Absolute zero tolerance?

Industry Standard: Insider info for those who dine out

By MARSHA LYNCH

We had a lively discussion on our local foodie forum at www.LouisvilleHotBytes.com recently. It began when one forum member posted a link to a blog post that tsk-tsked the bookstore chain Borders for implementing a policy that made her feel, well, sort of empty.
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El Rumbon Cuban Trailer gives new meaning to ‘road food’

Sandwich from El Rumbon

LEO’s Eats with LouisvilleHotBytes

Fidel Castro is sliding into retirement, and anti-Cuba sentiment feels oh-so ’60s nowadays. We still can’t legally smoke Cuban cigars, but they’re not so hard to score. And Cuban food is starting to look like the next big thing on the Louisville culinary scene.

Havana Rumba broke the ice, earning instant popularity when it opened in St. Matthews almost six years ago; the owners quickly doubled down with sibling Mojito and, more recently, a second location in Middletown. Cocos Lokos added another quality option on the Hurstbourne corridor last year, and Cuba Libre, new in Jeffersonville this summer, is drawing crowds.

Now, an amiable Cuban chef named Reinold Febles has added yet another tasty dimension with Cuban street food. Febles, who’s worked in a number of kitchens around town, sets up his large, spic-and-span food trailer on auto-dealer parking lots around Oxmoor Center, serving Cuban food as well as some Mexican favorites (burritos, quesadillas) and Norteamericano fried chicken and hot dogs.
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Say hello to the new Equus, sort of like the old Equus

“Beef tenderloin “sliders” at Equus and Jack’s”

LEO’s Eats with LouisvilleHotBytes

Sunrise, sunset
Sunrise, sunset
Swiftly fly the years …

Yeah, right. Now that I’ve successfully planted that earworm, let me say I can’t believe it’s been so long since I first reviewed Equus, a then-new restaurant in St. Matthews that was buzzing under a new owner and chef, Dean Corbett, for the old Louisville Times in 1985.

I didn’t have any gray in my hair then, and quite a few of the other favorites of the time — Casa Grisanti, say, or Sixth Avenue, both way stations in Corbett’s career — are long gone.

But Equus just keeps on keeping on, changing pace to stay au courant while continuing to satisfy its core audience.
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Salads to order, chop chop at Chop Shop

Chop Shop’s Steakhouse Salad

Voice-Tribune review by LouisvilleHotBytes
Stand in the center of St. Matthews at lunch time and look around. Try to find something healthy. Okay, there’s … um … pub grub. More pub grub. And still more pub grub! There’s a hearty Irish stew. Over there, hot dogs. Quick-service Chinese food. Fast-food sandwiches. Fried fish, and more fried fish. Danish pastries, yum … and pizza!

Yep, we’ve got lots of goodies to tantalize the taste buds here, but options are more limited when you’re in the mood for a light and healthy lunch.

Say hello to Chop Shop Salads, a new arrival that adds an appealing option to this limited local niche: It’s an all-salad eatery with a fast-food vibe.
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Looking for Mr. Goodlunch

The Dish’s Fish

LEO’s Eats with LouisvilleHotBytes

 

Two new spots —
Dish on Market
and
Hillbilly Tea

If dinner is about dressing up, hitting the town and unwinding at the end of a long day of work, lunch has more to do with packing as much enjoyment as we can into a breather from the toil. Two recent arrivals downtown do a worthy job of satisfying the crave.
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Festival food: Why does it cost so much?

By MARSHA LYNCH

With the Lebowski Fest, Forecastle Festival and HullabaLOU all recently put to bed, you might think Louisville’s festival season is over until next summer, but you’d be wrong.
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The Bard’s Town plays to the crowd

Pasta Diablo at The Bardstown

LEO’s Eats with LouisvilleHotBytes
Eve Bohakel Lee
Bardstown Road. Bard’s Town. The Bard. Bill Shakespeare! It’s surprising no one has seized the opportunity to pun upon the name of the Highlands’ main corridor until now.
With the Bard above the door and the promise of grand entertainment within, expectations run high for this new establishment at the corner of Speed Avenue.
“Curst be he who moves my bones,” warns the tombstone of Billy Shakes, and forsooth, the bones of previous occupants Big Dave’s, Judge Roy Bean’s and others back to Fat Cats remain perceptible here. However, owners Doug Schutte, Jon DeSalvo and Scot Atkinson have put a new, solid flesh on those bones. Their bottom-up renovation delivers an urbane, artsy feel that is laid-back and accessibly upscale. Local art will rotate in like scene changes. A performance space will open upstairs this month, offering live theater and more.
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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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A truly authentic experience at Peking City Bistro

Shredded pork with dried tofu

LEO’s Eats with LouisvilleHotBytes

“Tell me what you eat, and I will tell you what you are.” Not merely the intro line of the original Japanese “Iron Chef,” this fundamental hypothesis goes back to the French gourmet Anthelme Brillat-Savarin’s 1825 gastronomic essay, “Physiology of Taste.”

If Brillat-Savarin had examined my dinner at Peking City Bistro, he might have concluded I am a pregnant Chinese woman, a revelation that would come as a considerable surprise to both my mother and my wife.

Intrigued? Pull up a chair, and I’ll tell you the story.
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Village Anchor Pub takes roost

Myra’s fried chicken at Village Anchor

LEO’s Eats with LouisvilleHotBytes

Got milk? Or a Nike swoosh? How about “comfort food with a twist”?

Indeed, what kind of wacky restaurant concept might we expect from one of the nation’s top corporate-relations experts — a man who’s run campaigns for such iconic enterprises as the American dairy industry and Nike — when he comes back home and turns restaurateur?

That would be Anchorage resident Kevin Grangier, former sole owner of award-winning CarryOn Communications Inc. of Los Angeles, New York and … St. Matthews.
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Boombozz has come a long way, baby

Boombozz pizza

Voice-Tribune review by LouisvilleHotBytes

If you’ve noticed a little restaurant do-si-do around the corner of Frankfort Avenue and Cannon’s Lane, here’s the story: After Chef Amber McCool closed her Patron restaurant (destined for eventual reopening downtown, McCool has promised her fans), the old Boombozz Pizza moved down the block into the Patron’s old quarters.

So the new Boombozz is the old Patron, across the street from the old Boombozz, which was actually the second Boombozz. Let’s pause for a little history here: Back in the ‘90s, pizza guru Tony Palombino opened the original Tony Boombozz pizza in the tiny St. Matthews building that now houses Kayrouz Cafe. (That’s not the old Kayrouz, it’s the new Kayrouz.) He moved to the Cannons Lane quarters a few years later and has become a fixture there for a decade.
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A condiment conundrum

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

I hate it when servers bring me something and try to pass it off as something else entirely, don’t you? Earlier this week, my boyfriend, John, and I were trying out a newish spot in the Highlands. On initial reconnaissance at a new place, I like to find out if the cook can actually, you know, cook, before I trust him to feed me offal or prepare some deadly poisonous blowfish sushi. So we ordered burgers and frites … but like the culinary magpie I am, I was distracted by something shiny that caught my eye from the other page of the menu. Artichoke aioli, it said — and like the magpie, I had to make it mine.
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