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

$$$$ 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? →

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

Nothing succeeds like excess

Jeff Ruby's Steakhouse
Jeff Ruby’s: Jeff Ruby’s Steakhouse at Fourth and Main is one of several upscale restaurants that opened here this year. Photo by Robin Garr.

LEO’s Eat ‘n’ Blog with Louisville HotBytes
(2006 wrapup and Jeff Ruby’s review)

History may record 2006 as the year that the Louisville restaurant industry finally shucked the post-9/11 attitude that eschewed upscale, pricey dining.

Two of the year’s biggest downtown restaurant success stories are the arty, glitzy Proof on Main, and the very pricey Jeff Ruby’s Steakhouse. It’s easy for a diner to blow past the $100 mark for an evening meal at either of these fine spots. Said diner will go home stuffed and happy.

Nor did these two stand alone in the year’s march back toward more conspicuous consumption: From the upscale RAW sushi bar downtown and the classy Danielle’s in Clifton, Nio’s on Baxter and Stratto’s in Clarksville to the lovable Bistro New Albany, the upscale (if not necessarily expensive) restaurant hits just kept on coming. And we’re glad.
Continue reading Nothing succeeds like excess →

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

The Fixe is in: English Grill on a budget

Brown Hotel
English Grill: The Brown Hotel’s English Grill is worth a trip, but try the regular menu. Photo by Ben Schneider.

LEO’s Eat ‘n’ Blog with Louisville HotBytes
(English Grill’s pre-theater menu)

If you want to create an impression of class in your restaurant, just drop in a little French.

Unfortunately, some French words aren’t easy for English-speakers to handle. Take “prix fixe,” which means “fixed price” – a full meal of several courses offered for a set tab. Neat concept. Not easy to spell and pronounce. I’ve seen it rendered as “prefix” and pronounced as “pricks fix,” but nooooo: Make it “pree feese,” and you’ll hear no snobby Frenchmen snickering at you.

Whatever you want to call it, we invited Eat ‘N’ Blog correspondent ANDREA M. ESSENPREIS to try it, sampling the pre, er, pri, um, fixed-price dinner at the Brown Hotel’s English Grill on the company tab. Her conclusion: You get what you pay for. Continue reading The Fixe is in: English Grill on a budget →

$$$$ Luxury ($80 and up)

Earlier reviews of luxury restaurants ($60 per person and up)

The links below go to earlier reviews:

Asiatique
Avalon
Blu Italian Mediterranean Grille
Buck’s
Cafe Metro
De La Torre’s
The English Grill
Equus
Le Relais
Lilly’s
Limestone
The Melting Pot
Mitchell’s Fish Market
Morton’s of Chicago
The Oakroom
Park Place
Ruth’s Chris Steakhouse
Seviche
610 Magnolia
The Star of Louisville
Stoney River Legendary Steaks
211 Clover Lane
Vincenzo’s
Volare
Z’s Oyster Bar & Steakhouse