Category Archives: BBQ, Burgers & Down-Home

Can you say “Bread and Breakfast” three times fast?

Let’s head over to New Albany and get some bed and break … um … bed and break … DAMMIT! I mean BED AND BREAKFAST! No, BREAD! AND BEKKFAST! DAMMIT AGAIN!

Let’s face it. If I was mean enough to mark a place down because its name is hard to say, then this charming little bakery and b-r-e-a-k-f-a-s-t and lunch eatery at the corner of New Albany’s Main and Bank streets would be in a heap of trouble.
Continue reading Can you say “Bread and Breakfast” three times fast?

The daily Grind pays off for Liz and Jesse Huot

The simple black logo that adorns Louisville’s popular Grind Burger truck and its new sibling, Grind Burger Kitchen, speaks volumes about owners Liz and Jesse Huot’s brisk journey from corporate life to the uncertain joys of running a popular food truck.

Well … actually, Grind is not exactly a food truck. It’s a concession trailer towed by a pickup truck. And that, like the black, gear-like logo, is part of their story.
Continue reading The daily Grind pays off for Liz and Jesse Huot

Quality counts at Grind Burger Kitchen

When you’re buying a car, a suit, a pair of shoes, a watch, or even a hamburger, quality makes a difference. Leather seats or plastic in your family limo? All-weather wool from Armani or shiny polyester from T.J.Maxx? Mephisto loafers, or sneakers from Payless? Tag Heuer or a fake Rolex?

Oh, hell, this is too complicated. Let’s go get a burger.

?Or not.
Continue reading Quality counts at Grind Burger Kitchen

Please your palate, polish your Spanish with Palermo’s Parrillada

Psst! Señoras y Señores! Want to practice your Spanish? Here’s a tip: Go to Palermo Viejo and order the classic Argentine meat platter, La Parrillada.

The name of this dish (literally “The Grill Platter”) offers the Spanish-impaired student a double challenge, as it mashes up two of the toughest consonant pairs in Español: double-r and double-l.
Continue reading Please your palate, polish your Spanish with Palermo’s Parrillada

Corner Café, dishing up comfort food for 20 years

Think of a quintessential Louisville neighborhood, and chances are your thoughts will turn to Germantown or Clifton, the Highlands or Crescent Hill.

“That stretch out past Lyndon where Whipps Mill twists around the railroad tracks and tangles with Lagrange Road,” not so much. Continue reading Corner Café, dishing up comfort food for 20 years

Cottage Cafe Shines on Middletown’s Old Main Street

Middletown’s Main Street, a quaint strip of Victorian houses, steepled churches and storefront shops, served as the suburban community’s main drag for many years as its commercial center and a slow-down, look-around opportunity for traffic on the old U.S. 60.

Then came the age of the suburb. Middletown got a four-lane “bypass” that sped traffic around the old town center and that quickly sprouted with shopping centers and strip malls, and Main Street settled into a quieter, gentler place. Continue reading Cottage Cafe Shines on Middletown’s Old Main Street

Bluegrass Burgers: Virtuous, Local and Delicious

Mmm, who doesn’t love a hamburger? Hot, juicy, dripping with … um … greasy fat? Let’s get real: burgers appeal to something primal in most of us, but that seductive call can lead us down a path that goes directly to excess calories, unhealthy fat and … well, let’s not even talk about the hormones, the antibiotics, the e. coli or the stench of inhumane stewardship that surrounds industrial feedlot beef.

Why, the not-so-innocent burger’s unsavory reputation has reached the point that even multinational giant McDonald’s was recently caught warning its own employees against overdoing the chain’s trademark product. Continue reading Bluegrass Burgers: Virtuous, Local and Delicious

Food Network loves The Coach Lamp, but who loves Food Network?

Okay, I am just going to come right out and say it: I am so over Food Network. Have been for years, really.

She’s like an old flame, full of bad memories of a romance that I try to suppress now that I’m no longer quite so young and stupid. Oh, I loved her back then, I truly did. It was late coming to Louisville, and I lusted after it in my heart when I read my friends’ stories online about her seductive wiles. And when she finally came to town, sometime around the turn of the millennium, as I recall, I was smitten, so smitten. Continue reading Food Network loves The Coach Lamp, but who loves Food Network?

Road food road trip!

I can’t believe it’s Labor Day weekend already and I hadn’t made my annual (short) road trip across the Ohio to enjoy old-style roadside dining at two local favorites, A.J.’s Gyros and Polly’s Freeze.

We rectified this lapse today with a delicious lunch of gyros and falafel sandwiches and a plate of dolmades at AJ’s, followed by a soft-serve Brown Derby cone and a butterscotch shake at Polly’s. “This is what fast food was like before there was McDonald’s,” Mary mused over gyros. True. It’s fast food as our parents knew it, and our grandparents, too, before there were interstates. Continue reading Road food road trip!

Mussel & Burger (& Elotes) Bar

Okay, I have to admit, I was dubious at first about the idea of this new place in J’town bringing together mussels and burgers as its signature dishes.

When I heard that Cristina and Fernando Martinez and his cousin, Yaniel, were going to build a bill of fare around two such disparate edibles, my imagination pushed back: “One of these things is not like the other.”
Continue reading Mussel & Burger (& Elotes) Bar