Category Archives: $$ Modest ($30-$50)

A magic carpet ride to Caspian Grill

Salmon at Caspian Grill

LEO’s Eats with LouisvilleHotBytes.com

We’ve talked before about how Louisville’s Iranian-American community started in the 1970s with a crowd of students at the University of Louisville who decided to stay around when the Ayatollah Khomeini led the Iranian revolution and things went sour back home.

Iran’s loss has been Louisville’s gain, as a surprising number of these folks went into the restaurant business. Initially many of Louisville’s Iranians worked at the late, storied Casa Grisanti. They eventually ventured out to start restaurants of their own, and in more recent years have begun introducing us to their native cuisine. (The respected restaurateur Majid Ghavami, for instance, bridges this gap, now serving as both owner of Saffron’s, the city’s first Iranian restaurant, and general manager of Volare, one of our most popular Italian eateries.)

Now comes another Italian-to-Iranian translation, as the owners of Café Glace on Frankfort Avenue, a gelato shop, have opened Caspian Grill, an excellent Persian restaurant on Bardstown Road, in the quarters formerly occupied by Sweet Surrender.
Continue reading A magic carpet ride to Caspian Grill

Harming no animals at Bombay Grill

Vegetarian plate at Bombay Grill
Vegetarian plate from the lunch buffet at Bombay Grill. Photos by Robin Garr

LEO’s Eats with LouisvilleHotBytes.com

If you’ll pardon a brief personal digression, I’ve been mournful lately following the loss of my beloved yellow cat Pepito, who died last month after a short, vicious bout with a virulent feline cancer. I held him in my arms and cried as the vet gave him the injection that eased his pain and took him from us way too soon. He was only 10.

To be frank, after having watched the light fade from the bright eyes of my best friend, I went through a period when I really didn’t feel right about making my meal on anything that had once been part of a living animal with a mommy and a face.

A vegetarian food critic? Appealing, but probably impractical in a general-audience newspaper, even one as eccentric as LEO Weekly. Continue reading Harming no animals at Bombay Grill

Secret to a great Chinese banquet: Cook for me, chef!

Table topper
This table-topper at Red Pepper Chinese Cuisine featured cranes carved from daikon radish, perched on “rock piles” made from yams, decorated with what looked like taxus yew sprigs from the bushes out front. Photo by Robin Garr

LEO’s Eats with LouisvilleHotBytes.com

Are you the kind of adventurous diner who has always wanted to experience an authentic Chinese banquet but have despaired after too many meals of sweet and sour pork, fried rice and the like at chopsticks houses and Asian buffets?

Here’s good news: With a little advance planning, a willing spirit and a smile, you can enjoy a Chinese spread right here in Louisville that will take you surprisingly close to what you’d be served in Shanghai or Beijing.

All you have to do is get together a group of like-minded foodies, drop in on your favorite Chinese restaurant and ask the management’s assistance in organizing a special banquet.

This approach probably won’t work at a fast-food Chinese eatery or buffet. It requires a quality Chinese restaurant with a highly skilled chef. Louisville boasts several of these, my current favorite being Red Pepper Chinese on Brownsboro Road, where Sichuanese Chef Shen Hong Huang boasts restaurant experience in Chicago and in Chinese embassies around the world.
Continue reading Secret to a great Chinese banquet: Cook for me, chef!

Something old, something new … sort of

Sage Indian
Sage Indian, which replaces the short-lived India Palace on Oechsli Avenue, has mostly kept its menu – featuring standard Northern Indian dishes – the same. Photos by Robin Garr

LEO’s Eats with LouisvilleHotBytes.com

This week let’s make quick visits to a couple of St. Matthews-area eateries where you can fill the tank for a reasonable price and go away satisfied.

Shady Lane Café, a homey storefront nook in Brownsboro Center, qualifies as “old,” sort of, by local restaurant standards: Owners and cooks William and Susi Smith have been doing business in this location going on two years now, and they’ve built a following the old-fashioned way, earning loyalty through a savvy combination of high-quality, down-home fare at a price that’s right, even when there’s not a recession going on. (See my report in the post below)

Sage Indian makes the grade as “new,” sort of: It arrived last month in the quarters vacated by the amiable but short-lived Royal India, which put up the shutters well under a year after it opened last winter.
Continue reading Something old, something new … sort of

Lunch and antiques, not necessarily in that order

Goss Avenue Antique Mall
Lunch Lady Land: Exteriors of two Antique Malls each containing a new lunch spot – the new mall at Jackson and Broadway that has the resurrected Colonnade Café inside (below), and Olivia’s in the Goss Avenue Antique Mall. Photos by Robin Garr

LEO’s Eats with LouisvilleHotBytes.com

Ladies who lunch and go antique shopping (and men who do the same) have an unprecedented wealth of options these days, as a series of moves and changes has expanded the antique mall circuit from one popular eatery to three.

Let’s summarize: When the Louisville Antique Mall on Goss Avenue announced plans last year to move from its hulking 19th century brick industrial building to a different hulking 19th century brick industrial building on East Broadway, its critically acclaimed lunch spot, The Café, went off on its own to open a free-standing restaurant just east of downtown.

Then, not long after the Louisville Antique Mall made its move to East Broadway, a new luncheon establishment on its fifth floor revived the name of the old Colonnade cafeteria downtown. The move didn’t leave the old building on Goss vacant for long: Soon the Goss Avenue Antique Mall opened in slightly different but overlapping quarters. And sure enough, it has a lunch spot, too, dubbed Olivia’s Restaurant.
Continue reading Lunch and antiques, not necessarily in that order

DakShin Indian: A taste of a different South

Buffet at DakShin
A closer peek at just one portion of DakShin’s expansive daily lunch buffet. Photos by Robin Garr

LEO’s Eats with LouisvilleHotBytes.com

Step into DakShin’s spacious, almost cavernous quarters, blink until your eyes adjust to the dim, and you might think you’ve found your way into an oddly named barbecue joint. Square, rough-hewn log walls frame heavy booths of oak; atop a wall at the back, looming above a large-screen television, rests the biggest canoe you have ever seen.

But take another look, and then a sniff. Elusive, aromatic scents of curry direct your palate away from barbecue. Check the television and you’ll find Bollywood-style MTV, piped in straight from India. The art on the walls is Indian, and so are the massive, colorful, Tiffany-look light fixtures that dangle from the high ceiling.
Continue reading DakShin Indian: A taste of a different South

Sophisticated Mojito goes platinum

LEO’s Eats with LouisvilleHotBytes.com

Mojito
Mojito Tapas Restaurant in the Holiday Manor center features small-plate Spanish tapas with a Cuban vibe. Chef-owner Fernando Martinez recently traveled to Europe and brought much of what he learned back home to kick Mojito’s menu up a notch. Photos by Robin Garr

When Mojito Tapas Restaurant opened in the Holiday Manor center early in 2007, it almost instantly turned golden. A stylish, upscale-but-affordable eatery run by the good folks who brought us Havana Rumba, featuring small-plate Spanish tapas with a Cuban vibe: What’s not to like?

And now it has gone platinum.

Chef-owner Fernando Martinez spent a couple of months in Europe last winter, taking a six-week intensive culinary program at Le Cordon Bleu in Paris and traveling to Barcelona and environs in Spain to visit tapas bars. He’s talking about going back for more, but in the meantime, he brought much of what he learned back home and used it to kick Mojito’s menu up a notch … or several.
Continue reading Sophisticated Mojito goes platinum

We kick back at Big Al’s Beeritaville

By Kevin Gibson

It’s no secret that Louisville has an excellent fine-dining scene, especially for a city its size. Still, sometimes you just want to kick back with a good sandwich and a beer.

Enter Big Al’s Beeritaville in Clifton. With a cozy bar, front patio with tables and an outdoor beer garden complete with a horseshoe pit and cornhole, it’s a fun, laid-back place to spend a Saturday afternoon or a weeknight happy hour. LEO Weekly’s own Bar Belle, Sara Havens, wrote earlier this year that the bar at the newly made-over Mac’s is “like hanging out in a friend’s basement,” which pretty much says it all.
Continue reading We kick back at Big Al’s Beeritaville

We eat with our fingers, tastefully

Queen of Sheba
Ethiopian restaurant Queen of Sheba recently moved into the old Mazzoni’s building across from Bowman Field. Photo by Robin Garr.

LEO’s Eats with LouisvilleHotBytes.com

“Don’t eat with your fingers!” This nugget of parental advice is known to just about every child. It’s an integral part of the process of growing up with good manners.

From time to time, though, there’s a certain pleasure in casting aside knives and forks and diving right in. This casual approach works with fried chicken, for instance. Or the appropriately named finger sandwiches. Or a rack of juicy ribs. Just bring plenty of napkins.

Aficionados of ethnic food know another finger-food delight that, with a bit of experience, can actually be consumed with a degree of delicacy in a white-tablecloth setting. We’re talking about Ethiopian fare, an East African alternative that may currently be enjoyed at two local eateries.

Both Blue Nile and Queen of Sheba serve Ethiopian food in the traditional style, all dishes spread out on a large, communal plate lined with thin, spongy injera bread, with more of the bread served in rolls that replace our Western knives and forks.
Continue reading We eat with our fingers, tastefully