Category Archives: Frankfort Ave., Clifton, Crescent Hill

Blue Dog’s new owner keeps on keeping on

By Robin Garr
LouisvilleHotBytes.com

It was a chilly, cloudy Saturday morning in January. The temperature was hovering around 37º. Even so, the sidewalk tables in front of Frankfort Avenue’s beloved Blue Dog Bakery & Café were filling up just the same, hungry travelers clad in parkas and mittens, eagerly awaiting a steaming coffee drink and pastry treat.

Inside Blue Dog’s warm, cozy space was jammed with more eager supplicants. Counter service would begin any moment, and they were ready.

“It’s always like this,” Blue Dog’s new owner Libbie Ackerman Loeser said with a smile.

Continue reading Blue Dog’s new owner keeps on keeping on

Banish the winter chill with warming pho at Eatz

By Robin Garr
LouisvilleHotBytes.com

Vietnam is a tropical country, mostly. In its southern reaches, around Ho Chi Minh City (formerly Saigon) and the Mekong Delta, it’s searing hot and sopping humid virtually all year.

So how did a country so torrid give birth to pho, that aromatic, beefy soup-as-entree that’s delicious all year ‘round but lovably warming during winter’s icy blasts?

Continue reading Banish the winter chill with warming pho at Eatz

Blue Dog achieves perfection, or comes mighty close

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

We go for the big cheese, and charcuterie too, at Harvey’s

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

Every day is St. Patrick’s Day at The Irish Rover

By Robin Garr
LouisvilleHotBytes.com

Every year on St. Patrick’s Day, Louisville’s Irish Rover famously holds a humongous party, featuring an oversize tent that covers most of the parking lot, live Irish music, and plenty of great Irish food and gallons of dark Irish beer.

It’s fun, I’m told. But I’ve never been. Big, noisy crowds guzzling draft beer outdoors on a brisk March day, even with the comfort of a tent loaded with toasty heaters, is just not my style.

But catching up with The Rover for lunch the day after St. Patrick’s, enjoying the warm and cozy Irish pub comfort of The Rover’s historic Frankfort Avenue building on a more normal day? Priceless. Continue reading Every day is St. Patrick’s Day at The Irish Rover

Meat or no meat: The Smokery has you covered

By Robin Garr
LouisvilleHotBytes.com

A vegan walked into a barbecue joint. What’s the punchline?

Actually, there’s no punchline. I’m not a vegan myself. But I can see the ethos: The commercial agriculture that’s necessary to have everyone eating tasty animals is bad for the environment. It’s bad for our health. And it’s pretty obviously bad for the animals who have to be killed for our gustatory enjoyment.

For reasons such as these, growing numbers of people have gone vegan, vegetarian, or flexitarian recently, and that’s why I always try to include at least one meat-free dish in each review.

This can be a challenge, though, when I visit a new barbecue joint. Like this week, when I followed the delicious scent of hickory smoke to The Smokery, a new eatery in a small building on Frankfort Avenue in Clifton. Continue reading Meat or no meat: The Smokery has you covered

Con Huevos, a favorite for breakfast or lunch

By Robin Garr
LouisvilleHotBytes.com

Don’t stop me if I’ve told you this before, but breakfast is one of my favorite meals of the day, and I’m happy to enjoy it for breakfast, lunch, or dinner.

What’s more, Con Huevos is one of my favorite places for breakfast, although to my occasional sorrow, it’s open only for breakfast and lunch. If I want it for dinner, I have to get by with takeouts picked up earlier in the day. Continue reading Con Huevos, a favorite for breakfast or lunch

Lupo’s pizza is tops … and that’s not all

By Robin Garr
LouisvilleHotBytes.com

I did a quick double-take when I heard that Pizza Lupo had won “Best Pizza” honors in LEO Weekly’s Reader’s Choice awards.

Not that it isn’t worthy. Lupo’s wood-fired, leopard-spotted pies with their quality toppings are a go-to for me whenever I have pizza in mind. After all, “Pizza” is the restaurant’s first name. Continue reading Lupo’s pizza is tops … and that’s not all

We enjoy the chicken and the egg at Chik’n & Mi

By Robin Garr
LouisvilleHotBytes.com

I’m not going to say I’ve solved the ancient riddle about whether the chicken or the egg came first, but I can tell you that we enjoyed both those good things and more in a delicious brunch at Chik’n & Mi.

It shouldn’t come as a huge surprise that the fare is excellent at Chik’n & Mi, as it’s the only local eatery I know of where both owners/chefs – the husband-and-wife team of Jason McCollum and Aenith Sananikone McCollum – are graduates of the prestigious Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, New York. Continue reading We enjoy the chicken and the egg at Chik’n & Mi

Simply Mediterranean brings Lebanese flavor

By Robin Garr
LouisvilleHotBytes.com

Back in the late winter of 1984, I did my first restaurant review for The Louisville Times. I enjoyed a great dinner at a short-lived Lebanese restaurant on Bardstown Road with a Lebanese-American friend who spent a short time at the city’s afternoon paper before moving on to bigger things.

Here we are, almost too many years later to count, and I’ve just finished a tasty repast from Simply Mediterranean, which I believe is the city’s first ethnic Lebanese restaurant since then. Continue reading Simply Mediterranean brings Lebanese flavor