Category Archives: World Food

$ Budget (under $30), Downtown, NuLu and Butchertown, World Food

Flat wallet, round tummy? Try these great cheap eats

LEO’s Eats with Louisville HotBytes

Okay, we’re into 2008 now. The holidays are over. Your wallet is flat but your tummy is not. Fine dining and wretched excess are not in the picture, but we’re not really ready for a diet of raw carrots and soda water.

Let’s scout out some great cheap eats, the kind of fare that offers a quick and tasty meal that may not be diet food but isn’t a multi-course banquet, either.

To celebrate the New Year (if in fact there’s much to celebrate about a bleak Ohio Valley January), let’s take a quick look at a potpourri of recent quick and affordable discoveries on the local dining scene.
Continue reading Flat wallet, round tummy? Try these great cheap eats →

$ Budget (under $30), St. Matthews, Westport Village, and environs, World Food

Shiraz settles in at Holiday Manor

Ramin and Cheryl Akrami
Ramin and Cheryl Akrami at Shiraz Mediterranean Grill in Holiday Manor. Photo by Robin Garr.

(Shiraz Mediterranean Grill, Voice-Tribune, Dec. 13, 2007)

If you love a good success story, consider Shiraz Mediterranean Grill. It would be hard to find another modest restaurant in Louisville that started so small and grew so fast.

It seems much longer than just a year and a half since Ramin Akrami opened the first Shiraz, a tiny, four-table eatery almost hidden in a row of frame huts on lower Brownsboro Road. It quickly outgrew those quarters, and within six months Akrami moved to more spacious modern facilities in the new Clifton Lofts complex on Frankfort Avenue. Now Shiraz has come to the East End, with a shiny new branch in Holiday Manor Walk, an expansion that Akrami hopes will be a link in a growing chain.
Continue reading Shiraz settles in at Holiday Manor →

$ Budget (under $30), St. Matthews, Westport Village, and environs, World Food

And still more cheap eats: Breakfast at the Meridian Cafe

LEO’s Eats with Louisville HotBytes

The metro area is blessed with a surprising number of first-rate spots for a casual, comfortable soup, salad or sandwich lunch, and I try to make my way around to all of them regularly. One of my favorites is Meridian Café, and I’m apparently not the only person thus smitten – this place almost always has a big crowd.

Continue reading And still more cheap eats: Breakfast at the Meridian Cafe →

$ Budget (under $30), St. Matthews, Westport Village, and environs, World Food

South India to West China: two hot new ethnic spots

Royal India's masala dosa
Indian brunch: Masala Dosa, a South Indian vegetarian treat, is the large lentil crepe at lower left, folded around curried potatoes; also pictured are three white rice-based idlys, a cup of spicy sambar lentil soup, and a pool of green coconut chutney. Photos by Robin Garr.

LEO’s Eats with Louisville HotBytes
(Royal India; Red Pepper Chinese Cuisine)

You don’t have to be as old as the (Tuscan) hills to remember the days when “Northern” Italian fare first became a local craze, serving dishes like fettuccine alfredo and veal piccata. Before long, “Northern” was in, “Southern” was out, and to this day, as much as we may still love pizza and spaghetti with meatballs and other hearty red-sauced Italian comfort food, we don’t think of it as, well, upscale anymore.

Now get ready to broaden your culinary horizons with a couple more ethnic compass points. Two fine new restaurants are breaking new ground for Louisville with exotic, spicy South Indian and West Chinese cuisine.
Continue reading South India to West China: two hot new ethnic spots →

St. Matthews, Westport Village, and environs, World Food

Rising trend for ’07: fine dining comes to suburbia

Veal at Corbett's
Plated on a seductive, creamy puree of house-smoked sweet potatoes, the butter-tender Sonoma veal cutlets at Corbett’s “An American Place” are a work of culinary art. Photo by Robin Garr.

LEO’s Eats with Louisville HotBytes
(Seviche – A Latin Bistro; Corbett’s “An American Place”)

Here’s a vignette that captures the year 2007 on the local dining scene for me: I’m enjoying lunch in the new Seviche – A Latin Bistro on Goose Creek Road. The room is packed, but I’m the only male in sight, and I’m the youngest person in the place except for the servers. I’m enjoying a wonderful Chinese-Latino “fusion” seviche … and all the ladies lunching around me are having guacamole and quesadillas and talking about what a marvelous new Mexican place this is.

In fact, the year 2007 has seen a lot of action on the Louisville restaurant scene, including some disappointing closings (Bistro New Albany, Azalea, Diamante, Harper’s) and some exciting openings (Mojito, Basa, Varanese, Wild Eggs, Original Impellizzeri’s), not to mention a closing-but-reopening (Nio’s at 917) and even a closing-opening-closing-opening-again-then-really-and-truly-closing (the ill-fated Oscar Brown’s/La Rouge/Bobby J’s).

Perhaps the most intriguing developing local restaurant trend, though, is the first shaking of a seismic shift: The arrival of Seviche and other top-echelon, locally owned and independent white-tablecloth restaurants in the chain-rich East End.
Continue reading Rising trend for ’07: fine dining comes to suburbia →

$$ Modest ($30-$50), St. Matthews, Westport Village, and environs, World Food

Seviche comes to the East End

Crispy fish at Seviche
Seviche’s crispy fish was a deep-fried red snapper about a foot long, served head and tail on, set in swimming position atop a bed of subtly flavored macadamia-nut rice. Photo by Robin Garr.

(Seviche – A Latin Bistro, Voice-Tribune, Nov. 29, 2007)

When Anthony Lamas’s son, Ethan Diego, turned 4, Lamas and his wife, Samantha, made the same decision as a lot of young parents before them: They moved from the Highlands to the East End, seeking a quiet, suburban setting with good schools for the youngsters.

It wasn’t long before Lamas made another important decision: With the strong encouragement of his wife and his father-in-law, Dr. Bruce Gaddie – longtime Oldham County residents – he brought his workplace out to the suburbs, too.

Lamas, chef and owner of Louisville’s immensely popular Seviche – A Latin Restaurant – now presides over two restaurants, having opened Seviche – A Latin Bistro last month in the quarters vacated by the short-lived Cutting Board on Goose Creek Road.

With the exception of locally owned and operated Limestone on North Hurstbourne, Lamas said he was startled to discover how much the East End’s fine-dining scene has been dominated by corporate chain eateries.

The arrival of the new Seviche, though, coupled with Equus chef-owner Dean Corbett’s planned opening of Corbett’s An American Place in Brownsboro Crossing on Dec. 15 and Napa River Grill’s planned move from Dupont Circle to Westport Village early next year, may signal a coming tide.
Continue reading Seviche comes to the East End →

$ Budget (under $30), St. Matthews, Westport Village, and environs, World Food

Wild Eggs hatches breakfast … and lunch!

Wild Eggs

(Wild Eggs, Voice-Tribune, Nov. 8, 2007)

Who doesn’t love breakfast? The resounding success of a series of fancy yet comfortable breakfast and brunch spots around Louisville strongly suggests that most people in the Derby City do.

First there was Lynn’s Paradise Cafe, which has all but become a local institution in nearly 20 years of serving us pancakes, french toast and more. A couple of years ago, Toast on Market opened to rave reviews and has been packed ever since.

And now, in the East End, Wild Eggs seems poised to make it a morning trifecta.
Continue reading Wild Eggs hatches breakfast … and lunch! →

$ Budget (under $30), Baxter, Bardstown, Highlands, World Food

Dr. Livingstone would have loved Chez Seneba

The world has shrunk a great deal since the days when the journalist Henry Stanley found Dr. David Livingstone, we presume, in what was then known as darkest Africa. Curiously enough, that famous meeting occurred only a few short years before Steinert’s was to open its doors in New Albany.

To this day, most Americans remain a bit iffy on African geography, not to mention African cuisine. For the record, then, Chez Seneba represents West Africa in Louisville’s world atlas of eats: The owners hail from Senegal, which is pretty much directly across Africa from Ethiopia on the continent’s eastern side, a nation whose spicy cuisine is represented locally by Queen of Sheba on Bardstown Road. More about that another day.
Continue reading Dr. Livingstone would have loved Chez Seneba →

$ Budget (under $30), St. Matthews, Westport Village, and environs, World Food

Inside story at Sahara Café

Sahara
Sahara Café chef Mavash Rubino is from Iran, and the range of Middle Eastern fare that she prepares shows a distinct Persian accent. Sahara ranks right up there with other local Persian spots. LEO Photos by Nicole Pullen.

LEO’s Eat ‘n’ Blog with Louisville HotBytes
(Sahara Café, Wild Eggs)

A small puzzle accompanies Sahara Café, a new Middle Eastern eatery in St. Matthews: Is it a restaurant inside a shop, or is it a shop inside a restaurant?

I think maybe it’s both. Located in the new retail building at the northeast corner of Lexington Road and Bauer Avenue, just down the street from Lotsa Pasta, its close but comfortable quarters incorporate the family-owned Sahara Café and A Small World, a gift shop featuring, they say, “handcrafted home-decor items from around the world.”
Continue reading Inside story at Sahara Café →

$ Budget (under $30), West End, World Food

We take the Soul Train to Big Momma’s

When the Supreme Court axed Louisville’s long-standing school-desegregation plan this summer, an ABC News team came to town to report local reaction, and while they were here, they took their cameras to lunch at Big Momma’s Soul Kitchen and declared this tiny West End eatery “a true oasis of lovingly prepared home cooking that delivers great taste at a great price.”

That’s strong praise, so we headed west on Broadway to Shawnee Park, where Big Momma’s occupies a tiny, white-painted building just large enough for a service window and five tall stools along a short lunch counter.

Open for lunch and early dinner daily, Big Momma’s offers a lot of soul food for a little price. Each day’s menu changes slightly, but fried chicken and a few other items remain constant. A main course and two sides is $7 to $7.50; sandwiches are $3.50, mostly.

We filled up on crisp, juicy fried chicken and an oversize breaded pork chop smothered in gravy, with excellent long-simmered green beans and bacon; white beans; creamy, rich mashed potatoes; and long-cooked chunks of cabbage, all well-seasoned and flavored and prepared with obvious TLC. That’s what “soul” is all about. We dropped a good tip in the jar and left with smiles and change from a $20.

Big Momma’s Soul Kitchen
4532 W. Broadway
772-9580