I’ve long been a fan of Moby Dick. The local mini-chain with the cartoon whale logo may look fast-foodish, but they’ve been frying quality cod for nearly 45 years, and they know how to do it right. But the news of a recent addition at the Moby Dick in St. Matthews (4848 Shelbyville Road, near Whole Foods) made my head snap back. Fried chicken?
Continue reading A thigh and a wing for Captain Ahab?
Category Archives: Seafood & Water’s Edge
We get scrod, and haddock too, at The Fish House
So what’s a scrod? I’ll spare you the notorious Boston cabbie joke (although if you’re desperate to hear it, email me.) Anyway … scrod – or “schrod,” an older variation that’s dying out – is a foodie term that’s hard to pin down. Its definition varies depending on where you look it up.
Continue reading We get scrod, and haddock too, at The Fish House
Recession-busting dining, cheap but fine
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| Bazo’s, which recently moved to new quarters off Dupont Circle, serves one of the city’s best fish tacos. Photo by Robin Garr |
LEO’s Eats with LouisvilleHotBytes.com
(Bazo’s, Caffe Classico, J. Gumbo’s, Stan’s)
OK, everybody listen up. I’ve told you this before, and chances are you’re going to hear it again: There’s a recession on.
Yes, a recession, and a lot of us are hurting. We’re cutting back on luxuries and hoping we won’t have to cut back on necessities.
For those of us who love food and drink and dining out, we’re whipsawed: It’s harder to justify dropping a pile of bucks on a big evening out, so fine dining may be one of the first indulgences to drop off the budget. But this decision puts a hurtin’ on Louisville’s local, independent restaurant community, the Louisville Originals and Keep Louisville Weirds that make our city an exceptional place to dine for its size.
Continue reading Recession-busting dining, cheap but fine
No need to roll your own at Mazzoni’s
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| Mazzoni’s, the 125-year-old Louisville tradition, is still going strong in its new Middletown digs. The fried oysters should not be missed. Photo by Robin Garr. |
Mazzoni’s, the 125-year-old Louisville tradition, moved out to Middletown from its longtime quarters on Taylorsville Road earlier this year. I wandered out the other day for a couple deep-fried delights and found its new shopping center quarters virtually indistinguishable from the old, complete with the trademark 27-foot-long walnut serving bar (which dates all the way back to its old downtown location) and gallery of old Louisville pictures on the walls.
Continue reading No need to roll your own at Mazzoni’s
Unchained Macca’s delights at Westport Village
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| Macca’s Florida Seafood Grill & Bar holds down a prime spot in the Westport Village center. Outside seating, clean restrooms and a full bar, with plenty of scurrying employees wearing matching attire, put Macca’s squarely in the upscale-casual realm. Photo by Robin Garr. |
LEO’s Eats with LouisvilleHotBytes.com, with Guest Critic Kevin Gibson
If Macca’s Florida Seafood Grill & Bar, with its clean, corporate, angular design and requisite marine-centric décor, looks like it could be part of a chain, that’s probably more than coincidental – this sleek, family-friendly restaurant was originally going to be an R.J. Gator’s franchise, but corporate expansion plans by the Florida-based restaurant chain got put on the back burner, reportedly for economic reasons.
Continue reading Unchained Macca’s delights at Westport Village
Why did the foodie cross the river?
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| Market Street Fish House in New Albany. Photo by Robin Garr. |
LEO’s Eats with LouisvilleHotBytes.com
I went across the Ohio to New Albany last week and had me a big old batch of fried oysters, and they were fine, even though the month of May doesn’t have an “R” in it.
Happily, the old wisdom about avoiding oysters from the end of Aprrrril through the first of Septemberrrr has pretty much been repealed, allowing aficionados of the tasty bivalve to enjoy them year-round.
What’s the story? The old R Rule stemmed from two issues, one related to health and the other to enjoyment.
Continue reading Why did the foodie cross the river?
Mazzoni’s moves east
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| Mazzoni’s will celebrate its 125th anniversary next year in new quarters in Middletown. Inset: Chili, fish sandwich, rolled oysters. Photos by Robin Garr. |
(Mazzoni’s, Voice-Tribune, Feb. 14, 2008)
Mazzoni’s, one of Louisville’s oldest restaurants, will celebrate its 125th anniversary next year. It’s also brand-new.
This seeming contradiction is easily explained: Founded in 1884 in downtown Louisville by Philip Mazzoni, a recent arrival from Genoa, Italy, Mazzoni’s remains in family hands a century-and-a-quarter later, ranking it as the city’s second-oldest eatery. (Only Cunningham’s, founded about a decade earlier around the time Aristides won the first Kentucky Derby in 1875, boasts a longer local heritage.)
But Mazzoni’s as also as new as last week, when it reopened in shopping center quarters in suburban Middletown, having moved from the spot across Taylorsville Road from Bowman Field that it had called home since the 1980s.
Continue reading Mazzoni’s moves east
Something fishy this way comes
LEO’s Eats with Louisville HotBytes
(Moby Dick, Cunningham’s, the Fish House, Uptown Café)
Last week in this space we celebrated Carnival, wrapping up the season of winter revelry with a gumbo party, tasty libations and all manner of Mardi Gras beads.
Today it’s Ash Wednesday, the music has stopped, and the repentant Lenten season is here. Even in this secular era when only the most devout observe Lent with fasting and abstinence, one religious ritual remains mighty easy to follow: fish sandwiches on rye!
To hail the season, we checked out four local spots known for fish sandwiches: the fast-food Moby Dick, historic Cunningham’s, the friendly Fish House and, for an upscale touch, Uptown Café.
Something’s fishy at Seafood Connection, and we like that
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| Seafood Connection’s salmon taco (left) is topped with peach salsa; fried capers light up the flavor of the fish taco. Neither is your grandmother’s Tex-Mex. Photo by Robin Garr |
(Voice-Tribune, June 14, 2007)
Travel around the Mediterranean and through the Latin countries, from Greece past southern Italy, Provence in France, Spain and on around Gibraltar to Portugal, and you’ll find wonderful seafood and fish restaurants in just about every port.
To my mind, the best of these places are the most informal, and it just doesn’t get any better than when the “menu” is a pile of fresh fish and shellfish, still briny from the ocean, piled on ice near the entrance. Pick the fish that appeals to you, point to it, and someone will whisk it away, soon to return it sizzling on your plate.
Louisville is a long way from the Med. Indeed, we’re about 600 miles from the nearest seacoast. But you can eat like this – or a little bit like this anyway – in the heart of St. Matthews at Seafood Connection in Chenoweth Square.
Continue reading Something’s fishy at Seafood Connection, and we like that
Yummy fried fish is no penance
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| St. Augustine’s Catholic Church is well known for its Friday fish fries during Lent. The fish is good – you can choose baked cod, fried cod (above), whiting or buffalo – and some of the sides are excellent. Try the cheese grits, which sub pimento cheese for cheddar. Photos by Robin Garr. |
LEO’s Eat ‘n’ Blog with Louisville HotBytes
(St. Augustine’s fish fry, Stan’s Fish Sandwich, KFC Fish Snacker)
It’s Lent again, the liturgical season when many people undertake modest symbolic sacrifices such as eating fish on Fridays. Crunchy, golden-brown, delicious, sizzling fried fish: You call that penance?
In Louisville, we don’t reserve fish for Lent. Most of us are crazy for seafood at any time of year, and that’s been so for generations, way back to the postwar era – post-Civil War, that is – when L&N express trains would rush fresh oysters on ice up from the Gulf to oyster bars like the still-extant Mazzoni’s.
Continue reading Yummy fried fish is no penance