$ Budget (under $30), Baxter, Bardstown, Highlands, Chinese, Hurstbourne, Middletown, Jeffersontown, Pacific Rim

Cravin’ Asian at Shah’s Mongolian

Shalimar
Two build-your-own stir-fries at Shah’s Mongolian Grill. Photo by Robin Garr

(Voice-Tribune, April 12, 2006)

I love Italian food and wine and sometimes feel that I can’t get enough of it. But after spending over two weeks in Northern Italy, enjoying the real thing for breakfast, lunch and dinner, I came home last week just about ready for a change of pace.

But what, exactly, would fill the bill? Instinctively, I emulated the Italian nobleman Marco Polo, who headed for the exotic East in 1266 and found all manner of good things: I headed for Louisville’s East End to check out a favorite Asian eatery that I was overdue to visit because of ownership changes and new offerings since my last review.
Continue reading Cravin’ Asian at Shah’s Mongolian →

Baxter, Bardstown, Highlands, QuickBytes

Keeping things balanced on Bardstown

Ballyhoo's Baja Grill
A fish taco (top) and a shrimp taco (with optional jalapeños) at Ballyhoo’s Baja Grill. Photo by Robin Garr.

LEO’s Eat ‘n’ Blog with Louisville HotBytes
(Ballyhoo’s Baja Grill, Just Fresh)

Bardstown Road has been established as Louisville’s primary “restaurant row” for so long now that things seem to have achieved a sort of natural balance: If one eatery closes, chances are something similar will be along soon to fill its niche.

So, when the short-lived Baja Fresh closed after only a few months of vending fast-food-style fresh burritos out of a shiny new glass building, and a similarly ephemeral branch of Bazo’s came and went from the old building that once housed Jupiter Café and is now home to Nio’s, no one really expected that Bardstown would be long bereft of fish tacos. Or, for that matter, that Qdoba and La Bamba would dominate the boulevard’s burrito market without challenge.

Sure enough, now comes Ballyhoo’s Baja Grill, a new spot that looks a lot like a franchised chain operation but that’s actually only the smallest of chains, being the third property of a Nashville-based outfit whose eateries at the other end of the old L&N line bear the trademark name “Chile Burrito Co.”
Continue reading Keeping things balanced on Bardstown →

News announcements

Derby Fest adds wine competition

A competition for commercially produced wines from Kentucky and Indiana joins the roster of Kentucky Derby Festival events this year.

A panel of experienced wine judges (including this writer) will sit in judgment on Tuesday, May 1, on an estimated 50 to 70 locally produced wines in eight categories, following the same 20-point American Wine Society rating scale used in the Kentucky State Fair competition for regional home wine makers.
Continue reading Derby Fest adds wine competition →

Commentary

G3 – A Great Bite: One person’s opinion

Faux CJ front page

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

Taste and palate are extremely personal and subjective. A restaurant review is simply one person’s opinion – their view, attitude or appraisal of a particular dining experience. It is not, nor should it ever be, a definitive statement of superlative or the death knell of any restaurant.

Unfortunately, that is not always the case in our little burg. Citizens apparently take heed of our locally published restaurant reviews. As a result, La Rouge, which had the possibility of being one of Louisville’s shining dining destinations, was unable to survive in light of one man’s assessment of his meal (which I am given to understand he consumed completely during yet his third dining venture to La Rouge).
Continue reading G3 – A Great Bite: One person’s opinion →

Commentary, QuickBytes

Does wireless come with that shake?

James Browdy
James Browdy, who’s retired from his job at Audubon Hospital, says he visits the Heine Bros. at Eastern Parkway and Bardstown Road four or five days to check out jazz videos through a Wi-Fi connection. Photos by Richard Meadows.

LEO’s Eat ‘n’ Blog with Louisville HotBytes

While I’m over here in Italy checking out the wine and food and trying to find a WiFi hotspot so I can call home, Eat ‘N’ Blog contributor RICHARD MEADOWS has been toting his notebook computer around Louisville, checking out the state of the wireless Internet art at local eateries and watering holes.

Richard, a foodie and computer geek with plenty of opinions about both, has been surfing the WiFi waves since the ‘Net first went wireless. Here’s his irreverent report:

Sitting at Heine Brothers Coffee in the Highlands one cold, blustery evening, I looked up from my laptop and realized that the place was chock full of WiFi users, all gazing at their own laptops. Continue reading Does wireless come with that shake? →

Commentary

Italian postcard: Real pizza!

After two weeks as a wine judge and traveling wine writer, I’ve been dining very well indeed at some of the best eateries in Northern Italy’s Lombardy and Veneto regions. Not that there’s anything wrong with that: It’s a hard job, but somebody has to do it.

But on the eve of my flight home, I was almost desperately ready for something simple, earthy and divine: Pizza, of course, from the land of pizza, and if the Verona area isn’t quite as close to the mother lode of pizza as, say, Naples, it’s a lot closer than Louisville. Continue reading Italian postcard: Real pizza! →

$ Budget (under $30), BBQ, Burgers & Down-Home, Northeast Metro

Something old, something new at Norton Commons

Karem's
Karem’s in Norton Commons occupies a brand-new, three-story red-brick storefront that’s made to look a lot like an old one. Photo by Robin Garr

(Karem’s Grill & Pub, Shady Lane Café
Voice-Tribune, March 29, 2007)

One of the more unusual suburban developments in recent memory, Norton Commons – billed as a “traditional neighborhood development” or “TND” – brings a touch of nostalgia to Louisville’s outer suburbs.

It incorporates acres of parklike green space surrounding a squared-off grid of residential blocks made to resemble an old-fashioned urban neighborhood, with sturdy brick houses lined up side-by-side, most of them equipped with front porches where folks can come out to sit a spell and talk with the neighbors.

And just as in grandpa’s day, a short stroll (no need to get out the horseless carriage) will take you down to the quaint town square, with brand-new, three-story red-brick storefronts made to look a lot like old ones.
Continue reading Something old, something new at Norton Commons →

$$ Modest ($30-$50), Bistros, St. Matthews, Westport Village, and environs

Built like a Brix House Special

Bar at Brix
Brix Wine Bar, on Lagrange Road, is an attractive, worthy addition to the suburbs. Photos by Robin Garr.

LEO’s Eat ‘n’ Blog with Louisville HotBytes

(Brix Wine Bar, Diamante)

As soon as I saw the name of Brix Wine Bar, I knew I had to try it.

Brix – pronounced “bricks,” not the Frenchified “bree” – is a serious techno-wine word, a vineyard term for the level of sugar in wine grapes, a measure of ripeness at harvest. The higher the brix, the riper the grapes, the more sugar, the greater potential alcohol.

Only a real wine geek could come up with an oenophiliac name like that. It’s not like calling your wine bar “Merlot” or something.
Continue reading Built like a Brix House Special →

$ Budget (under $30), Commentary, Seafood & Water's Edge, St. Matthews, Westport Village, and environs

Yummy fried fish is no penance

St. Augustine's fish dinner
St. Augustine’s Catholic Church is well known for its Friday fish fries during Lent. The fish is good – you can choose baked cod, fried cod (above), whiting or buffalo – and some of the sides are excellent. Try the cheese grits, which sub pimento cheese for cheddar. Photos by Robin Garr.

LEO’s Eat ‘n’ Blog with Louisville HotBytes
(St. Augustine’s fish fry, Stan’s Fish Sandwich, KFC Fish Snacker)

It’s Lent again, the liturgical season when many people undertake modest symbolic sacrifices such as eating fish on Fridays. Crunchy, golden-brown, delicious, sizzling fried fish: You call that penance?

In Louisville, we don’t reserve fish for Lent. Most of us are crazy for seafood at any time of year, and that’s been so for generations, way back to the postwar era – post-Civil War, that is – when L&N express trains would rush fresh oysters on ice up from the Gulf to oyster bars like the still-extant Mazzoni’s.
Continue reading Yummy fried fish is no penance →

$$ Modest ($30-$50), Bistros, Downtown, NuLu and Butchertown

Critic yells ‘beer me’ as suds go upscale

Mussel soup
Bistro New Albany and New Albanian Brewing Co. teamed up for an “Extreme Belgian” dinner that paired Belgian beers with various dishes, such as this succulent mussel soup. Photos by Robin Garr.

LEO’s Eat ‘n’ Blog with Louisville HotBytes
(Extreme Belgian at Bistro New Albany; CarlyRae’s)

If you don’t think there’s any class distinction between wine and beer, you might consider whether you’ve even seen a drunk slouch into a bar and yell, “Wine me!” Beer, let’s face it, owns a downscale, blue-collar image that contrasts with wine’s perceived position as the drink the beautiful people sip.

But need this be so? In an age when artisanal brewpubs and microbreweries abound and the term “quality American beer” is no longer an oxymoron, it’s arguable that beer – fine, crafted beer made in a wide variety of styles – deserves as much connoisseurish attention as wine enthusiasts are accustomed to lavishing on their grape juice.
Continue reading Critic yells ‘beer me’ as suds go upscale →

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