Category Archives: $$$$ Luxury ($80 and up)

$$$$ Luxury ($80 and up), Baxter, Bardstown, Highlands, LEO's Eats, underSlideshowEntries, White tablecloth, deluxe

How is Le Relais like a high-school reunion?

Imagine, if you will, a high school reunion. A seemingly ordinary reunion, perhaps 25 years after you graduated and left town for new challenges. You return, eager to see old friends again. Hey, Jack hasn’t changed a bit! Trent and Joanie got married, gained a few pounds as they slouched into middle age. Ronnie is bald!

And then, across the room, a tall, slender form appears. It’s Lizzie! The cheerleader you had a crush on. She must be a beauty still. You walk over to say hello. She turns, smiles and … oh.
Continue reading How is Le Relais like a high-school reunion? →

$$$$ Luxury ($80 and up), BBQ, Burgers & Down-Home, Hurstbourne, Middletown, Jeffersontown, underSlideshowEntries, White tablecloth, deluxe

Z’s and a lesson in steakhouse economics

Let’s consider the economics of steak. Hungry for a sizzling rare boneless strip? Meijer had USDA choice for $7.99 a pound this week. (Kroger had flatiron, a chunk of chuck, for just $5.99 a pound, but let’s keep things upscale with strip or rib eye.) Bring it home, slap it on the grill, add a potato and a salad, and you’ve got steak dinner for two for $10. Such a deal.

Now let’s tinker with this scenario. Continue reading Z’s and a lesson in steakhouse economics →

$$$$ Luxury ($80 and up), Downtown, NuLu and Butchertown, underSlideshowEntries, White tablecloth, deluxe

Dining like an ‘Iron Chef’ judge at 610 Magnolia

By Robin Garr
LouisvilleHotBytes.com

I’ve always been a big fan of “Iron Chef,” both the Japanese original and the American imitation it spawned.

Some find its campy concept over the top, with the wacky über-rich Chairman in his Kitchen Stadium yelling “Allez Cuisine!” in bad French, but just about every foodie I know can see past the yuks to the serious competitive restaurant-chef cookery.

After an hour of an intense, timed cooking competition, in which the competitors make the best use of the week’s secret ingredient, comes the best part of the show: when the chefs bring their finished dishes forward to a panel of judges, a group that on the original show invariably included a food critic plus such skilled experts as a movie starlet, perhaps a Japanese athlete, sometimes a member of the Japanese parliament.

How I wished I could have been up there at the table sampling all those amazing, creative dishes.

So when Chef Edward Lee of Louisville’s 610 Magnolia turned up on “Iron Chef America” last month, taking on Iron Chef Jose Garces in an offal battle featuring “tongue and cheek,” and Lee won, I realized I could get a similar effect right here at home by presenting myself for a dinner of Lee’s inspired cooking. Continue reading Dining like an ‘Iron Chef’ judge at 610 Magnolia →

$$$$ Luxury ($80 and up), Commentary, St. Matthews, Westport Village, and environs, White tablecloth, deluxe

Corbett’s joins the region’s top tables

Corbett's
Housed in the 150-year-old farmhouse that was originally home to the Von Allmen dairy operation, Corbett’s “An American Place” opened in the winter, joining the ranks of the region’s top tables. Photo by Robin Garr.

LEO’s Eats with LouisvilleHotBytes.com

Chef Dean Corbett, who made his mark on the Louisville food scene with his excellent restaurant Equus in St. Matthews, has created one of the most outstanding restaurants in the region with this latest venture. Corbett’s “An American Place” opened in the winter in the far-east end of Jefferson County, in the growing Brownsboro Crossing shopping center east of the Snyder Freeway. It has already joined the ranks of the region’s top tables.

Housed in the 150-year-old farmhouse that was originally home to the Von Allmen dairy operation, Corbett’s has been renovated from cellar to ceiling, the gracious lines of a prosperous country estate now girded with every high-tech restaurant bell and whistle imaginable, from special air-conditioning for the comfort of chefs on the hot stations to a 21st century television system that allows, among other things, guests in the private “chef’s room” to interact with kitchen staff while their dinner is being prepared ($150 per person) and later receive a souvenir DVD recording of the experience.
Continue reading Corbett’s joins the region’s top tables →

$$$$ Luxury ($80 and up), Baxter, Bardstown, Highlands, White tablecloth, deluxe

French Flying: Le Relais soars

Le Relais
If you’re in the mood for a more casual experience, the rear patio at Le Relais is more laid-back and offers a bonus: It overlooks the runway and hangars, so you can watch small planes come and go. Photo by Robin Garr.

LEO’s Eats with LouisvilleHotBytes.com, with Guest Critic Paige Moore-Heavin

Le Relais consistently ranks among my top five restaurants in Louisville, and on any given night, it can make the top one. Yet a lot of people are wary of experiencing this great dining room. Some fear it will be too expensive. Others sweat the potential embarrassment of being unable to read a fancy French menu.

There’s no need for concern, says LouisvilleHotBytes correspondent Paige Moore-Heavin, who recently checked out Le Relais and found the price doable (especially if you go for the special-deal prix fixe menu) and the friendly attitude entirely bilingual. Here’s her report:
Continue reading French Flying: Le Relais soars →

$$$$ Luxury ($80 and up), Hurstbourne, Middletown, Jeffersontown, White tablecloth, deluxe

We put on that ole Southern drawl at Limestone

Michael Cunha
Limestone Restaurant chef and co-owner Michael Cunha dresses up Southern fare in a city suit. The suburban restaurant remains up there with the top spots in town. LEO photo by Nicole Pullen.

LEO’s Eats with Louisville HotBytes

Louisville, it is said, is the only Northern city that chose to declare itself “Southern” only after the South had lost the Civil War. This odd decision, some say, led directly to 100 years of stagnation, no major-league sports teams and a slow decline that eventually took us to the bottom of the nation’s top 50 media markets.

It was a hefty price to pay for the privilege of adopting an affected drawl and adding fatback, grits and greens to our culinary tradition.

I don’t know about you, but our family never ate that stuff at home. Ours was a steak-and-potatoes, spaghetti-and-meatballs, braunschweiger-and-kuchen urban household, and we liked it like that.

Nevertheless, Southern, aka “country,” fare dressed up in a city suit has become a staple in some of Louisville’s finest upscale eateries, and chefs Jim Gerhardt and Michael Cunha have been among the leaders in making it so.
Continue reading We put on that ole Southern drawl at Limestone →

$$$$ Luxury ($80 and up), Downtown, NuLu and Butchertown, White tablecloth, deluxe

A man, a plan, a great meal at 610 Magnolia

Edward Lee
Chef Edward Lee at 610 Magnolia. LEO photo by Nicole Pullen

LEO’s Eat ‘n’ Blog with Louisville HotBytes

What happens when one becomes so jaded that even the regular dinner at a culinary shrine seems routine? “Ho, hum, dinner at 610 Magnolia again!” Here’s my advice: Kick it up with a special dinner at 610.

Frankly, I don’t think I could ever attain such a level of ennui about the restaurant that’s arguably the region’s best. Chef Edward Lee’s regular menu is a never-ending series of surprises, with exciting new dishes every weekend. But every now and then, Lee pulls off something special. And these events – best tracked by signing up for the e-mail list on the restaurant Web site at www.610magnolia.com – are memorable indeed.

Take last week’s Palindrome dinner.

Say what?
Continue reading A man, a plan, a great meal at 610 Magnolia →

$$$$ Luxury ($80 and up), Downtown, NuLu and Butchertown, White tablecloth, deluxe

Oakroom foams over the top

Culinary foam
“Culinary foam”: A mound of glistening orange white chocolate froth drooling off your Oakroom dessert is airy and succulent, but it’s not so easy to look at on the plate. Photos by Robin Garr.

LEO’s Eat ‘n’ Blog with Louisville HotBytes

“Culinary foam” – trendy for decades in the upper reaches of dining-as-theater – is one of the more striking “molecular gastronomy” inventions of Spanish Chef Ferran Adrià of El Bulli near Barcelona. The flavored foams – aerosol squirted onto food – add subtle tastes, and they signal that the chef is “with it.”

Adrià has been foaming since 1995, and now foams have made it to Louisville, where Chefs Todd Richards and Duane Nutter and Pastry Chef Ethan Ray are making their mark with foams, smears and sauces, dispensed from martini shakers or spread in thin, colorful layers across your plate.

The Oakroom crew does molecular gastronomy very well: The white-chocolate-orange foam on a succulent chocolate trio dessert plate the other night was intensely flavored yet light as air. But much like a raw oyster (and I choose the analogy advisedly), a mound of glistening froth drooling off your food isn’t easy to look at on the plate.
Continue reading Oakroom foams over the top →

$$$$ Luxury ($80 and up), Commentary, Downtown, NuLu and Butchertown, White tablecloth, deluxe

Has Vincenzo’s lost a step?

Chef Agostino Gabriele presides over Vincenzo's table at last summer's WorldFeast. Photo by Robin Garr.
Chef Agostino Gabriele presides over Vincenzo’s table at last summer’s WorldFeast. Photo by Robin Garr.
One of the toughest challenges that faces the long-term food critic is that, eventually, most of the players in the local restaurant business figure out who you are. Even when you keep a very low profile, it doesn’t take the sharper cookies long to figure out who’s covering the eats beat.
Continue reading Has Vincenzo’s lost a step? →