Category Archives: Coffee Shops & Desserts

$ Budget (under $30), A RESTAURANT LISTING..., Breakfast and lunch spots, sandwich spots, Brunch, Coffee Shops & Desserts, Hurstbourne, Middletown, Jeffersontown

Born2Bagel and lox and bialys, oh my!

By Robin Garr
LouisvilleHotBytes.com

Here’s a good way to start a noisy debate among Louisville food lovers: Ask for opinions on where to get the best bagel in town. Want to kick it up another notch? Ask you can even get a bialy hereabouts.

What’s a bialy? See what I mean? A lot of us have so little exposure to this rarely seen cousin to the bagel that we’re not even sure what it is.

More about that shortly. First, though, let’s put our hands together and welcome our town’s latest bagel shop: Born2Bagel, which opened last autumn in a Middletown shopping-strip storefront at the corner of Shelbyville Road and Blankenbaker Parkway.

Continue reading Born2Bagel and lox and bialys, oh my! →
$$ Modest ($30-$50), A RESTAURANT LISTING..., Coffee Shops & Desserts, Commentary, Frankfort Ave., Clifton, Crescent Hill

Blue Dog’s new owner keeps on keeping on

By Robin Garr
LouisvilleHotBytes.com

It was a chilly, cloudy Saturday morning in January. The temperature was hovering around 37º. Even so, the sidewalk tables in front of Frankfort Avenue’s beloved Blue Dog Bakery & Café were filling up just the same, hungry travelers clad in parkas and mittens, eagerly awaiting a steaming coffee drink and pastry treat.

Inside Blue Dog’s warm, cozy space was jammed with more eager supplicants. Counter service would begin any moment, and they were ready.

“It’s always like this,” Blue Dog’s new owner Libbie Ackerman Loeser said with a smile.

Continue reading Blue Dog’s new owner keeps on keeping on →
$ Budget (under $30), Baxter, Bardstown, Highlands, Coffee Shops & Desserts, Frankfort Ave., Clifton, Crescent Hill, St. Matthews, Westport Village, and environs

Ice cream for Christmas because why not?

Tell me about favorite desserts and sweet treats for the holidays: What have you got? If you celebrated Hanukkah in your household, you’ve enjoyed such deliciousness as hamentaschen, jelly donuts, and all manner of fried sweets. Christmas brings a wealth of sugary delights, from gingerbread cookies and Yule log cakes to the ubiquitous fruitcake and whatever the hell sugar plums are.

But wait! Where’s the ice cream? Yes, knocking back a pint of frozen cream can bring down your core temperature, but inside a warm and cozy house, in front of a fireplace, ice cream can be a festive treat. Continue reading Ice cream for Christmas because why not? →

$ Budget (under $30), Coffee Shops & Desserts, Downtown, NuLu and Butchertown, LEO's Eats, QuickBytes

Ehrler’s is back, and it’s good

Nothing goes much better to rid your palate of the sad and mournful taste of raw kale than a scoop of delicious, creamy ice cream, and the serious shot of bourbon in Ehrler’s bourbon pecan fudge ($3.60 for a kiddie cup big enough for two kiddies) did the trick for me. Continue reading Ehrler’s is back, and it’s good →

$ Budget (under $30), Baxter, Bardstown, Highlands, Coffee Shops & Desserts, Frankfort Ave., Clifton, Crescent Hill, QuickBytes, Southern Indiana, St. Matthews, Westport Village, and environs, underSlideshowEntries, Voice-Tribune review

Comfy Cow growing into a herd

“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 →

$ Budget (under $30), Coffee Shops & Desserts, QuickBytes, Southern Indiana, underSlideshowEntries, Voice-Tribune review, World Food

Road food road trip in Southern Indiana!

I know this is hard to believe, but a couple of generations back, when our parents and even our grandparents were young, a road trip took some planning. There were no Interstate highways and nothing like McDonald’s, Wendy’s or Burger King. What was a hungry traveler to do in those days of winding two-lane highways and no familiar burger logos glowing in the distance? As it happens, though it may have taken longer to get to your destination, but our forbears arguably enjoyed a finer, tastier and better quality of road food in those days gone by.
Continue reading Road food road trip in Southern Indiana! →

$ Budget (under $30), Coffee Shops & Desserts, QuickBytes, underSlideshowEntries, Voice-Tribune review

’tis the season for the perfect peach (ice cream)

What’s my favorite season? Don’t ask me to choose between summer, winter, spring or fall. Baseball, football, basketball, it doesn’t matter much to me. But talk about fresh peach season, and you’ve grabbed my attention in a serious way. Continue reading ’tis the season for the perfect peach (ice cream) →

$ Budget (under $30), Coffee Shops & Desserts, Frankfort Ave., Clifton, Crescent Hill

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.

$ Budget (under $30), Baxter, Bardstown, Highlands, Coffee Shops & Desserts, Commentary, Germantown, Southern Indiana, underSlideshowEntries

In search of the city’s best doughnuts

Donuts at Nord's

Who doesn’t like doughnuts? There’s something comforting about these fried spheres of goodness with a hole in the middle, and most doughnut lovers have strong opinions on the subject.

Louisville boasts many local bakeries and doughnut joints. But not all doughnuts (or, if you prefer, “donuts”) are created equal, so I set out to try a random sample of five locals to see how they compared.
Continue reading In search of the city’s best doughnuts →