Mezza Plate at Dejlah Bistro. Photo by Ron Jasin.

LEO’s Eats with LouisvilleHotBytes

]More than 7,500 years ago, historians say, early hunter-gatherers started moving in small bands down from the mountains north of the Persian Gulf to settle along the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. They saved and planted seeds, domesticated farm animals, and eventually founded the world’s first cities, then its first empires, in Mesopotamia, the rich land “between the rivers.”

The ancient Mesopotamians invented writing, not to mention bread, wine and beer. Indeed, the need to provide a growing population with food and drink inspired the first civilization, the fertile soil to which we all trace back our cultural roots.
Continue reading Taste of Mesopotamia at Dejlah Bistro →

Sandwich from El Rumbon

LEO’s Eats with LouisvilleHotBytes

Fidel Castro is sliding into retirement, and anti-Cuba sentiment feels oh-so ’60s nowadays. We still can’t legally smoke Cuban cigars, but they’re not so hard to score. And Cuban food is starting to look like the next big thing on the Louisville culinary scene.

Havana Rumba broke the ice, earning instant popularity when it opened in St. Matthews almost six years ago; the owners quickly doubled down with sibling Mojito and, more recently, a second location in Middletown. Cocos Lokos added another quality option on the Hurstbourne corridor last year, and Cuba Libre, new in Jeffersonville this summer, is drawing crowds.

Now, an amiable Cuban chef named Reinold Febles has added yet another tasty dimension with Cuban street food. Febles, who’s worked in a number of kitchens around town, sets up his large, spic-and-span food trailer on auto-dealer parking lots around Oxmoor Center, serving Cuban food as well as some Mexican favorites (burritos, quesadillas) and Norteamericano fried chicken and hot dogs.
Continue reading El Rumbon Cuban Trailer gives new meaning to ‘road food’ →