$$ Modest ($30-$50), $$$ Upscale ( $50 - $80), St. Matthews, Westport Village, and environs, World Food

Sophisticated Mojito goes platinum

LEO’s Eats with LouisvilleHotBytes.com

Mojito
Mojito Tapas Restaurant in the Holiday Manor center features small-plate Spanish tapas with a Cuban vibe. Chef-owner Fernando Martinez recently traveled to Europe and brought much of what he learned back home to kick Mojito’s menu up a notch. Photos by Robin Garr

When Mojito Tapas Restaurant opened in the Holiday Manor center early in 2007, it almost instantly turned golden. A stylish, upscale-but-affordable eatery run by the good folks who brought us Havana Rumba, featuring small-plate Spanish tapas with a Cuban vibe: What’s not to like?

And now it has gone platinum.

Chef-owner Fernando Martinez spent a couple of months in Europe last winter, taking a six-week intensive culinary program at Le Cordon Bleu in Paris and traveling to Barcelona and environs in Spain to visit tapas bars. He’s talking about going back for more, but in the meantime, he brought much of what he learned back home and used it to kick Mojito’s menu up a notch … or several.
Continue reading Sophisticated Mojito goes platinum →

Commentary, News announcements

Welcome Ryder Cup fans! Now, let’s have dinner

LEO’s Eats with LouisvilleHotBytes.com

Welcome to Louisville, Ryder Cup fans, and please excuse us if we accidentally misspell the name of your event. After all, in Louisville for the last 140 years or so, “Rider” has meant one of the little guys who captain those big horses around the track at Churchill Downs.

But we’re trying to get on board with the idea of folks who use long sticks to knock small white balls into tiny holes, and we truly do want to make you feel welcome.

Ryder Cup may attract more than 200,000 spectators (and another 1,500 reporters and photographers) to the Valhalla Golf Club during the five-day event (Sept. 16-21), and that puts it on par with Kentucky Derby season as a gathering likely to pack the town and make it mighty hard to get a table in some of our hottest eateries.

Valhalla, a gated, guarded greensward, is surrounded by endless suburbia, a scene that you may find a lot like home, whether you’re visiting from Atlanta, Ann Arbor or Greenwich. It would be all too easy for you to enjoy a pasteurized and homogenized dining experience, too, should you choose to take your meals at Olive Garden, Red Lobster or any of the many other corporate chains that dot that quadrant of our map.

But what a shame that would be! Louisville, a city where the locals allegedly dine out more often per capita than any other U.S. metropolis, is rich with fine, independently owned and operated eateries at a broad range of prices, styles and ethnic origins.

We hope you’ll make it a point to spend some time – and yes, some of your tourist dollars – getting to know our locals. We think you’ll see just why it is that we eat out so much.
Continue reading Welcome Ryder Cup fans! Now, let’s have dinner →

Industry Standard

Don’t get all your ingredients from one store

Foodie: Someone who cares about food, takes pride in the variety of his eating habits and enjoys getting quality ingredients for his home cooking. Did you know you can buy many of the products we use in the restaurant business without ever setting foot in a retail grocery store?
Continue reading Don’t get all your ingredients from one store →

Commentary

Voyage of foodie discovery at Worldfest

WorldFest
The “Food Village” at this year’s WorldFest. Photos by Robin Garr

LEO’s Eats with LouisvilleHotBytes.com

Another WorldFest, Louisville’s annual celebration of ethnic diversity, is behind us and as usual, that means I’ve spent another weekend stuffing myself with delicious and exotic food from many nations.

That’s the good news. On the other side of the ledger, it didn’t seem to me that there were quite as many ethnic restaurants represented at WorldFest this year as last. Asiatique was there as usual, holding down the high end of the local-restaurant spectrum with well-prepared goat-cheese crabmeat spring rolls, salmon egg rolls and beef kebabs ($2 each or all three for $5).

A number of other local ethnic favorites staffed booths offering samples of their fare, including India Palace, Los Aztecas, Mai’s Thai, Queen of Sheba Ethiopian, Safier Mediterranean Deli, Taste of Jamaica Cafe, Thai Taste, Valu Market and Yang Kee Noodle, not to mention sweet treats from Café Glace, Coco’s Bakery, Gelato Gilberto and Kizito Cookies. Even those wary of unfamiliar dishes could easily fill the inner person with such comfort foods as bratwurst, ice cream and funnel cakes.
Continue reading Voyage of foodie discovery at Worldfest →

$$ Modest ($30-$50), BBQ, Burgers & Down-Home, Frankfort Ave., Clifton, Crescent Hill

We kick back at Big Al’s Beeritaville

By Kevin Gibson

It’s no secret that Louisville has an excellent fine-dining scene, especially for a city its size. Still, sometimes you just want to kick back with a good sandwich and a beer.

Enter Big Al’s Beeritaville in Clifton. With a cozy bar, front patio with tables and an outdoor beer garden complete with a horseshoe pit and cornhole, it’s a fun, laid-back place to spend a Saturday afternoon or a weeknight happy hour. LEO Weekly’s own Bar Belle, Sara Havens, wrote earlier this year that the bar at the newly made-over Mac’s is “like hanging out in a friend’s basement,” which pretty much says it all.
Continue reading We kick back at Big Al’s Beeritaville →

$$$ Upscale ( $50 - $80), Bistros, Downtown, NuLu and Butchertown

Haunted House? Clancy lowers the boom

The patio at Carly Rae's
With the arrival of Chef David Clancy, Carly Rae’s is emerging as a strong contender to break the spell of the doomed location at the corner of First and Oak streets in Old Louisville. Pictured: The charming patio. LEO photo by Sara Havens

LEO’s Eats with LouisvilleHotBytes.com

Just about all local foodies can tell you about Louisville’s allegedly haunted or cursed restaurant venues, the unlucky spots that can’t hold a successful restaurant, housing one failed effort after another.

In at least one notorious situation, the old Parisian Pantry at Bardstown Road and Bonnycastle Avenue was widely believed to be cursed by an angry ghost who remained inconsolable over the removal of an upstairs wall. A dozen short-lived eateries must have come and gone before Café 360 seemed to break the juju – perhaps they replaced the wall?
Continue reading Haunted House? Clancy lowers the boom →

Commentary

BLT: The ultimate Challenge

Stephen Dennison
Stephen Dennison of Varanese and his prize-winning sushi-style BLT. Photos by Melissa Richards and Robin Garr

LEO’s Eats with LouisvilleHotBytes.com

B … L … T. Are any three letters better suited to capture the joyful tastes of midsummer’s seasonal bounty?

A bacon, lettuce and tomato sandwich, properly constructed with quality materials, is arguably the greatest sandwich ever invented, an expression of summer at its best, when fresh tomatoes come bursting from gardens in juicy, glowing red orbs.

With the current emphasis on heirloom tomatoes, artisanal bacon, varietal lettuces and great breads, the BLT has never been better.

Inspired by this summer treat, four local chefs who participate in the LouisvilleHotBytes.com online forum recently faced off in a BLT challenge before a live audience of local foodies and trio of judges Continue reading BLT: The ultimate Challenge →

$ Budget (under $30), Coffee Shops & Desserts, Outside the city

Q&A Sweet Treats: Outrageously good

Following up on last week’s report on Cake Flour, the yummy new organic bakery on East Market: LouisvilleHotBytes forumite Andrea Essenpreiss is building quite a reputation for herself in La Grange and Oldham County – and quickly spilling over into Louisville – with her recently established business, Q&A Sweet Treats.
Continue reading Q&A Sweet Treats: Outrageously good →

$ Budget (under $30), Mexican, Cuban, Caribbean, Southern Indiana

Ask a Mexican, ask a Norteamericano: Buenos Dias Café es muy sabroso

Breakfast at Buenos Dias
The Desayuno Hondureño at Buenos Dias Café features two eggs as you like them, a mound of spicy beef strips, Honduran refried red beans, fresh avocado, fried plantains and strips of mild queso bianco Mexican cheese. Breakfast of campeones! Photos by Robin Garr

LEO’s Eats with LouisvilleHotBytes.com

If your idea of Mexican food is shaped by Taco Bell or Don Pablo’s, it’s time you tie your taste buds into something auténtico. Real Mexican food sports colorful flavors that aren’t just spicy but tickle your tongue like a mariachi band rattles your ears.

In recent years, we’ve told you about quite a few new taquerias and roticerias brought to town by Louisville’s growing Latino community; just about every new arrival has added gustatory excitement to the regional mix. We thought we had pretty much hit the top of the ladder when a lovable, Mexico City-style taco and gordita trailer, Las Gorditas, rolled up recently in Fern Creek’s Eastland Shopping Center (LEO Weekly, May 28).

But there’s more. Out on another edge of the metro area, in a strip center just off I-65 where Hamburg Pike meets the mysteriously monikered Charlestown–N.A. Pike, the tiny but lovable Buenos Dias Café – open since March but attended with zero publicity – raises the bar another notch.
Continue reading Ask a Mexican, ask a Norteamericano: Buenos Dias Café es muy sabroso →

Commentary, Guest columnist

Industry Standard: Behind the Kitchen Door: Part II

In my last column, we visited the restaurant kitchen that lies behind the dining room access door and found it to be bright, hot and noisy. But who’s cooking your food?

Georges Auguste Escoffier (1846-1935) simplified the elaborate and ornate kitchen brigade first popularized by Antoine Careme, one of the codifiers of French haute cuisine. The 21st century kitchen brigade has been even further distilled, personnel-wise. Who’s cooking your food? A little bit of everyone. Let’s look at the Brigade de Cuisine in the modern restaurant kitchen, shall we?
Continue reading Industry Standard: Behind the Kitchen Door: Part II →

Louisville's top spot for talk and reviews from the food and restaurant scene