It’s not usually difficult for a restaurant critic to learn about new eateries around our town. Either the owner or chef clues me in with an email, text, or news release, or I’ll hear about it on social media or the Louisville HotBytes forum.
Now and then, though, an appealing new place will fly under the radar until, like Columbus “discovering” America, I stumble into it myself.
Not long after the turn of this century, I’m not sure that many of us would have predicted the rise of St. Matthews as one of the city’s most active bar and nightlife zones.
So I guess it shouldn’t surprise us that this suburban village has suddenly become a go-to zone for Asian eateries with estimable bars.
Last summer, 110 years after Hauck’s Handy Store opened as a neighborhood grocery on a Schnitzelburg street corner – and three years after it closed following the death at 100 of owner and patriarch George Hauck – this local landmark returned as a restaurant and bar.
In 1912 you could buy a baloney sandwich on white bread at Hauck’s and get change from a dime. Today, a century and $1 million in renovations later, you can still get something like that, but they spell it “bologna” now, and it will cost you $14.95 for a thick-cut, smoked slice perched on a brioche bun with stone-ground mustard, pimento cheese, pickles, and an over-easy egg. Continue reading Hauck’s Corner returns, dainty and all→
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→
Covid-19 has been rough for NuLu restaurants. The pandemic has taken at least partial blame for the loss of Harvest, Rye, and most recently, Decca.
For the Martinez family’s Olé restaurant group, though, challenges create opportunities. They opened the Cuban restaurant La Bodeguita de Mamá in July 2020, early in the pandemic, in the former headquarters of Creation Gardens at 725 E. Market St.
Thoughts inspired by a recent meal at Louisville’s Tandoori Fusion restaurant: Fusion cuisine has been around for centuries, going back as far as Chinese restaurateurs coming up with chop suey to please western consumers in 1850s California, and maybe even to Marco Polo and his noodles.
But the concept didn’t get a name until the 1980s, when chefs like Roy Yamaguchi and Wolfgang Puck began to intentionally combine flavors from different cultures. Before long, just about everyone was chowing down on Pacific Rim cuisine and Thai pizza, and calling it “fusion.” Continue reading Tandoori Fusion offers artistic Indian creations→
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→
I’m pretty sure I’ve told you before that pizza is one of my favorite foods. I can’t think of a one of Louisville’s 60-some pizzerias that I would flatly reject. Well, possibly some of the national chains, unless I was really hungry.
I mean, what’s not to like about pizza? It’s relatively healthy, a thin base of bread that, excepting the occasional deep-dish pie, imparts barely enough carbs to bother anyone. A layer of delicious tomato sauce, a layer of delicious cheese, some tasty meats or veggies of your liking on top … why, you’ve got all of the food groups on your plate! Continue reading MozzaPi’s pizza remains near and dear to my heart→
China’s $1.4 billion population in 2022 is roughly four times the size of our 335 million people, and all those hungry Chinese enjoy, depending on where they live, at least eight major regional cuisines dating back thousands of years.
So why is it, if we don’t think twice about enjoying the varieties of American fare – Southern chow, Cajun cuisine, Texas barbecue and so many more of our own regional cuisines – that most Americans for many years assumed that all Chinese food was summed up in the menu at the local chop suey house? Continue reading For a top-notch Sichuanese meal, call J-a-s-m-i-n-e→
The beloved German restaurant Gasthaus closed last month after nearly 30 years of delighting us with delicious schnitzel sauerbraten and more. So what are we going to go now, when we’re hankering for wurst or some flammenkueche or even a giant German pretzel?
