Navigating a Tasting Event and a Bit of Other Derby Advice

Derby Derby Derby Derby Derby! For those of us in the biz in Louisville, it’s New Year’s Eve plus the Fourth of July times Easter Brunch this week. At least it’s not Derbygeddon this year (Derbygeddon is the nickname given to the years in which Derby and Mother’s Day fall on the same weekend. Yikes!).
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We celebrate Cuba at TropiCuba

After 50 years of nutty national policy toward Cuba, our president, giving the finger to a recalcitrant congress, has shifted foreign-policy gears, reaching out to our island neighbor just south of Florida, demonstrating to our joy that Obama’s just another name for nothing left to lose.
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Something old, something new

Let’s touch down for a couple of quick hits on the metro dining scene this week. Uptown Café has been a Bardstown Road landmark for 20 years, serving always reliable fare in a friendly setting that keeps bringing people back for more.

Shandaar Indian is so new that its well-crafted Facebook page still has that new-page smell. So far out in the East End that it feels closer to downtown Shelbyville than downtown Louisville, it proved to be well worth the trek.
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Con Huevos tiene buena comida

For months now, I’ve been watching the vacant little Clifton storefront where Sari Sari Filipino used to be with a joyous anticipation not unlike a kid waiting for Christmas. Or maybe Christmas with a touch of Cinco de Mayo thrown in.
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We’ve got Dystopia: Louisville’s food scene in 2065

LOUISVILLE, New South United People’s Zone, April 1, 2065 – The recent discovery of a large trove of 50-year-old LEO Weeklys, lost in the rubble-filled basement of one of the old buildings in the old city’s fabled New Lew (Nulu?) district before it was destroyed in the Troubles of ’37, sheds fascinating light on the city’s dining scene in those times.

How different it all seems from our perspective! Continue reading We’ve got Dystopia: Louisville’s food scene in 2065

It’s my party

My (long-suffering) fiancé, John, had a celebratory dinner with workmates scheduled last Saturday for 7 p.m. at a popular sushi-hibachi restaurant in Fern Creek. At 7:45, he texted me: Still waiting for a table.

Sure, it was Saturday night, and the place was packed, but that seemed a little bit too much of a delay. I replied: Lordy. Didn’t you have a res?
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The cat ate my review. No, really!

After quite a few years writing a weekly column about food, I’ve learned a thing or two. For instance:
* When the going gets tough, the tough get going.
* That which does not kill us makes us strong.
* The deadline monster must be fed.
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Ramen guys do ramen and dumplings at Rumplings

Warmed by the delights of four big bowls of steaming ramen at Rumplings in five day’s time, I asked my baby boomer pals on Facebook a simple question this week: When did you first encounter instant ramen? What did you think of it when you did?
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Dundee done be a gastropub now

What’s a gastropub, anyway? This culinary neologism has been floating around since the middle of the last decade, and some say it cries out for mockery. “Gastropub”? It sounds, a bit unnervingly, like some kind of medical condition afflicting the digestive system.

What’s more, plenty of the more pompous food scribes decry the term. I still remember an odd analysis by one local food reviewer, who dismissed “gastropub” as an annoying label, misused and meaningless, reserved for bars that wanted to serve house-made ketchup.
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