Category Archives: Commentary

Robin Garr’s musings about food and restaurant matters that don’t fit neatly into the “review” category.

Healthy dining out? Yes, it is possible

By Robin Garr
LouisvilleHotBytes.com

Restaurant food is delicious. We all know that. This is why we love to eat out. But is it healthy? Well …Chances are that your wondrous repast is loaded with butter, weighed down with carbs, blown up into portion sizes big enough for three. Hell, that’s what makes it so good!

But sometimes, perhaps after looking at the scales or eyeing our next health checkup, we wonder: Is there any way to enjoy restaurant fare without setting out on a slow path to an early demise?

Well, maybe.

Continue reading Healthy dining out? Yes, it is possible

Feed Louisville’s food rescue grows

Homelessness – or houselessness, as many advocates prefer to call it since even a tent is still a person’s home – is an ongoing crisis.

The Coalition for the Homeless declared homelessness “one of the most pressing crises facing Louisville today” in a 2021 report that found 10,640 people without housing in the city in 2021.

Continue reading Feed Louisville’s food rescue grows

More thoughts from the critic’s table

By Robin Garr
LouisvilleHotBytes.com

Here’s an existential question about the art of the food critic: Should a restaurant review stick to the simple basics of food, mood, and service? Or does a review gain texture and meaning by bringing in a broader range of history, culture, culinary arts and other trips down fascinating rabbit holes?

If you follow my food writing at all, you won’t have much trouble finding me sitting unobtrusively at a dinner table behind Door No. Two. I love those culinary rabbit holes, and I suspect it shows. Continue reading More thoughts from the critic’s table

We just can’t stop talking about pizza

By Robin Garr
LouisvilleHotBytes.com

If you’ve long harbored a wish to go viral on social media but didn’t know where to start, here’s a modest proposal: Speak of your undying love for pizza topped with pineapple … and anchovies.

That should do it, and if it costs you a few lost friends and followers, well, that’s the price of fame.

What is it about pizza that makes it such a natural topic for conversation and even debate? Continue reading We just can’t stop talking about pizza

Overcoming food aversions, restaurant-style

By Robin Garr
LouisvilleHotBytes.com

Refusing to eat a disgusting dish may be one of the first things that we as humans can do to claim our individual agency, our right to yell “No!”

“It’s broccoli, dear.” “I say it’s spinach, and I say the hell with it.” Carl Ross’ classic 1928 New Yorker cartoon captured the concept perfectly. We don’t like it. We say the hell with it. And more often than not, that childhood response evolves into a lifelong aversion.

Until it doesn’t. Continue reading Overcoming food aversions, restaurant-style

Invisible disabilities: A challenge for restaurant accessibility

By Robin Garr
LouisvilleHotBytes.com

Think about accessibility for disabled people in restaurants and other businesses, and you’ll probably visualize that familiar blue-and-white stick figure in a wheelchair.

That’s not too surprising. The Americans With Disabilities Act, popularly known as the ADA, passed in 1990, is a civil-rights law that prohibits discrimination against individuals with disabilities in all areas of public life. Continue reading Invisible disabilities: A challenge for restaurant accessibility

What’s an influencer? Is there money in it?

By Robin Garr
LouisvilleHotBytes.com

I was putting on my disguise and puffing up my wig, getting ready to go review a restaurant, when a New York Times headline caught my eye: “The 21st-Century Shakedown of Restaurants.” (The Times’ headline is pictured above.)

“This isn’t a joke,” opinion essayist Karen Stabiner wrote. “This is a 21st-century shakedown. Here is how it works: An influencer walks into a restaurant to collect an evening’s worth of free food and drink, having promised to create social media content extolling the restaurant’s virtues.” Continue reading What’s an influencer? Is there money in it?

“Find us on Facebook” Or not. Restaurants and social media

By Robin Garr
LouisvilleHotBytes.com

In the overall scheme of things, it hasn’t been all that long since Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web. And it’s still recent history when Steve Jobs started the process of getting a tiny, powerful computer into everyone’s pocket.

How in the heck did we figure out how to eat before we could grab our smartphone and in a matter of seconds check out everything we wanted to know about where to go for dinner tonight and figure out what to have when we got there? Continue reading “Find us on Facebook” Or not. Restaurants and social media