Category Archives: Bistros

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

Anoosh is back! Now, what is he going to do?

Here’s a pro tip for restaurant servers: Don’t suck up. Even if you think you’ve spotted a food critic in the house, don’t do it. It can lead to no good end.

Or maybe you don’t reserve the obsequiousness for suspected food writers. Maybe you fawn over everyone who comes in the door, thinking that bowing and scraping like a rug merchant in a Middle Eastern bazaar will prompt everyone to shower you with big tips.

Take this clue: It doesn’t work. Or it sure as hell doesn’t work for me, anyway.
Continue reading Anoosh is back! Now, what is he going to do? →

$$$ Upscale ( $50 - $80), Baxter, Bardstown, Highlands, Bistros, LEO's Eats

LouVino? LOUVINO? What? I can’t heeeaaarrr you!

We stepped into the high-ceilinged room that had housed De La Torre’s for so many years. It looks … different. And very cool. There’s wood all around, and glass and some brass, too, and a bar so long it goes back to there, backed by an awe-inspiring wall of wines housed in high-tech argon gas dispensers that keep the vino fresh.

Also, it’s loud, and by “loud,” I mean LOUD! as in “I can’t hear a frappin’ word you’re saying!”
Continue reading LouVino? LOUVINO? What? I can’t heeeaaarrr you! →

$$$ Upscale ( $50 - $80), Bistros, Downtown, NuLu and Butchertown, LEO's Eats

Harvest inspires our critic’s rant

For a change of pace this week, let’s start with a rant. A political rant! A rant about food politics!

I don’t want to say Michael Pollan or Mark Bittman are latecomers to the party. But I’m sure I’m not the only Boomer who woke up to the issues of food justice a generation earlier when I read Frankie Moore Lappé’s “Diet for a Small Planet” and “Food First” back in the ’70s, when being a “foodie” -a name not yet invented -was just becoming a thing.

The idea that there was a connection between stuffing our faces, feeding hungry people locally, fighting hunger around the world and pushing back against the food industry’s excesses from Frankenfood chemistry to horrific concentrated animal feeding operations came as a new and exciting notion back then.
Continue reading Harvest inspires our critic’s rant →

$$ Modest ($30-$50), $$$ Upscale ( $50 - $80), Baxter, Bardstown, Highlands, Bistros, LEO's Eats, Pubs, Brew Pubs, GastroPubs, slideshow

We study Reinheitsgebot and good eats at The Brewery

I like to think I’m a bit of a beer geek, but our friend Don puts me in the shade when it comes to knowledge of things malty and hoppy. I’ll bet he could recite the rules of the ancient Reinheitsgebot beer laws forwards and backwards, and our multilingual pal Anne could help us do it in the original German.
Continue reading We study Reinheitsgebot and good eats at The Brewery →

$$$ Upscale ( $50 - $80), Bistros, Downtown, NuLu and Butchertown, slideshow, Voice-Tribune review

You Don’t Have To Speak French To Love La Coop

You don’t need to know nearly as much French as you used to do in order to enjoy dinner without assistance at La Coop. Well, you don’t need a French dictionary much, anyway, once you translate the moniker “Bistro à Vins” to discover that it means something like “unpretentious eatery and wines.” Continue reading You Don’t Have To Speak French To Love La Coop →

$$$ Upscale ( $50 - $80), Baxter, Bardstown, Highlands, Bistros, New and noteworthy, underSlideshowEntries

Loop 22 is a fine addition to the Highlands restaurant scene

When baby boomers were kids, our parents overcooked our veggies until they were mushy and bland. A generation later, baby millennials got their veggies crisp and barely cooked, reflecting the then-trendy restaurant style. You’d think that by 2014, some kind of balance might have been achieved between the extremes of ’70s mush and ’90s crunch, but noooo … Continue reading Loop 22 is a fine addition to the Highlands restaurant scene →

$$$$ Luxury ($80 and up), Bistros, Downtown, NuLu and Butchertown, LEO's Eats, underSlideshowEntries

It’s an eatery! It’s an art show! It’s Proof on Main!

What the Flock?! No, that’s not a question. It’s a title, the moniker artist Johnston Foster bestowed on the “site-specific installation” (you or I might call it a “sculpture show”) that, since 2012, has filled the overhead space in Proof on Main with a squadron of exploding seagulls.

Let’s face it, Proof on Main is that kind of place. It’s housed in the trendy confines of Louisville’s much applauded 21c Museum Hotel, which includes the word “museum” in its name with good reason: The place is loaded with wacky yet meaningful art that incorporates everything from its signature red penguins to the giant golden replica of Michelangelo’s “David” out front to, well, exploding gulls. Continue reading It’s an eatery! It’s an art show! It’s Proof on Main! →

$$$ Upscale ( $50 - $80), Bistros, Pubs, Brew Pubs, GastroPubs, Southern Indiana, underSlideshowEntries, Voice-Tribune review

Exchange Pub + Kitchen, a Pillar of Its Community

How good is Exchange Pub + Kitchen? Why, it’s a Pillar of its community.

I mean that literally: This month the popular spot in New Albany’s buzzing downtown dining scene won one of the city’s Pillar Awards, which recognize contributors to downtown restoration and renovation. Exchange Pub won the Horizon Award, honoring co-owners Ian and Nikki Hall for their 2012 move from the Grant Line Road area into the historic 1875-era Shrader Stables building downtown, the New Albany Tribune reported.
Continue reading Exchange Pub + Kitchen, a Pillar of Its Community →

$$ Modest ($30-$50), $$$ Upscale ( $50 - $80), Bistros, Breakfast and lunch spots, sandwich spots, LEO's Eats, St. Matthews, Westport Village, and environs, underSlideshowEntries

Napa River Grill’s Sunday brunch is eggs-actly delicious

Today, let us consider the incredible egg: a gift of nature that’s supremely edible when we handle it right, but when it’s raw or overcooked, not so much.

You see, eggs coagulate, a process the American Egg Board explains as “the denaturation of protein, which is when proteins lose their native, water-soluble structure and become insoluble. … The change of state — from liquid to solid or semi-solid, known as coagulation or gelation — results when the egg protein structure is altered from its native form by whipping or heating, or both.”

Yeah, right, OK, so what? Well, as it happens, this process can be both a blessing and a curse for those who love eggs and the chefs who cook them. Continue reading Napa River Grill’s Sunday brunch is eggs-actly delicious →