Umai Zushi impresses with bountiful sushi spread

Five nigiri-zushi and two maki-zushi rolls at Umai Zushi

Voice-Tribune review by LouisvilleHotBytes

I love Asian food, and I’m a big fan of many of the East End’s excellent Chinese restaurants, including such quality eateries as Oriental House, Jade Palace, Jasmine, Liang’s and the new Peking City Bistro.

I’m less whelmed with storefront chopsticks houses and all-you-can-eat Chinese buffets, though. Not that they won’t fill me up when I’m cravin’ Asian, but to be quite frank, they’re all pretty much the same.

Until now, that is.

The arrival of Umai Zushi Buffet near the outer stretches of Westport Road introduces a new variable to the Asian buffet equation: In addition to the usual Chinese suspects, it offers a bounty of king crab legs and, from the cuisine of Japan, more than 40 sushi and sashimi goodies.

It’s pretty good sushi, too, I’m pleased to report.
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Indian home cooking at Little India Café

One of the dishes at Litte India Café.

LEO’s Eats with LouisvilleHotBytes

I’d like to tell you about a cozy new place where dining is much like being invited into an Indian family’s home for dinner.

Pop bustles about while Junior sets the table and keeps up a stream of friendly chatter. Mom’s in the kitchen with a clatter of pans and spoons, and wonderful smells come wafting out. Plates bearing aromatic, home-cooked Indian goodies soon start appearing on the table, and the whole family smiles, awaiting your thumbs-up.

That’s basically the scene at Little India Café.
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Taste your Asia four ways

LEO’s Eats with LouisvilleHotBytes

Speaking of new ethnic arrivals in spaces formerly occupied by other restaurants, A Taste of Asia has landed in the shopping-center space formerly occupied by Tony Boombozz’s North Hurstbourne quarters before Boombozz moved to Westport Village.
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Wasabiya serves creative sushi, but not without a few flaws

A roll at Wasabiya

LEO’s Eats with LouisvilleHotBytes

All right, who ordered all this raw fish? At the rate things are going, the city’s Bardstown-Baxter strip is going to have to change its nickname from restaurant row to something like … well, how does “The Boulevard of Bistros and Sushi Bars” sound?

The strip’s bubbling demographic stew of hipsters, punks, tattoo’d and pierced people with a healthy dose of aging hippies, slow-food types and upscale LEO-reading liberals brings it about as close as Louisville can get to the Upper West Side.
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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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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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Café Thuy Van: Vietnamese off the beaten path

(Photo by Robin Garr.)

LEO’s Eats with LouisvilleHotBytes

More than 30 years after the first wave of Vietnamese immigrants came to Louisville, these refugees and their children and grandchildren have moved into the mainstream of community life.

Much like our Latino, Bosnian, Senegalese and other immigrant neighbors, these refugees of war brought Louisville a gift that delights both our hearts and our tummies. Our Vietnamese community has made a significant contribution to the cityscape in the form of inviting Vietnamese restaurants and groceries.

Just about every resident foodie knows and loves Vietnam Kitchen. In the same South End neighborhood, Café Annie and Pho Binh Minh all have their partisans. But it takes a few more left and right turns past the South End cluster and into less familiar territory to bring you to Café Thuy Van, a culinary delight that’s been around for nine years but is just far enough off the beaten path to have escaped many foodies’ notice.
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TanThai sets new standard in Thai food

LEO’s Eats with LouisvilleHotBytes
(Photo by Robin Garr.)

Foodies, food lovers and food geeks who’ve been around town for a while will recall the happy shock that comes with the discovery of an ethnic spot that stands out from the pack: A new arrival with food preparation and style that hint at something special going on in the kitchen.

So it was with Vietnam Kitchen, almost a generation ago now, around the same time as the Mayan Gypsy truck went land-based with its first bricks-and-mortar location. More recently, we’ve seen it with Saffron’s for Iranian and Red Pepper for hardcore authentic Chinese.

In each case, the food, the mood and the service — but especially the food — signal that this place is, well, different.

Now welcome another ethnic standout, TanThai Cuisine of Thailand. It’s been in its shopping-center quarters on Charlestown Pike, north of New Albany, for close to a year now. But word of mouth travels slowly when there’s a broad river to cross, and TanThai remains unfamiliar to most of Louisville’s ethnic-food fanciers.
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Café Mimosa returns

By Kevin Gibson
LEO’s Eats with LouisvilleHotBytes

The familiar logo on the former Lentini’s reads “Café Mimosa,” but the sandwich board out front says it all: “We open now!”

A fire destroyed Café Mimosa’s former location — along with its partner Egg Roll Machine — in January. Owner Phat Le vowed to reopen; the former Lentini’s made sense since, well, he already owned it.

The new Mimosa, replacing recent tenant Jarfi’s, seems more upscale than the old, but food and prices are much the same.
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Thai comes to Fern Creek

LEO’s Eats with LouisvilleHotBytes

With all due respect, the Fern Creek neighborhood has long been the kind of place where “ethnic” means barbecue or diner fare.

But the arrival last year of Sake Blue, one of the region’s top Japanese restaurants, changed that metric forever. Now add Thai to the mix with the opening of True Thai in the Glenmary Plaza shopping center just east of the Snyder.

Small but bright and attractively decorated, True Thai is operated, I’m told, by a former employee of Louisville’s Thai-Siam. A menu of about 30 standard Thai dishes is attractively priced with all dishes under $10. Stir-fry, noodle and fried-rice dishes are $8.95 for chicken, pork or tofu dishes; add a buck for seafood. Curries are $7.95 and $9.95.
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Dragon King’s Daughter gives sushi a new twist

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

“I just can’t do sushi,” my Facebook friend Suzie in Arkansas posted. “It’s the redneck in me.”

Maybe. But even the most ardent sushi-hater could be rehabilitated at Dragon King’s Daughter, where Toki Masabuchi puts an international twist on the creative sushi delights that have built her a loyal following at Maido Essential Japanese in Clifton.

Take the “Italian Picnic” ($10, pictured). There’s no fish in this delight, which features pencil-thin asparagus, tempura-battered and fried, tucked into a sushi roll topped not with seafood but Italian prosciutto, fresh basil leaves and a dab of Japanese mayo topped with a few toasted pine nuts. Is it Japanese? Is it Italian? It’s both – and it is delicious.

Masabuchi, who continues to work her culinary magic at Maido, too, recently took over the Bardstown Road quarters left vacant by the abrupt departure of Karma Café.

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Mikato brings Japanese flair to old Napa River space

LouisvilleHotBytes.com in The Voice-Tribune

If you think of a Japanese restaurant, sushi may cross your mind, assuming you’re a reasonably adventurous diner. Not so adventurous? Then the fun of Japanese slice-and-dice chefs showing off their utensil-tossing techniques at hibachi tables may ring your gong.

Adventurous or shy, just about everybody can appreciate the subject of today’s sermon, the bento box. This attractive option, a Japanese food tradition for some 500 years, features a pretty, black-lacquered wooden box neatly divided into rectangular sections, each containing a different tidbit, each offering a delicious contrast of color, texture and flavor. (It’s perfect for those who can’t stand foods touching on the plate, but even the less compulsive can come to love a bento.)

Happily, you can find sushi, hibachi grills AND bentos – and much more – at Mikato Japanese Steak & Sushi in St. Matthews. (more…)

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