Louisville Restaurants

I wanted to provide a brief introduction to my restaurant reviews. Many members review the best restaurants in their pages and don't mention the mediocre or worst. I'd like to provide a thorough assessment of Louisville's restaurants, good and bad.

I consider myself to be a serious foodie and the quality of a restaurant is, therefore, complex. I look at overall quality as well as individual aspects of quality from entering the restaurant to leaving. Not all of these reviews reflect that as many were written prior to this updated review cycle.

As a foodie, I look for the best foods I can afford, either to cook or to order at a restaurant. That's not to say I eat steak and lobster every night (steak and lobster are overrated). That is to say, though, that if I eat out at a restaurant that is reputed to be good, or that claims to be good, it should not fail those expectations. I'm well aware that I'm a food snob, but do note that, for me, being a food snob does not prevent enjoyment of simpler foods, from street vendors to certain fast foods.

What I'm trying to do with these reviews is to look at these restaurants from a foodie's perspective to provide the readers with a unbiased assessment of the restaurant. I'm not being negative just for the sake of being negative and using the anonymity of the internet to air my angers at the world. (I have no particular food favorites and am not picky about individual ingredients, so one culture's cuisine won't always reign supreme over all others. I like food from all cultures.) I'm doing this to provide feedback to restaurants and consumers so that improvements can be made and the best foods and services provided to discerning customers and travelers. I wouldn't want to travel someplace in search of interesting and exotic foods only to find another American chain. I want authentic, I want fresh, I want hand-made- and I assume that other travelers want that as well.

One note for any restaurant out there: KC Masterpiece is not a selling point for barbeque. How many of the best barbeque places in the world use that? Not many. So why try to sell your food on a mediocre store-bought sauce?

So, to begin, how do we define good food? Is one cut of meat really better than any other.

More later.

This is allegedly a barbeque joint. If you hold any love for the culinary wonderfulness (new word) that is barbeque, stay far away from barbeque that fails not only its namesake, but the meat it's designed to serve.

Smokey Bones may have decent service and a kid-friendly (lots of background noise) atmosphere, but it does not fulfill the BBQ quotient. Poor quality meat, insipid sauce... that's what I remember of our visit. For a serious foodie and a lover of BBQ, I was not simply disappointed, but also astonished at what passed for BBQ at this restaurant.

Louisville isn't really known for barbeque, but we have a few excellent places, noted in other reviews. If you're going out for barbeque, I can't say that the food here is worth the trip. In fact, I can say that we were utterly disappointed in the disservice that this place did to barbeque that we never want to go back.

***I must note that their other food may be just fine- I didn't try most everything else they had. But this is a chain restaurant, I believe, and if so, the food is about par with other chains.***

One note for any restaurant out there: KC Masterpiece is not a selling point for barbeque. How many of the best barbeque places in the world use that? Not many. So why try to sell your food on a mediocre store-bought sauce?

The Blind Pig combines the ambience of an old "industrial" building with pig meat in its many forms. They make their own sausages and have a decent selection of libations for the more discerning drinkers. Yet, like many restaurants, they fall down in certain areas.

Service at the Blind Pig is just fine, the appetizers are decent. But their mains were not quite as good as they could have been and the pumpkin dessert was unsweetened,,,... Probably an oversight, but shows lack of care and consideration on the chef's part.

One of the draws of Proof on Main is its attachment to 21C Museum Hotel, noted as one of the top hotels in the country, and, as the restaurant's name implies, is located on Main Street in downtown Louisville.

I get the feeling that this restaurant is very impressed with itself. It is attached to a hotel that displays some bizarre and interesting art, and it seems that this is a "see-and-be-seen" joint, especially on weekend nights.

All that said, the staff is typically friendly and, especially early in the evening, (on a week night) is happy to accomodate infants and kids (hopefully well-behaved ones). The decor of the restaurant is fairly basic when compared with the museum and hotel, but its simplicity is elegant.

The service on our visit was without fault. It was neither overly-attentive nor lacking, and the server had a good grasp on the menu and drink offerings. Our server was impressed with my order of straight bourbon (Pappy Van Winkle, I believe) and was further impressed by our order of the bone marrow appetizer. That's not tooting our horn, but may suggest that those particular items were not often ordered, despite their more elegant or gourmet nature.

The food itself probably holds a better reputation that it deserves. An eater used to the chain restaurant fare would consider Proof to be superb, yet those with a more qualified palate might have looked at the marrow as simply trying to be gourmet. Similar to the way wrapping food in bacon is an attempt to elevate the main ingredient by making it feel richer or more decadent, the bone marrow seemed to do the same for the menu and did not fully reflect marrow's true culinary potential.

The cucumber soup was not as expected. Again, this was an attempt by the chef to be clever and different and exemplifies the problem with Proof- they haven't quite hit the food flavor ("deliciousness") mark as well as they might have hit the inventiveness mark for a Louisville restaurant). Yet, the soup, amounting to a thin cucumber puree with toasted bread crumbs and grape/cherry tomatos worked pretty well.

It should be of note that we can't recall what we had for entrees- not exactly the effect for which a stellar restaurant should shoot, but indicative of the overall disappointment we felt in Proof's menu considering its many positive reviews.

One of our desserts was a plum pudding, which was nothing like the heavy, British style of pudding and more a fresh plum fruit pudding. The taste was good, but it just wasn't as expected.

Keep in mind that the dishes described may not be on the menu if and when you visit, but they are presented to represent the restaurant's style.,

As you've probably gathered from this review, we weren't exceedingly impressed with Chef Michael Paley's restaurant. He clearly holds promise, but we didn't feel that the food was up to par with the concept or quality of the hotel and Proof felt like more of a place for people to begin to appreciate gourmet foods than a place for true foodies to get their fix, a place for people to feel like they're eating top quality. Unfortunately, it just wasn't up there with the best.

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Again, I'm writing this tip almost 2 years after the fact. But since I've been cleaning up things in my house I ran across the receipt which helped jog my memory of this really good restaurant. I was on a road trip with a co-worker going from Indianapolis to Louisville to Cincinnati to Cleveland, so we were on the 2nd leg of our trip. I had been to Louisville a couple of times before and had been on Bardstown Road, so when I got to the hotel I looked at a map and found Seviche in an advertisement. It looked like my type of place so away we went for about an 8 mile ride.

Favorite Dish: We started out our evening with some home made Sangria which was probably the best Sangria I have ever tasted. Not too sweet, but with each sip you wanted to keep this going all night long. For our befores we had a spinach and pear salad along with some empanadas (which were listed as MR and GC), they were light and flakey and as you can see from picture #2 were presented very well. Needless to say we cleaned our plates off.

Then it was on to the main course. My co-worker had a very good (according to her) roasted organic chicken which indeed did look delicious. Whenever I see sea bass on the menu my stomach always starts its argument to order it and once again it won out over the other equally impressive items on the menu. It came with a side of fava beans which I don't think I'd ever had by themselves. But the two together set each other off just perfectly.

The afters we had were a custard flan and the picture you see here was the banana chimichanga. Now there is always room for dessert after a meal and these 2 were just out of this world.

I've made a trip back to Louisville since then, but the one night I attempted to go to Seviche they had a private party. Darn. If you ever are in town this is my #1 recommended restaurant.

An excellent, if rather pricey, restaurant. The best part is the great view of the city from atop the Kaden Tower. This unique Frank Lloyd Wright design is controversial; most people either love it or hate it.

Favorite Dish: Hard to say. Everything is good.

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A very nice neighborhood pub/eatery that has fabulous beers and really satisfying food!

Altbier 1996 Great American Beer Festival Bronze medal winner, this is BBC's all time best-seller. A medium bodied amber ale with a mild hop finish, this well balanced beer will appeal to beer connoisseurs as well as the average beer drinker

American Pale Ale 1998 Real Ale Fest, Best of Fest Winner, this rich, copper colored ale features a full-bodied, hoppy flavor supported by generous amounts of malt. The recipe was carefully developed for the local palate and has become a favorite of BBC's regular guests

Dark Star Porter 1997 Real Ale Fest Winner and named after the 1953 Kentucky Derby winner, this traditional English style ale has a robust yet smooth flavor. A subtile hint of chocolate malt flavor fins its way through this very dark ale which features a spicy hop finish.

Favorite Dish: brick-oven pizzas -- I love them but other food is really good, too

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Very cute location with great indoor + outdoor seating (for Spring, Summer, Fall) BUT the FOOD is fabulous. Seriously! I went for the beer originally plus the added fact that you can bring your dog on part of the outside seating. But now I go back as this has become one of my favorite restaurants. The Chef formerly worked at the Brown (across the Street) and turns out a delicious Hot Brown (a dish for which Louisville is famous). But the menu is filled with great offerings from vegetarian dishes (many of them) to pizza, to entrees, to appetizers. This is not an old fas

Favorite Dish: I really like the Pizza Margarita, but everything I have had from this menu is great. However, if you like great beer this is our place. The German Style Alt beer (an unusual amber typical of Dusseldorf) is a good everyday beer. They have fabulous beer aged in Bourbon barrels. Their Bourbon Barrel smoked beer is very unusual (and probably not for everyone) but I love it. The Bourbon Barrel Rye has a great flavor. Note: these bourbon barrel beers have 7.5-8% alc. compared to about 5% in 'commercial' beers -- but their regular taps are more traditional.