Robin Garr's LOUISVILLE Restaurant Reviews

CLOSED. Doors locked and facility for rent on Oct. 27, 2004.

88	The Chef's Table 103 W. Oak St. (502) 587-2433 (CHEF)

If you love good things to eat, what could be better than dining at the chef's table, sitting alongside the guy with the skillet and wooden spoon, enjoying the best he has to offer?

You can actually do this very thing at the Chef's Table restaurant, by reservation for a group of up to 12, sharing a special table within the orbit of the restaurant's bright, open kitchen for a fixed-price, five-course dinner, prepared before your eyes and brought to your table with a steady line of patter by the chefs themselves.

But the fact is that every table in this charming new eatery in Old Louisville gets personal attention from the chef, as co-owner Bob Brinke circulates through the room while his wife, Michele, presides over the busy kitchen scene. An eclectic menu offers a good range of dishes in the affordable upscale range (entrees are mostly $15 to $20), and a well-chosen wine list features an international selection of bottles including some intriguing items from Louisville's own In Town Winery, which will open (as Old Louisville Winery) in an adjacent building later this year.

The Brinkes have been well-known figures around the local food and wine scene for years, most recently having operated Creative Cuisine, a small place with a big reputation, on Bardstown Road, as well as teaching culinary classes at the University of Louisville and elsewhere. Michele also cooked at The Terrace, predecessor to Ruth's Chris in the famous lacy white building on Dutchmans Lane, and earlier at the fondly remembered Parisian Pantry.

I've been slow to post a review because I've known Bob and Michele for a long time and even joined them to host an occasional wine-appreciation class, making it impossible for me to dine here anonymously. But after repeated visits, I'm comfortable about reporting my experiences in confidence that you'll be treated as warmly and well as I have been at this comfortably casual new establishment, which quietly opened its doors around Derby time.

The building at the corner of First and Oak streets long housed a neighborhood market, then was briefly home to the first incarnation of Mai's Thai, which later moved to Southern Indiana. The Corner Market and Cafe followed with a fairly short-lived sandwich-shop-and-convenience-market combo that meant well but never quite got it together.

Chef's Table has completely renovated the facilities, moving the entrance door west onto Oak Street and thoroughly updating the interior, with lovely wall art created by Martin Alan Hirsch, the Louisville artist who also designed the interior at Mezzaluna Tuscan Grill. You don't need to hang pictures on the walls when the walls are the art: Warm, textured old-gold in color, they resemble ancient stucco with grapevines painted on in a discreet, almost impressionistic fresco style. It's very European in feeling, with none of the silliness of faux-Italian pizzeria decor.

The dining room manages to feel intimate in spite of its good size, with shiny black tables and surprisingly comfortable mahogany-varnished old-fashioned wooden office chairs to seat close to 100 diners. Square wooden pillars mark off the boundaries of the open kitchen but they don't block the view of all the activity going on in there, with its sunny yellow counters and black and white checkerboard tile floor.

The bill of fare, as I said, is eclectic, American with international touches, and more than a few of its dishes won't be unfamiliar to diners who've followed Michele's cooking around town.

The dinner menu features a half-dozen appetizers and a trio of salads, from $4.95 (for the house salad or baby greens with mandarin orange salad) to $13.25 (for a four-person plate of artisanal Kentucky cheeses from Kenny Mattingly's Country Cheeses with fruit). Other tasty starters include fried Camembert with cranberry sauce ($7.25), steamed mussels in herbed white wine ($8.25) and the chef's Cobb salad ($8.50). Sixteen dinner entrees are subdivided among beef, poultry, pork, vegetarian, seafood and pasta dishes and range in price from $14.95 (for pasta carbonara or portabella primavera pasta, a vegetable Wellington and zucchini chimichangas) to $19.95 (for a "king-cut" 8-to-9-ounce hand-cut filet mignon). Dinners are accompanied with a house salad and bread. A special "dinner for two" option offers a fixed menu of steamed mussels, house salad, chicken Oscar (a poultry version of the traditional veal dish with crab meat and asparagus sauced with Hollandaise) and choice of desserts, plus a bottle of In Town wine, is an excellent deal at $49 for two.

The lunch menu is not just a pared-down version of dinner but offers a separate, equally interesting selection of dishes including soups and salads (from $3.50 for a cup of roasted tomato soup or the soup of the day, $4.95 for a bowl, to $7.95 for a lunch version of the chef's Cobb salad), crepes ($5.95 or $6.95), nine sandwiches (from $5.95 for a BLT or Croque Monsieur, French grilled ham and cheese, to $7.95 (for an open-face prime rib sandwich). Atkins and South Beach types will be delighted to find a quartet of "Low Carb" selections, $6.75 for a ratatouille casserole or $7.95 for a rib eye steak (no bread!), smothered chicken breast (no pasta!) or a grilled steak and spinach salad (no croutons!)

The weekend brunch menu carries over a lot of favorites from Creative Cuisine, including omelets, crepes, French toast and other breakfast specialties, from $5.95 (for apple crepes à la mode or New York-style blintzes stuffed with cream cheese and topped with fruit) to $8.95 (for a Hot Brown). Worth special note is the Velvet Elvis, French toast made with thick "Texas toast," stuffed with peanut butter, bananas and bacon. Don't knock it if you haven't tried it ... I haven't.

The wine list is thoughtfully chosen and affordable, with many choices available by the glass, topping out at just $30 - the point at which many of the city's more pricey lists start - for such fine items as the Cinnabar "Mercury Rising" red blend from California, Argyle Pinot Noir from Oregon's Willamette Valley, and Kim Crawford 2003 Sauvignon Blanc from New Zealand. Another favorite, Altos Las Hormigas Malbec from Malbec, is a good food wine at an affordable $22. We checked out one of the locally made wines (from trucked-in West Coast fruit) by In Town, the Fleur de Lis red, for $3.50 a glass. It was a pleasant wine, full and fruity, perhaps a touch sweet, fairly similar in style to the Cline 2002 California "Red Truck" Red at $5.50 a glass.

We stopped by for dinner during the restaurant's first week of operation and found things going smoothly right out of the starting gate. It was more of a social visit for our group of four than a formal review, so I didn't make detailed observations (and in any event, the menu and pricing have changed somewhat in the meantime). I can report, however, that the blackened chicken quesadilla (now $7.95) and prosciutto and Gruyere puffs with fresh sage (now $8.25) disappeared from the shared plates very quickly indeed, and the robust yet subtle flavor blend of thin-sliced Italian ham, French cheese and aromatic fresh sage wrapped in buttery puff pastry made a particularly triumphant dish.

Even though I'm an omnivore, I'm always on the lookout for a really good meatless dish, and the Vegetable Wellington (now $14.95) fully qualifies: Rich, golden puff pastry encased an enticing blend of veggies including eggplant, zucchini and summer squash, onions and peppers, with an Italian accent lent by tomatoes and cheese. It was so filling that I didn't miss the meat, and nobody had to tell me to eat my vegetables. Our friends' petite prime rib (now $16.95) and chicken Oscar (now $17.95) were well received, too.

Desserts were equally compelling: My wife cannot resist molten chocolate lava cake ($5.95), with its dense, brownie-like exterior and hot-fudge interior. In an early version, this dish gained exotic appeal with a dark-chocolate sauce accented with smoky, fiery chipotle peppers, an excursion on the wild side that we loved but that Bob says he has abandoned, finding it just a little too offbeat for most diners. Profiteroles ($4.95), tiny cream puffs, an old signature dessert from Parisian Pantry resurrected in Old Louisville, took me right back to the old days. Cheesecake ($4.95) was excellent, too. Service was fine throughout the meal, and a first-rate, filling dinner for four came to just under $100, plus tip, which breaks down to a toll for two (with a couple of glasses of modest wine but not a full bottle) that's safely in the moderate range.

A return visit for Sunday brunch brought more good things. The San Antonio breakfast burritos (now $7.25) consisted of two large flour tortillas stuffed with eggs scrambled with spicy crumbled Mexican chorizo sausage, hot as a bandido's pistol, topped with a warmly spiced red-chile sauce and melted Mexican-style queso blanco and accompanied with a pool of rich, gently spiced frijoles refritos.

The Old Louisville veggie omelet (now $6.95) was big, bright and light, a fluffy pale-yellow blanket rolled around crisp, barely cooked diced red and green bell peppers, chopped onions, mushrooms and diced potato with a ration of sharp and pleasantly earthy Gruyere cheese. With coffee ($1.25 a cup) and the Sunday New York Times (free, first come, first served) to enjoy while we ate, a filling brunch for two came to an affordable $16.32, and we left the change from a $20 for competent if almost startlingly enthusiastic service.

A little time and a trip to France went by after these visits, so we dropped in again for lunch.

Crepes Florentine ($6.95), another carry-over from Creative Cuisine, featured a pair of paper-thin and tender crepes, rolled over, and topped by, a creamy mix of chopped spinach, creamy bechamel sauce and a mild Gruyere. It was well made, edibly garnished with a single starfruit slice, a bright-red strawberry carved in a fan shape, and a thin slice of fresh canteloupe, and prettily plated with sprinkles of minced parsley and paprika. The cheese was so mild, though, that the dish fell a bit on the bland side of delicate. This was surprising, since the Gruyere-laced omelet at brunch had been distinctly funky, and my French-tuned taste buds were counting on something a little wilder. Bob said the sharpness of the Gruyere seems to vary from batch to batch from his supplier. Fair enough.

Anyway, there was nothing bland about the Chef's Table burger ($6.95), a juicy, oversize beefburger topped with thick slices of grilled portabello mushroom, a round of mild Provolone cheese, sliced onion and tomato and leaf lettuce, and a little crock of garlicky mayo on the side. The burger was outstanding, the beefy ground meat, earthy portabello and creamy cheese making a perfect match of flavors and textures. I rank it among the best "gourmet-style" burgers in town, only flawed - if it is a flaw - by the fact that the burger was so juicy that it saturated the white bun, making it more of a knife-and-fork burger than a pick-up-and-eat lunch.

A side dish of potato salad was very good indeed, chunks of still-firm red-skin potatoes in a light, creamy dressing, topped with chopped parsley and infused with a distinct and delicious taste of dill. Service was courteous and friendly, but just careless enough to make me think that Bob didn't bother to inform the server that there was a dining critic in the house ... she neglected to tell us the specials or soup of the day, and took the burger order without asking how we wanted it prepared (although happily, it did come back an appropriate medium, with just a tinge of pink at the center).

With strong, fresh iced tea ($1.25), and an encore sample of that addictive molten chocolate lava cake ($5.95) from which I swiped the scoop of creamy homemade Bourbon ball ice cream, a dinner-size lunch for two came to $22.37, plus a $5 tip. $$

(April, May and June 2004)

ACCESSIBILITY: The main entrance door has a low step that could be easily bridged by a small ramp. Wheelchair users must request entry through a grade-level door just west of the regular entrance and wheel around through a separate room.