By Robin Garr
LouisvilleHotBytes.com
If you’ve long harbored a wish to go viral on social media but didn’t know where to start, here’s a modest proposal: Speak of your undying love for pizza topped with pineapple … and anchovies.
That should do it, and if it costs you a few lost friends and followers, well, that’s the price of fame.
What is it about pizza that makes it such a natural topic for conversation and even debate? Continue reading We just can’t stop talking about pizza
By Robin Garr
LouisvilleHotBytes.com
If you haven’t heard about Chef Edward Lee’s new Korean restaurant Nami by now, it’s probably only because you haven’t been paying attention. The news about this Korean-American top chef opening his first Korean restaurant since his 20-something youth in New York City has been all over the place.
Nami, which opened on May 2, has been jammed since the start. If you want a seat, especially on weekends, you should get a reservation will in advance or plan to arrive before 6 p.m.
Regardless, you should definitely go. Continue reading Nami: Korean-style fare with a side of Ed Lee
By Robin Garr
LouisvilleHotBytes.com
Refusing to eat a disgusting dish may be one of the first things that we as humans can do to claim our individual agency, our right to yell “No!”
“It’s broccoli, dear.” “I say it’s spinach, and I say the hell with it.” Carl Ross’ classic 1928 New Yorker cartoon captured the concept perfectly. We don’t like it. We say the hell with it. And more often than not, that childhood response evolves into a lifelong aversion.
Until it doesn’t. Continue reading Overcoming food aversions, restaurant-style
By Robin Garr
LouisvilleHotBytes.com
Two popular East End restaurants did a kind of corporate musical chairs this fall: It all started when Goose Creek Diner closed its shop on Goose Creek Lane after more than 20 years, and Sal’s Pizza & Sports Pub on Lyndon Lane closed last December after a dozen years.
Neighbors promptly begain grieving the loss of their familiar watering holes, but the events seemed unavoidable. Goose Creek Diner’s landlord decided to raze its building. Sal’s owner simply decided it was time to retire. Neighbors at both places wondered where they were going to go for down-home fare in a friendly environment.
It didn’t take long for Goose Creek to answer that question. Continue reading The Goose has landed, and we’re happy about that
By Robin Garr
LouisvilleHotBytes.com
Think about accessibility for disabled people in restaurants and other businesses, and you’ll probably visualize that familiar blue-and-white stick figure in a wheelchair.
That’s not too surprising. The Americans With Disabilities Act, popularly known as the ADA, passed in 1990, is a civil-rights law that prohibits discrimination against individuals with disabilities in all areas of public life. Continue reading Invisible disabilities: A challenge for restaurant accessibility
By Robin Garr
LouisvilleHotBytes.com
As autumn 2020 chilled into the first Covid winter, one of the hardest hits of a run of bad restaurant news came when Uptown Cafe announced that it was closing on the Saturday after Thanksgiving, seemingly ending a 35-year run as a fixture on Bardstown Road’s Restaurant Row.
Uptown was comfortable, cozy, reasonably affordable, yet stylish, more a bistro than a diner. If it wasn’t a place where everyone knew your name, at least it was a place where your face was always familiar. Continue reading New Uptown Cafe, a lot like the old Uptown Cafe
By Robin Garr
LouisvilleHotBytes.com
I was putting on my disguise and puffing up my wig, getting ready to go review a restaurant, when a New York Times headline caught my eye: “The 21st-Century Shakedown of Restaurants.” (The Times’ headline is pictured above.)
“This isn’t a joke,” opinion essayist Karen Stabiner wrote. “This is a 21st-century shakedown. Here is how it works: An influencer walks into a restaurant to collect an evening’s worth of free food and drink, having promised to create social media content extolling the restaurant’s virtues.” Continue reading What’s an influencer? Is there money in it?
By Robin Garr
LouisvilleHotBytes.com
Blue Dog Bakery celebrated a quarter-century of making great bread for Louisville’s people this year, and it’s hard for me to believe that it has been that long.
It feels as if it was only recently, but it was actually way back in 1998 that I knocked on Blue Dog’s back door in the dark hours before dawn and met owners Bob Hancock and his wife Kit Garrett. Continue reading Blue Dog achieves perfection, or comes mighty close
By Robin Garr
LouisvilleHotBytes.com
In the overall scheme of things, it hasn’t been all that long since Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web. And it’s still recent history when Steve Jobs started the process of getting a tiny, powerful computer into everyone’s pocket.
How in the heck did we figure out how to eat before we could grab our smartphone and in a matter of seconds check out everything we wanted to know about where to go for dinner tonight and figure out what to have when we got there? Continue reading “Find us on Facebook” Or not. Restaurants and social media
By Robin Garr
LouisvilleHotBytes.com
Charcuterie. Not long ago, most of us weren’t even sure how to pronounce it. Now, says the National Restaurant Association, “Charcuterie makes the cut for 2023. A Top 3 hot menu trend and No. 1 in appetizers … charcuterie is a rising star on menus.”
Indeed, charcuterie is showing up in restaurants all over town. You can get a board on the menu at Red Hog, North of Bourbon, Mussel & Burger Bar, Monnik Beer Co., where the $21 charcuterie plate features local meats and cheeses … did I mention that charcuterie is trending? We’re even getting shops that specialize in charcuterie: Board and You in New Albany will fashion you a board to go, and so will Cultured – Cheese and Charcuterie Bar in Butchertown. Not to mention Harvey’s in Clifton, a newish spot that I’ve been meaning to check out since it opened at the end of February, when it moved into this storefront in the Clifton Lofts condo building from its former stand in the Logan Street Market. Continue reading We go for the big cheese, and charcuterie too, at Harvey’s
