Don’t shun the store brand

INDUSTRY STANDARD:
Insider Info For Those Who Dine Out
With Columnist Marsha Lynch

My dear, departed mom was a housewife in the ’60s and ’70s. In addition to being enamored of all sorts of convenience foods (such as skillet-dinner-in-a-box and instant mashed potatoes), she was a starry-eyed brand-name-foods aficionada.
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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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No animals were harmed in making this chilidog

Speaking of creative eateries, Conez & Coneyz may be one of the smallest dining venues on Frankfort Avenue, but it’s also one of the most eager to please.
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Let’s break our fast at Zapata’s Corner

Zapata’s Huevos con Chorizos

LEO’s Eats with LouisvilleHotBytes

How about a little desayuno? Barring the Saturday bowl of menudo at the local taqueria, the regrettable closing of Bueños Dias Café in Jeffersonville left the area bereft of a really good Mexican breakfast … until the happy arrival of Zapata’s Corner in Middletown, refilling the space left vacant by the brief final incarnation of Mazzoni’s with a happy, colorful Latino vibe.
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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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Cocos Lokos brings Cuban and more to Hurstbourne

Ceviche of the Day. Photo: Robin Garr.

Voice-Tribune review by LouisvilleHotBytes

Walk into Cocos Lokos, and a couple of things are likely to catch your eye.

First, if you think you detect a resemblance to Havana Rumba, that’s not terribly surprising. The manager and several members of the Cocos Lokos team left the popular Cuban spot in St. Matthews a couple of months ago to open this new spot in the Hunnington Place shopping center just off I-64 and Hurstbourne Parkway.

Second, you may be as pleasantly surprised as I was to see what a remarkable job they’ve done of making a shopping center space look, well, like it isn’t in a shopping center.
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Dissertation on chili and a fine new place to enjoy it

	Lunch at the Chili Pot. Photo: Robin Garr.

LEO’s Eats with LouisvilleHotBytes

If you think wine-snob dogma like “never drink white wine with red meat” or “never drink white Zinfandel with any meat” or “never drink a wine with a rating under 90” is tough, you’ve obviously never set foot in a room filled with baying chili-heads.

Tomatoes or no tomatoes? Beans or no beans? Chopped meat or ground meat? Chili powder, dried chilies or fresh? It’s like listening to medieval theologians arguing about how many angels can dance on the head of a pin.

A recent visit to The Chili Pot, a great new spot in Okolona, filled me with the warming potion and prompted me to ponder the chili mystique.
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Diamond Café: A Facebook phenom scores in the real world

The Reuben at Diamond Café

LEO’s Eats with LouisvilleHotBytes
As a veteran of food and wine online since well before Al Gore played his small role in the invention of the Internet, I’ve been following the development of social media from the start.

But here’s something new: Mark down Diamond Café as the first local spot I’m aware of that went viral on Facebook before word-of-mouth spread news of its arrival in Clifton Heights.

Diamond (”D&C Diamond Café,” per its business card) quietly replaced Taste of Jamaica a few months ago. When I spotted the café’s Facebook fan page the other day, bearing the slogan “fine dining at an affordable price,” it had already gathered more than 900 followers.
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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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Otto’s takes on tough competition with “best burger”

The Otto BurgerPhoto: Robin Garr

Voice-Tribune review by LouisvilleHotBytes

The economy being what it is, I find myself ordering hamburger about as often as steak these days. But if I’m going to have a burger, I want it to be a good one. And happily, quite a few local beef emporia have made this wish an entirely possible dream.

Recently Otto’s Cafe, the first-floor coffee shop at the Seelbach Hotel, entered the hamburger sweepstakes with a take-no-prisoners news release that flatly declares Otto’s new hamburger the best in town.

“Now that consumers have tried the rest,” the Emailed statement boldly declared, “Otto’s at The Seelbach Hilton is inviting everyone to try the very best!”

Going on in considerable detail, the PR spun a tale of friendly corporate espionage: Culinary staff fanned out across the city like a squadron of food critics, ordering hamburgers and checking them twice, trying to see which were naughty or nice.

Disappointed by prefab frozen patties, dried-out, pounded and pressed burgers devoid of juicy deliciousness (I’m just passing along the story here, folks), the Otto’s burger creators concluded that high-quality fresh-ground, hand-packed beef parked on a house-baked bun was the way to go.
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Who put these foodie sugar plums in my stocking?

Caffe Classico’s Saffron Asiago risotto cakes

LEO’s Eats with LouisvilleHotBytes

New happenings at Caffe Classico and The Comfy Cow

With visions of sugar plums dancing in our heads, and neither a kerchief nor a stocking cap in sight, a long winter’s nap has been the furthest thing from Mamma’s, er, Mary’s and my heads as the holiday season draws near.

We’re obligate foodies, we’re ready for eats, and we see no conflict between celebrating Christmas the old-fashioned way, with joyous services on Christmas morning, followed by a late lunch, making the trek over the creek and through the woods to Vietnam Kitchen. It’s a perennial favorite among the many Asian eateries that remain open on Christmas Day.
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Thai Orchids bloom in Stony Brook

Voice-Tribune review by Robin Garr
LouisvilleHotBytes

Thailand’s tropical shores, forests and mountains are home to beautiful orchids, making this beautiful tropical flower all but the unofficial symbol of this ancient Southeast Asian kingdom.

Hailing Thailand’s symbolic flower in its name, Louisville’s Thai Orchid arrived last year when Sala Thai departed Jeffersontown’s Stony Brook for a downtown location (now sadly defunct).
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