Eating for two (or more) at Buca di Beppo

Buca di Beppo
Buca di Beppo is notorious for its zany, tongue-in-cheek New Jersey-style Italian-restaurant décor and its huge portions of Italian-American dishes. The restaurant recently launched a new “Buca Mio” (“My Buca”) menu that features smaller portions meant to feed a single diner. LEO Photo by Nicole Pullen.

LEO’s Eat ‘n’ Blog with Louisville HotBytes

My friends know me as the un-chained guy, an obligate foodie with a strong preferential option for locally owned and operated eateries, where you’ll find a distinct local flavor, and where you’ll find the host on the premises, working without strings being pulled by accountants and lawyers in a distant corporate office.

My reasoning should be obvious: While chains may provide consistency and a predictable experience, the heavy hand of the bean counter and the cold reality of the quarterly balance sheet almost invariably inspire corner-cutting, and this is as true in the restaurant industry as it is in, well, the newspaper business.

Still, it wouldn’t make sense to avoid chain dining entirely – heaven knows, it’s popular – and I might miss some good eats. Here and there around the Metro, and particularly in the chain-rich environment of the East End, there’s decent dining to be found in at least a few of the big-name brands.

One of the best bets, in my experience, is Buca di Beppo, Continue reading Eating for two (or more) at Buca di Beppo

True grits and more at 211 Clover

Shrimp and grits
211 Clover offers a fancy version of shrimp and grits, a Southern specialty. LEO Photo by Nicole Pullen.

LEO’s Eat ‘n’ Blog with Louisville HotBytes
(Brunch at 211 Clover Lane)BZZZZT! Sorry, Bubba. This hearty Southern comfort food comes to us direct from South Carolina’s Low Country around Charleston. Continue reading True grits and more at 211 Clover

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!

Ein Feste Burg: Beer and brats in Schnitzelburg

Check's
Check’s Café, an archetypal Germantown tavern, excels at the four Bs: brats, burgers, bean soup and beer. A recent renovation has freshened the interior without taking away any of the character. LEO Photo by Nicole Pullen.

LEO’s Eat ‘n’ Blog with Louisville HotBytes
(With Guest Writer Greg Gapsis: Check’s Café, Flabby’s Schnitzelburg, Germantown Café)

Have a beer. And a bratwurst. And how about a little sauerkraut? Have yourself a happy little German something, and know that you’re partaking of a heritage that runs long and deep in Louisville.

Our city has boasted a distinct German accent for nearly 200 years, since the first German-Americans (including the first arrivals in the Garr family) came down the Ohio from German-speaking enclaves in Philadelphia and Northern Virginia in the early 1800s.

Another boatload, literally – democratic German reformers fleeing the Habsburg Empire and dubbed “The Forty Eighters” – came along in 1849. Eerily foreshadowing the Hurstbournes and Polo Fields of the 20th century, they threw up rows of “shotgun” houses on fields that had been dairy farmland at the edge of the city south of Broadway and Beargrass Creek.

For a century, the loosely defined neighborhood was casually known as Germantown, or “Schnitzelburg” for yuks. Continue reading Ein Feste Burg: Beer and brats in Schnitzelburg

In Memory of Danny Boyle

Click here to post your remembrances of Danny on the LouisvilleHotBytes forum

Tuscany

The Food & Dining and LouisvilleHotBytes family has suffered a devastating loss this week with the sudden death of co-worker and friend Danny Boyle, a kind and gentle man who was taken from us way too soon. To share our bad news with you all, here’s a brief memorial from Danny’s old and dear friend, John C. White, the publisher of Food & Dining:

For Danny:

“It is with the greatest of sorrow that I bring this news to the forum. Thursday was, and will remain, one of the saddest days of my life. Daniel F. Boyle, my best friend for as long as I can remember and my right-hand-man for Food & Dining Magazine, died suddenly of heart failure Thursday night.

“He leaves behind his loving and devoted wife Sara and two small boys: Jordan, 12, and Matthew, 6.

“I cannot begin to tell you what he has meant to me in my life, but I can tell you that he has touched so many more lives than mine.

“Most every restaurant owner and chef, hotel manager and purveyor of our humble magazine knew him in some way. Many counted him as a friend, and most all thought of him as he was, a kind, generous and loving man.
Continue reading In Memory of Danny Boyle

Wood City Grill

Following up on our Halloween trick-or-treatise on scary dishes, I’ve run into a much less fearsome way to introduce goat meat into your diet. Check out Wood City Grill, downtown in the longtime Pit Stop location at 612 S. Fifth St. (290-0518).

Along with more traditional smoked-meat goodies as pulled pork, smoked chicken and ribs (all $6 for an entree portion, sides extra a la carte), chef and owner Allen Sims – who boasts experience in the kitchen at Vincenzo’s – also smokes up mean versions of lamb and goat ($7 each).

It’s all good, and the smoky, dry-rubbed lean ribs are sensational. But we came for the goat and found it toothsome and not at all challenging: Lean and tender, with a thin purple smoke ring circling thin slices of tenderloin, it showed only a slight, appealing gamey character that played nicely off both Sims’ traditional original and spicy sauces and his more offbeat, hot-and-fruity Hawaiian and Szechuan sauces.

It’s an easy walk from most of downtown, and almost miraculously for the neighborhood, Wood City has a small, free lot so you can park off the street and bedevil the meter maids while you eat.

Something scary this way comes

Frank Elbl
There’s nothing sweet about sweetbreads – Palermo Viejo chef Francisco “Frank” Elbl shows off the Argentina delicacy, which consists of … wait for it … a calf’s thymus gland. LEO Photo by Nicole Pullen.

LEO’s Eat ‘n’ Blog with Louisville HotBytes
(“Challenging” dishes at Palermo Viejo, Tokyo Japanese, India Palace)

It’s Halloween, blustery winds are whistling through the eaves and rattling the leaves, and there are ghosties and ghoulies and things going bump out there in the night. Let’s eat something scary!

How about a nice plate of sweetbreads, my dearies? The name sounds so appealing. Sweet meets bread. A dessert of some sort? A comforting sweet roll? Well, no. “Sweetbread” is a culinary euphemism, actually, for an organ that would be a much harder sell if it were explicitly identified as a calf’s thymus gland. It’s innards, OK? And it’s delicious.

Today let’s celebrate Halloween with visits to three local favorites for a trio of “challenging” dishes that tickle the taste buds but may require the diner to willingly suspend disbelief long enough to get them down. Trick or treat!
Continue reading Something scary this way comes

Steinert’s: serving the neighborhood since 1883

Steinert's
Steinert’s in New Albany serves basic pub grub at reasonable prices and is a great place to hear a band or watch IU sports. LEO Photo.

LEO’s Eat ‘n’ Blog with Louisville HotBytes, with Guest Blogger Kevin Gibson

Grover Cleveland would have loved Steinert’s.

Steinert’s Grill and Pub (aka Steinert’s Tavern) looks like pretty much any other neighborhood restaurant/bar, tucked into a largely residential area at the intersection of Charlestown Road and Silver Street in New Albany.
Continue reading Steinert’s: serving the neighborhood since 1883

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

Maido: Not just another sushi bar

Maido
Maido Essential Japanese is Louisville’s only example of “izakaya” dining, a combination of pub, sake bar and eatery. Pictured are owners Jim and Toki Masubuchi Huie. LEO Photo by Nicole Pullen.

LEO’s Eat ‘n’ Blog with Louisville HotBytes
(Maido Essential Japanese)

Here’s a dining critic’s dilemma: I live in Crescent Hill, so I drive past Maido Essential Japanese often. Every time I do, I look over and feel a warm, loving feeling pass over me as I think, “I love that place.” Yet, because duty calls me to dine somewhere different every week, I rarely get to come back to Maido and other favorites … and that’s just wrong.

So it was to my great delight that I turned over a calendar page the other day and saw that enough time had passed since Maido’s 2004 opening to justify a return trip. Hai!

Maido, it should be noted, is Japanese, but it is not just another sushi bar. In fact, it’s not a sushi bar at all, although sushi is made in the kitchen. It’s something much more interesting: Louisville’s only example (and one of the few between the coasts) of “izakaya” dining, a combination of pub, sake bar and eatery that’s beloved by “sararimen” (“salary-men” or business workers) in Japan’s second city, Osaka, and the Kansai region around it.
Continue reading Maido: Not just another sushi bar

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