Robin Garr's LOUISVILLE Restaurant Reviews

86	Chester's Tavern 5444 New Cut Road (502) 368-8848

If I've heard it once, I've heard it a hundred times: What this city's South End needs is a good, upscale restaurant.

The genial proprietors of Chester's Tavern have a simple answer, loud and clear: Come on down!

Chester's, which opened last spring near the foot of South Louisville's Iroquois Park and Kenwood Hill, has earned a place of pride on the local restaurant scene - and a loyal audience that keeps it crowded just about every night of the week - with a stylish yet affordable spot that's not just a neighborhood joint but a dining destination good enough to lure East Enders right out of their comfort zone on Bardstown Road and Frankfort Avenue.

I should have gotten there sooner myself. After a fine dinner here during the Christmas season, I'm kicking myself for waiting so long to get to the South End to check it out. Clubby without being pretentious, Chester's cozy, understated decor seems faintly British. The large space is divided into several dining sections (and a large, cozy U-shaped bar) by shoulder-high room dividers topped with cafe curtains in earth-toned red and green plaid that matches the green and rose floral-pattern carpeting.

The large front windows are screened by narrow blinds. The walls are yellow, red and green, not bold primary shades but more discreet clubby hues. Framed paintings, a hanging plant or two and wall sconces fit the mood, and a baby grand piano gets good use through the evening by a capable pianist playing unintrusive standards.

Tables are covered with white cloth with an odd, shiny texture that almost seems rubberized, and are set with burgundy-color cloth napkins and rather simple, lightweight flatware, off-white stoneware, votive candles in old-fashioned frosted-glass holders, and bud vases that, just for the season, were decked with boughs of evergreen and red berries to match a pretty Christmas tree next to the piano. Add points for very good service, helpful but unobtrusive, there when you need it and not when you don't.

The extensive menu features separate pages for lunch, dinner and "late nite" (Chester's is open until 1 a.m. Monday-Saturday, 9 p.m. Sunday), as well as a separate "Taste of the South" bill of fare that features country-style fare brought to the city. Lunch and Late Nite selections are somewhat similar, with the former focused more on soups, salads, sandwiches and light entrees, the latter toward sandwiches and bar-food munchies. Sandwiches are $5.95 (for a vegetarian special, a meatless grilled Portabella mushroom) to $7.45 (for Chester's Grill, a variation on the classic Monte Cristo sandwich of the '60s, with turkey, bacon and Swiss on egg-dipped French toast, served with raspberry sauce). There's also a massive (and deservedly popular) Sunday brunch buffet.

The "Taste of the South" dinner menu, served daily after 3 p.m., offers about 10 hearty dishes such as chicken-fried steak, liver and onions, pork chops with gravy or a fried fish platter; they're all $8.95 and come with choice of two side dishes, except for the meatless $6.95 vegetable plate, which consists of any four from a list of 20 (count 'em) sides.

The regular dinner menu, served after 5 p.m. daily, offers a good, if not overly adventurous, selection of American bistro fare with light Continental touches. A half-dozen appetizers range from $5.25 (for Chester's own beer cheese with flatbread crackers and celery) to $6.95 (for homemade crab cakes, shrimp cocktail or skewer-grilled teriyaki pineapple chicken). Soups and salads are $1.95 (for a cup of the soup du jour) to $9.25 (for a dinner-size shrimp and tuna salad plate with fresh fruit and mixed greens).

More than a dozen dinner entrees are $9.95 (for a Kentucky Hot Brown or 6-ounce petite top sirloin) to $25.95 (for a 14-ounce grilled New York strip steak. Baked swordfish "Mediterranean" (with onions, capers and garlic in a white-wine sauce with diced tomatoes) is $12.95; so is Chicken Lorenze, stuffed with spinach and asparagus and served with an asparagus cream sauce over green spinach fettuccine. Grilled salmon is $13.95, and beef lovers have plenty of options, from $13.95 for a small (8-ounce) serving of prime rib to $19.95 (for a grilled 8-ounce beef tenderloin) or the 12-ounce Jim Beam rib eye marinated in you-know-what ($15.95).

The wine list, like the menu, is straightforward, not overly adventurous, but user-friendly and affordable. Dinner entrees note recommended wines that will complement each, and they appear well-chosen: Bonterra Cabernet Sauvignon or Banfi Chianti with the prime rib ... Blackston Merlot or Mondavi Zinfandel with the filet mignon ... Estancia Reserve Pinot Noir or Montevina White Zin with grilled salmon ... even Rosemount Shiraz from Australia with the beer cheese! It offers about 30 bottles (plus a supplementary list of items too new for the printed list), mostly in the affordable range from $14 for a bottle of Beringer or Montevina White Zinfandel to $30 for Banfi Chianti Classico Riserva. Celebrating? There's always the $199 bottle of Dom Perignon Champagne or the $50 Piper-Heidseick bubbly. About two-thirds of the wine selections are available by the glass from $3.50 (for the white Zins) to $5.75 (for Greg Norman Cabernet/Merlot).

Full bar service includes a good selection of Bourbons and specialty martinis, and the beer selection ranges from $2.25 and $2.50 for bottled domestics to $3.50 for a short list of imports plus Samuel Adams.

I was inordinately impressed with our server's wine knowledge and skill as she gently nudged me to try an offbeat item - Rock Rabbit Shiraz ($5.50 a glass). She offered a concise - and completely accurate - explanation that this is a California wine that just happens to use the Australian name "Shiraz" for the grape that most California producers call Syrah. Give Chester's several extra points for having a staff that knows wine and can tell you about it without seeming pushy or snobbish. This is a lesson that some of the city's fancier East End spots would do well to learn.

Rock Rabbit, by the way, was just as the server described: Fruity and mellow, a Shiraz-style red that was easy to enjoy and a great match with my peppery pork entree. The wine glasses were restaurant-style, and they bring out larger vessels for red wines, sizable enough to hold a good serving that still leaves room in the glass to swirl and sniff.

Complementary bread came in a napkin-lined wicker basket, and it was fine: Simple white yeast dinner rolls baked on a sheet, fluffy and slightly sweet, with plenty of cold whipped butter in plastic tubs.

The house salad (which is included free with dinner entrees or as a side-order option with the Taste of the South menu) is straightforward, fresh and fine, a good-size portion of crisp mixed lettuces garnished with thick-sliced cucumbers, skin on, and cherry tomatoes cut into wedges, served chilled. My choice of dressing, blue cheese, was creamy and tangy.

I held my glass of wine for the main course and ordered iced tea ($1.79) with the salad. It was extremely good, brewed fresh and strong, with a good-size wedge of lemon and plenty of ice.

My wife chose fried chicken ($8.95) from the Taste of the South menu. A massive serving of four large pieces - a breast, a wing, a thigh and a leg - were served steaming and juicy, encased in a very well-done dark-brown breading that was not too thick and not at all greasy. This is memorable fried chicken, a strong contender with such more downscale entries as Cottage Inn and Flabby's Schnitzelburg for the title of best fried chicken in town.

Her pair of side dishes were lima beans, which were just right, long-simmered until creamy and tender, with an appetizing hint of ham flavor. A broccoli-and-cauliflower dish was well-prepared, too, a healthy dish, steamed just right, neither mushy nor crisp-raw; but the kitchen must have been suffering a cauliflower shortage, as the portion included about two dozen broccoli florets and excatly one piece of cauliflower.

I chose roasted pork loin medallions ($13.95) from the dinner menu. A thick slice of tender, boneless pork tenderloin was cut into three good-size "logs" and topped with an interesting sauce that I tried to deconstruct but found hard to parse: It was dressed with a sizable portion of dark-brown, soft purplish-brown marinated peppercorns in a dark-brown, faintly smoky, savory and salty sauce that might have been a wine reduction. The peppercorns were mild, but several dozen of them gave the dish a distinctly peppery flavor that makes this a choice only for pepper lovers. This dish comes with garlic mashed potatoes that weren't overly garlicky, but deliciously creamy and dense.

We shared dessert, a hefty wedge of key lime pie ($4.95) that seemed to be the real thing, with a pale-green creamy tart filling in a crunchy graham-cracker crust, both topped and bracketed with abundant whipped cream and decorated with stripes of a sweet, pale-green lime sauce.

Even with a glass of wine in place of a bottle, I would have expected a $60-plus check for a dinner like this at an East End bistro, so I was amazed to get a bill for just $38.84, to which I gladly added an $8 tip for excellent service. $$

(December 2003)

ACCESSIBILITY: Fully accessible to wheelchair users.

Chester's Tavern 5444 New Cut Rd Louisville 40214