Cricket’s Café adds flavor to Sunny Side

It’s a wrap at Cricket Café

LEO’s Eats with LouisvilleHotBytes

By Kevin Gibson

You want fries with that? Eh. I’ll admit I often save a little time and eat a chain burger or corporate taco. But I know there are alternatives out there if I need them.

Over in Sellersburg, Cricket’s Café offers such an option.
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Warming up at Wiltshire on Market

Pork tenderloin at Wiltshire on Market

LEO’s Eats with LouisvilleHotBytes

We found a parking place right in front of Wiltshire on Market on a freezing Thursday evening, negotiated rock-hard ridges of icy snow and made it to the front door still standing. As soon as we stepped inside, a welcoming warmth enveloped us and drove away the cold.
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We follow the yellow brick road to Arbor Ridge

Arbor Ridge’s crab cakes

LEO’s Eats with LouisvilleHotBytes

Arbor Ridge’s menu is extensive and, management attests, “serves a fresh, flavorful and healthy cuisine with Californian and Mediterranean flair.” It is certainly a giant step beyond boring, although I wouldn’t rate it adventurous.
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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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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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Olmsted’s Bistro open to everyone

Voice-Tribune review by Robin Garr
LouisvilleHotBytes

Just about everyone in Louisville knows that our impressive collection of city parks from Cherokee to Iroquois to Shawnee - and the tree-lined parkways that connect them - were designed in the 19th century by the prominent landscape-architecture firm, Olmsted Brothers, headed by Frederick Law Olmsted, Jr.

It’s perhaps a bit less well-known that Olmsted designed other landscape projects around Louisville, including the oak-shaded lawns of the Masonic Home of Louisville on Frankfort Avenue, for which Olmstead designed the plans in 1867.

Originally the Masonic Widows and Orphans Home, now providing residential personal-care and nursing-care services for seniors, Masonic Home today is a stately campus of red-brick buildings, most of them built during the 1920s. Its central building is now called the Olmsted after the famous architect.

The Olmsted has been open to the public for catered meetings and events for several years. Now, after a recent renovation of its lower level, its 48-seat dining room - dubbed The Bistro in Club Olmstead - is open to the public for breakfast, lunch and dinner.
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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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Selena’s brings comfort to Willow Lake

LEO’s Eats with LouisvilleHotBytes

An old, popular East End country dive bar, closed for years, reopened about a year ago as Selena’s and has been drawing crowds ever since, owing its growing popularity to bountiful food, friendly service and a relaxing atmosphere. “A tradition since 1979,” read the black awning over the entrance to what used to be the Willow Lake Tavern when we visited soon after it opened last fall.
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The Patron won’t go away, and we’re glad

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

Early in August, Chef Amber McCool announced “a new path” for the popular Patron Restaurant, involving a move to a still-undisclosed location at an uncertain time. In the meantime, the restaurant at the corner of Frankfort Avenue and Cannons Lane would continue catering and wholesale operations as well as “calendared events.”

That calendar, it seems, has been full, with food and music events on Wednesdays (Kim Sorise’s “Wax on Wednesdays,” with 12-inch LPs and 12-inch pizzas), many Fridays (“Burger Night” with music, burgers and brews), and a tasty menu-based brunch on Saturdays and Sundays.

My wife and I didn’t really have food in mind when we drove past the Patron early on a recent Sunday afternoon, but the sight of a jammed parking lot lured us in. Sure enough, the place was slammed with happy brunchers, but it took a minute or two for us to be seated.
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The Windsor is slick, and so are its napkins

LEO’s Eats with LouisvilleHotBytes

“Five-second rule! Five-second rule!”

It didn’t matter whether I was decked out in fancy all-weather wool slacks on a Thursday evening or well-worn jeans for a Tuesday lunch: No matter the fabric, no matter how I folded and knotted the thing, the slick, slippery burgundy polyester napkin would not stay on my lap.

I must have invoked the five-second rule a dozen times or more, grumbling every time I plucked my fallen napkin from the floor, during a couple of recent meals at New Albany’s otherwise delightful Windsor Restaurant and Garden.

Come to think about it, the irritating napkin slide was just about the only nit I could find to pick with this splendid eatery, a worthy successor to the late and still lamented Bistro New Albany.

Young co-chefs Justin McMillen and Cory Cuff were barely old enough to legally sample their own wine list when the classy dining room and bar, with its lovable New Orleans-style patio, reopened in the old New Albany Inn last year.
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Breakfast, tapas? Have it your way at North End

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

Where is it written that eggs must be reserved for breakfast? In my culinary Day Timer, an omelet makes a splendid date for dinner. Scrambled eggs go down well anytime. And bacon! There’s no hour of the day or night when the thought of smoky, salty bacon won’t inspire a hunger pang.

On the other hand, I’m equally flexible about non-traditional savories at breakfast time. A slice of pizza, a piece of cold fried chicken or a scoop of cottage cheese filched from its tub while I stand in front of the open refrigerator door: These alternatives, too, make a perfectly acceptable way to start the day.

Now, to huzzahs from breakfast lovers everywhere, North End Café makes all-day breakfast easy. (more…)

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