Category Archives: BBQ, Burgers & Down-Home

$ Budget (under $30), BBQ, Burgers & Down-Home, Bistros, Commentary, Downtown, NuLu and Butchertown, QuickBytes, South End

Dissertation on chili and a fine new place to enjoy it

CLOSED.

  bowl of chili
  Lunch at the Chili Pot. Photo: Robin Garr.

LEO’s Eats with LouisvilleHotBytes

If you think wine-snob dogma like “never drink white wine with red meat” or “never drink white Zinfandel with any meat” or “never drink a wine with a rating under 90” is tough, you’ve obviously never set foot in a room filled with baying chili-heads.

Tomatoes or no tomatoes? Beans or no beans? Chopped meat or ground meat? Chili powder, dried chilies or fresh? It’s like listening to medieval theologians arguing about how many angels can dance on the head of a pin.

A recent visit to The Chili Pot, a great new spot in Okolona, filled me with the warming potion and prompted me to ponder the chili mystique.
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$ Budget (under $30), BBQ, Burgers & Down-Home, Commentary, Downtown, NuLu and Butchertown, New and noteworthy, QuickBytes

Otto’s takes on tough competition with “best burger”

otto burger

The economy being what it is, I find myself ordering hamburger about as often as steak these days. But if I’m going to have a burger, I want it to be a good one. And happily, quite a few local beef emporia have made this wish an entirely possible dream.

Recently Otto’s Cafe, the first-floor coffee shop at the Seelbach Hotel, entered the hamburger sweepstakes with a take-no-prisoners news release that flatly declares Otto’s new hamburger the best in town.
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$ Budget (under $30), BBQ, Burgers & Down-Home, Commentary, Frankfort Ave., Clifton, Crescent Hill, Hurstbourne, Middletown, Jeffersontown, QuickBytes

Burgers, dogs and cones, oh my!

Five Guys dog and burger

LEO’s Eats with LouisvilleHotBytes
(Five Guys, Home Run, Conez and Coneyz)
EDITOR’S NOTE: Conez and Coneys is now closed.
For all the talk of market indicators and the rebounding Dow and yada yada yada, you and I know there’s still a recession going on. And so, apparently, do a lot of Louisville’s restaurateurs.

I’ve reported recently on the ways some of the city’s top-tier eateries are responding to tightened consumer spending with menu-price reductions. Small-plates restaurants, always popular, are on the rise.

And, in a time when the economy and other things that go bump in the night look scary, many of us crave cheap, hearty and, yes, fatty comfort food. New spots that specialize in economical edibles such as hamburgers and hot dogs are springing up all over.
Continue reading Burgers, dogs and cones, oh my! →

$ Budget (under $30), BBQ, Burgers & Down-Home, Commentary, QuickBytes, South End

Ole Hickory Pit, old Western Kentucky tradition

Ribs at Ole Hickory Pit

Anybody want a little mutton? I can hear you going “Eeuuww!” all the way from here.

Once beloved by our English and Australian cousins, who had a lot of sheep around, mutton has all but died out in modern times. You’ll rarely if ever see it in the grocery store or on a restaurant menu. In an age of mild beef, chicken and pork, “the other white meat,” mutton has a bad reputation as strong, greasy and gamey meat.
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$ Budget (under $30), BBQ, Burgers & Down-Home, Commentary, Downtown, NuLu and Butchertown, QuickBytes, South End, Southern Indiana, World Food

Road trip ramble

Burger Boy
The new and improved Burger Boy. LEO photo by Ron Jasin

LEO’s Eats with LouisvilleHotBytes
(Burger Boy, A.J.’s Coffee ‘n’ Cream, Polly’s Freeze, Mike Linnig’s)

“Road trip!”

With the possible exception of “smog alert,” no two words say summer better.

For the inveterate foodie, no road trip would be complete without stopping to sample roadfood, a concept that the writers Jane and Michael Stern made famous, defining it as “memorable local eateries along the highways and back roads of America.”

With summer finally blazing at its peak, we’ve done some road time lately, visiting a few old friends on the highways around Louisville, and discovering a bright new face on a roadfood-style inner-city eatery that has lifted itself from a dive into an inviting diner. Let’s start there.
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$$ Modest ($30-$50), A RESTAURANT LISTING..., Baxter, Bardstown, Highlands, BBQ, Burgers & Down-Home, Commentary, Guest columnist, QuickBytes

Fried chicken? Falafels? Captain Pepper Jack’s mixes it up

LEO’s Eats with LouisvilleHotBytes
(By Paige Moore-Heavin)

When my friend Lynn suggested Captain Pepper Jack’s Aero Bistro for girls’ night out, I was a little confused. This place, which opened near Bowman Field in May, was new to me. “It’s part Southern American and part Mediterranean,” she said. Well, that’s an odd combination. But, ever the foodie, I was willing to give this culinary mash-up a try.
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$ Budget (under $30), A RESTAURANT LISTING..., Baxter, Bardstown, Highlands, BBQ, Burgers & Down-Home, QuickBytes

Great Bunz, loaded with splendid burgers

Burger at Bunz

LEO’s Eats with LouisvilleHotBytes.com

So we’re walking down Baxter just north of Highland Avenue, well into the city’s club zone, and suddenly a new hanging sign catches my eye.

“BUNZ,” it reads, like a hip-hop interpretation of a bread store specializing in … naw, can’t be. We swerved into the tiny quarters that had previously housed Omar’s Gyros and found a spiffy new shop specializing in hamburgers – fat, dense and beefy burgers, mounted, of course, on exceptional buns. Er, bunz.

Located just across the street from Derby City Dogs and a block or so north from the new Highlands branch of Lonnie’s Taste of Chicago, another hot-dog store, this recent arrival would seem to mark a new high-water mark for restaurant specialization in the neighborhood.
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BBQ, Burgers & Down-Home, Bistros, Coffee Shops & Desserts, Downtown, NuLu and Butchertown, Southern Indiana

Don’t dismiss little ol’ Jeff

Our Best
Our Best Restaurant in Jeffersonville is a family-owned business that started as a single eatery in Smithfield, Ky. Photos by Robin Garr

LEO’s Eats with LouisvilleHotBytes.com
(Our Best Restaurant, Perkfection Café; Z’s Fusion opening report)

It would be easy to dismiss the dining options in little ol’ Jeffersonville, especially when you look across the majestic Ohio River and see … Hooters. But there are some rich and varied dining choices over yonder, from the delicious and affordable Mai’s Thai to the old favorite Come Back Inn.

Reporter Kevin Gibson tried a couple of Jeffersonville’s choices recently – Our Best Restaurant, located just off Ind. 62, and Perkfection Café & Bar – and found good things at both.
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