so many gritty and downscale shopping strips that confer a distinctly “urban” tone. But it’s a fact: Drive down the strip and count the tiny bottle shops, check-cashing stores, junk shops, gas station-convenience shops, a 24-hour diner and even a supermarket so widely, if unjustly, known as “Dirty” Kroger that even former Louisville mayor Dave Armstrong once uttered the term to me in an on-the-record interview.

It should be no surprise, then, that there’s been a quick series of short-lived eateries in the Lower Brownsboro restaurant space that shares a small parking lot with an advance payday loan shop that guards its parking spaces with dire threats of immediate towing. A Middle Eastern spot, a Jamaican eatery, an excellent soul food shop — some of them have been quite good, but I don’t see how the grim surroundings can help.

The latest tenant, however, is worth checking out. If friendly, smiling service, appealing Japanese-Korean fare and, on the day of our visit, impeccably fresh sushi count for anything, then maybe I ♥ Sushi & Teriyaki can stick.

The dining room is small but shiny and well-kept, with nary a painting or any other decor to adorn the pale beige walls; floor-to-ceiling plate-glass windows afford a view of four tiny commercial huts across the road. An L-shaped bar at the entrance has been converted into a sushi bar with a half-dozen tall stools. Wooden benches and red dinette chairs provide seating for maybe two dozen more at large tables, which are set with paper napkins and wooden chopsticks (Western cutlery is available on request).

The menu is relatively brief, but it offers plenty of choices for everyone, with an abundance of cooked dishes for those who don’t ♥ raw fish. Dinner entrees come with rice, vegetables and salad and range in price from $11 (for “chicken and chicken,” boneless bites in teriyaki glaze) to $21 (for deep-fried lobster meat in honey almond-coconut sauce, or sauteed “scallop and scallop”). As mentioned, Korean flavors turn up amid the Japanese mix, with bulgogi (Korean marinated grilled beef, $15) and kalbi (Korean marinated beef short ribs, $15) among the goodies.

The usual extensive list of sushi rolls, nigiri sushi bites and sashimi is also available, of course, many at $3.50 or $4 for nigiri, and rolls starting at $3, rising to a still reasonable $12 for some specialty rolls.

If you’re on a budget, you can enjoy filling soba or udon noodle dishes for $10 or less, and fried rice for as little as $5 for the vegetarian version. About 18 appetizers are subdivided into vegetable and meat items, and prices in the $3 to $7 range for many items would make the grazing option an easy choice. There’s a short list of beers, wines and Japanese sake, plus Japanese green tea or soft drinks to wash it all down.

We took advantage of the 11 a.m.-3 p.m. lunch menu ($7 to $10) and some sushi and were quite satisfied with food and service.

Mary picked what appeared to be a Korean-Japanese hybrid dish, bulgogi teriyaki ($9), and was happy with her oversize white platter loaded with stir-fried veggies aromatic with wok hai, the characteristic smoky scent of food fresh from a well-handled wok, and thin-sliced, soy-marinated grilled beef. A generous portion of steaming white rice came alongside, and both lunches were accompanied by steaming, “meaty” miso soup and a fresh green salad with a tangy ginger-and-citrus dressing.

I chose Combo B ($10), which consisted of a plate of Yaki Soba (more of those great, sizzling stir-fried veggies and a dash of soy flavor atop a bed of thin, vermicelli-like wheat noodles), and an order of four nigiri sushi — chef’s choice of shrimp, salmon, tuna and snapper — following as a second course. We also summoned two sushi rolls, crispy salmon skin ($6) and sweet mild yellowtail and scallion ($5).

The sushi was very good to excellent — nothing fancy, but extremely fresh fish on a Tuesday, and as everyone who has read my rants about stinky, old fish in sushi will know — I’m a strict judge of this point as being key to a sushi bar’s success.

A filling lunch for two, with some Korean bulgogi beef left over for lunch the next day, came to $33.66, a mighty light toll by sushi-bar standards. I rounded up to $40 for enthusiastic service.

I ♥ Sushi & Teriyaki
2017 Brownsboro Road
893-8226
Rating: 84