Category Archives: Commentary

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

$ Budget (under $30), BBQ, Burgers & Down-Home, Commentary, Southern Indiana

Travel back in time at Schuler’s

Schuler's
The crowded parking lot at Schuler’s in Henryville, Ind., signals a popular neighborhood establishment. Photo by Fred Schloemer.

LEO’s Eat ‘n’ Blog with Louisville HotBytes

Imagine a world without fast-food restaurants, with no golden arches beckoning hungry travelers. It’s almost unthinkable in this day and age, but if you can do it, you’re probably at least 50. For anyone younger, fast food has always been a fact of life.

So says local free-lance writer (and psychotherapist) FRED SCHLOEMER, who favors us this week with this reminiscence of Schuler’s Family Restaurant in Henryville, Ind., a veritable gustatory time machine that can whisk us back to the days when the Beatles were young and Elvis was still alive.

Tell us about it, Fred!
Continue reading Travel back in time at Schuler’s →

Commentary, QuickBytes

G3/Great Bite: Behind The Pink Door

Pink Door

(By Jim Murphy. Republished with permission from G3 Illustrated)

We heard about The Pink Door from our good friends, Mike Neal and Big Jim Stewart. They had gone several months ago and encouraged us to feature the new restaurant as A Great Bite. Given Mike’s temperamental palate, I knew that The Pink Door would be good.

The Pink Door is located in Douglass Loop and does actually possess the symbolic “pink” door. The owners, Brian and Heather Werle, transformed the previously dreary pub décor into a light and airy Asian-inspired eatery.

Drawing from Brian’s Korean roots, Heather created a menu which has something for everyone – Thai, Chinese, Korean and Japanese. Continue reading G3/Great Bite: Behind The Pink Door →

Commentary, QuickBytes

Circling the globe on your dinner plate

Voodoo chicken
Gumbo A Go-Go’s new voodoo chicken needed no extra hot sauce, blogger Kevin Gibson reports. That’s a first. Photo by Robin Garr.

LEO’s Eat ‘n’ Blog with Louisville HotBytes
(Gumbo A Go-Go, Porcini chef at Gourmet to Go, Mayan Café)

One of the most enjoyable aspects of dining out for me is the opportunity to sample a world of cuisines, from the familiar to the exotic.

With relatively few exceptions, ranging from such culinary delights as Indonesian rijstafel to more morally dubious items like Japanese whale sushi or Chinese “fragrant meat” (a euphemism for dog, which is illegal even in China), Louisville’s dining scene offers pretty much anything a diner could want; and if we can’t get it here, we probably don’t really want it anyway.

This week we take a world tour on a dinner plate, with quick trips to Louisiana’s Acadiana, Tuscany and the Yucatan.
Continue reading Circling the globe on your dinner plate →

$$$$ Luxury ($80 and up), Commentary, Downtown, NuLu and Butchertown, White tablecloth, deluxe

Has Vincenzo’s lost a step?

Chef Agostino Gabriele presides over Vincenzo's table at last summer's WorldFeast. Photo by Robin Garr.
Chef Agostino Gabriele presides over Vincenzo’s table at last summer’s WorldFeast. Photo by Robin Garr.
One of the toughest challenges that faces the long-term food critic is that, eventually, most of the players in the local restaurant business figure out who you are. Even when you keep a very low profile, it doesn’t take the sharper cookies long to figure out who’s covering the eats beat.
Continue reading Has Vincenzo’s lost a step? →

Commentary

“Coupledom” at Jenicca’s Café and Wine Bar

G3 - A Great Bite

(Republished with permission from G3 Illustrated)

Benifer. Brangelina. We’re becoming accustomed to the shorthand of celebrity coupledom. The very fact that one is assigned a “couplename” denotes a glamour and comportment to which we mere mortals can only aspire.

It was with that simple expectation that Jim and I set out this month to have A Great Bite at Jenicca’s Café and Wine Bar on Market. The café is named for sisters Jennifer and Rebecca – a pair whose effortless style and charisma is reflected in every aspect of their namesake establishment.
Continue reading “Coupledom” at Jenicca’s Café and Wine Bar →

$$$$ Luxury ($80 and up), Commentary, Downtown, NuLu and Butchertown, White tablecloth, deluxe

The Fixe is in: English Grill on a budget

Brown Hotel
English Grill: The Brown Hotel’s English Grill is worth a trip, but try the regular menu. Photo by Ben Schneider.

LEO’s Eat ‘n’ Blog with Louisville HotBytes
(English Grill’s pre-theater menu)

If you want to create an impression of class in your restaurant, just drop in a little French.

Unfortunately, some French words aren’t easy for English-speakers to handle. Take “prix fixe,” which means “fixed price” – a full meal of several courses offered for a set tab. Neat concept. Not easy to spell and pronounce. I’ve seen it rendered as “prefix” and pronounced as “pricks fix,” but nooooo: Make it “pree feese,” and you’ll hear no snobby Frenchmen snickering at you.

Whatever you want to call it, we invited Eat ‘N’ Blog correspondent ANDREA M. ESSENPREIS to try it, sampling the pre, er, pri, um, fixed-price dinner at the Brown Hotel’s English Grill on the company tab. Her conclusion: You get what you pay for. Continue reading The Fixe is in: English Grill on a budget →

Commentary

Danielle’s: Still sweet, and better than ever

CLOSED. We very much regret to learn of the abrupt closing of Danielle’s just before New Years. The owners, attributing the closure largely to intractible issues surrounding city liquor licensure, say they hope to find a way to return to business eventually.

Danielle's
Danielle’s has earned its place as one of Frankfort Avenue’s stars. Photo by Robin Garr.

LEO’s Eat ‘n’ Blog with Louisville HotBytes

“Dammit,” grumbled my wife, squinting crossly as she studied the new menu at Danielle’s. “Look at this! It’s just like before! Everything has sweet flavors and fruit in it.”

I leaned out of whacking range and snickered: “This is a bad thing?”
It wasn’t bad at all, as it turned out, and even my wife eventually agreed, after she scraped the sweet tomato jam off a hearty portion of lamb shank.
Continue reading Danielle’s: Still sweet, and better than ever →

Commentary

Eating our way through the holidays

LEO’s Eat ‘n’ Blog with Louisville HotBytes

OK, you’re going to shop till you drop – taking care to drop someplace where you can get something tasty and restorative so you can bounce back to shop again.

Or maybe you hate shopping as much as I do and would rather just forget the whole thing, buy your Christmas presents on the Internet, and eat your way through the holidays instead.

No matter which way you want to play it, we’ve got plenty of holiday-season dining advice for you. Tuck this column into your purse or your car. If you find yourself feeling a little peckish during a shopping venture, browse these quirky mini-reviews to find the places just right for you.
Continue reading Eating our way through the holidays →

Commentary

We chow down (and pig out) at WorldFeast

WorldFeast
Hungry festival-goers congregated in the Kentucky Center lobby last Thursday for WorldFeast. Photos by Robin Garr

LEO’s Eat ‘n’ Blog with Louisville HotBytes
(Walking-around bites from 30 Louisville Originals)

It’s not every weekend that you can enjoy the fine fare of a few dozen of the city’s most interesting eateries and wash it all down with an enticing selection of beverages from around the world, for not much more than the price of dinner at a random Bardstown Road bistro.

But this past week, thanks to the one-two combination of WorldFeast in the Kentucky Center Thursday evening and WorldFest on the Belvedere on Friday and Saturday, it was possible to do just that thing, with a world of ethnic music and dancing as a bonus attraction.

WorldFeast, a new venture this year, filled the Main Street performing-arts center’s lofty lobby with tables occupied by more than two dozen restaurant members of the Louisville Originals group, an association of independent, locally owned restaurants, along with a dozen drink companies ranging from microbreweries to coffee companies to importers of fine wines and liquors. Proceeds of the $50 admission tickets went to benefit Louisville Originals, the Kentucky Center’s international programs and the metro Office for International Affairs, which organizes the two-day WorldFest outdoor carnival that followed.

I assume it goes without saying that with this much good food from local restaurants, Eat’N’Blog was THERE. Continue reading We chow down (and pig out) at WorldFeast →

Commentary, News announcements

Oakroom’s Richards vs. Iron Chef!

Chefs Duane and Todd
Photo by Food & Dining Magazine

Chef Todd Richards, executive chef of the Seelbach Hotel’s Oakroom, has been invited to compete on Food Network’s Iron Chef America.

Richards, with his chef de cuisine Duane Nutter (left in the photo) and a third Oakroom chef to be selected, will travel to New York City for the taping on Oct. 17. The episode will be broadcast on FoodTV in January.

“We will be doing some intense training,” Richards said, adding that the chefs plan practice sessions every Sunday and Monday from now until show time.

The January broadcast will give the Oakroom a double-barreled blast of national publicity, Richards said, as they also have an invitation to James Beard House in January or February.

With its enduring American Automobile Association five-diamond rating, the Oakroom under Richards and Nutter is said to be the nation’s only “five-star” restaurant operated by a team of African-American chefs.

“This is great for the city also,” Richards said. “Most of the chefs they pick are in New York, California or Chicago. So to be in Louisville and on the show is great.”

LouisvilleHotBytes congratulates these honored chefs. We can hardly wait to see which of the Iron Chefs they take on. Allez Cuisiner!