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Mackerel in Vucciria, Palermo, photo by Galina Stepanoff-Dargery (2010)

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 LOVING LOUISVILLE AND LEXINGTON

 
         I used to visit Louisville and Lexington every few years just to see what’s new and to bask in what’s old, like attending the Kentucky Derby on a sweltering Saturday in May, eating biscuits and country ham washed down with mint juleps. I’ve driven out to the rolling bluegrass horse country around Lexington to see former winners like Smarty Jones, Big Brown, and War Chant enjoy their days nibbling bluegrass and playing the lucky stud at Three Chimneys Farm.  I’ve staggered through legendary distilleries like Maker’s Mark, Woodford Reserve, Jim Beam and Heaven Hill along the Kentucky Bourbon Trail. 
         But now I find I need to visit Louisville and Lexington annually, just to keep up with the booming food and restaurant scene there.  Some of the cities’ restaurants and chefs rank with the best in the USA right now, while others are very much a part of the food culture in this, one of the most beautiful states in America.

English Grill at the Brown Hotel
335 West Broadway, Louisville
502-583-1234
www.brownhotel.com

    The majestic Brown Hotel, opened in 1923,  is home to the beautiful English Grill.   Indeed, if sophistication were palpable in the air, you could bottle it at The English Grill. The restaurant is one of the finest in the South, and the Hotel itself  home to  the open-faced turkey sandwich with bacon, pimentos, and Mornay sauce called the Hot Brown.
     You enter the Grill from the long, pillared lobby and find yourself in a room of daunting elegance,  with varnished wooden pillars, stained glass windows, equestrian paintings, a ceiling with splendid bas-relief tracery, a neatly patterned carpet, and tables set with lovely little lamps of a kind you rarely see anymore.  It has majesty but exceptional warmth and total Southern hospitality in every detail.

     Chef Matthew Wilcoxson and Exec Chef Laurent Giroli offer a lavish cuisine of dishes like Angus ribeye of beef au poivre with roasted shallots and frites.  For starters there is lacquered duck with shaved celery, arugula, and sherry vinaigrette; for entrees, roast chicken  with summer spinach mousseline, pommes fondantes with caramelized pearl onions and thyme-scented glace de volaille; and grilled “White Marble Farms” pork chop with smoked  cannellini beans, Serrano ham, tomatoes and a lusty Pommery mustard sauce.
    The signature dessert here is called the "Chocolate Striptease," made with dark chocolate cake with milk chocolate mousse with a  dark chocolate ganache and coated with chocolate shavings, lavished with mixed berries and chocolate sauce, all of it  then flamed with Bacardi 151 Rum.
    Chef Giroli also offers both a "Classic Chef's Table" for  four to eight guests and a "Theater Chef's Table"  on the working side of the kitchen, for up to 16 guests and incorporates the concept of small-plate dining, complete with fines and spirits.

Open Mon.-Sat. for dinner only. Appetizers $8-$16, entrees $22-$40.

Pat's Steak House
2437 Brownsboro Road, Louisville
502-893-2062
www.patssteakhouselouisville.com

     I know how you love paying $45 for a sirloin, with no potatoes, no vegetable, no nothin’ on the side, at the nationwide high-end steakhouse chains.  Me, I seek out the independents when I’m on the road, places that look the way they always have, where the regulars and newcomers all get greeted and treated the same, and where, as at Pat’s Steak House in Louisville, a USDA Prime, one-pound sirloin will run you $36.25 and a 24-ounce porterhouse $39.25, along with hot rolls, plenty of butter, and a choice of two vegetables, including sautéed mushrooms, hash browns, french fries, and the most delicious, butter-splashed baby lima beans imaginable. 

     Pat’s also serves addictive. garlicky baby frogs’ legs, an array of icy oysters, chicken livers, country ham, meat loaf, and the crispiest, juiciest fried chicken in Kentucky.  Finish off with flaky apple pie with “carmel” sauce or true strawberry shortcake, and you’ll still walk out with cash in your wallet.  (Pat’s only takes cash, but there’s an ATM box right inside the front door.)

     A good steak house should have the owner’s name out front, as does Pat’s, with a shamrock on the sign, the first of many Irish references, with dining rooms named Paddy’s Pub, the Dublin and the Blarney.  The premises date back 150 years as a waystop along Brownsboro Road, which Mike Francis took over in 1958 to open Min’s Steak House—a name oldtimers still call it—until his son Pat took over and put his own name outside.

       Pat is there every day, knows most everyone, where they like to sit, who their favorite waiter is, and what they’re drinking, which is likely to be chosen from a stash of 60 bourbons.  Pat still chooses every hand-cut slab of meat served and five decades of grill men guarantee they will be impeccably seared, juicy, and beefy tasting.

     Push through the front door and peer into the dark, wood-paneled downstairs dining room, which will be packed, from six o’clock on.  The varnished walls are hung with softly glowing sconces and vintage horse racing posters. The tavern will be full of people waiting for a table, and you’ll first smell then see the sizzling steak platters brought by waiters for whom working here has been a lifetime career.  Some years ago, most of the waiters were black, but now there’s a mix, every one expert at doling out the kind of Southern hospitality that has a fine balance of the deferential with the amiable.

     This is Kentucky, where an old song goes, “The moonlight is the softest, Summer days come oftest.”  On such days and nights, I want to be at Pat’s nursing a small batch bourbon on the rocks, listening to the lilting cadence of Louisvillians debating the Cardinals' chances of going all the way this winter, slicing into my sirloin and accepting a waiter’s offer of more lima beans, just the way I did when I first came to Pat’s back in 1982.  Of course, my father had been there a lot earlier.  He was the one who told me to sit downstairs, wear a jacket, and bring cash.

Seviche
1538 Bardstown Road, Louisville
502-473-8560.

 Out on Bardstown Road, which locals like to call their “bohemian neighborhood” (I did see a tattoo parlor and one Goth couple shaking their nose rings), Seviche stands out as the most exciting restaurant in the city, and Anthony Lamas has proven himself one of the best chefs in America.  The son of a Mexican mother and Puerto Rican father, he started out with an ambitious seviche-based eatery and turned it into a full-fledged Latino restaurant with Asian accents where every dish expresses both his own vivid personality and an extraordinary talent for matching flavors and textures in every dish, very carefully modulating his seasonings for maximum taste. He’ll side wild Pacific halibut seviche with green apple, ginger and yuzu, while albacore tuna comes with delicate sweet watermelon, yuzu, and a little chile flake. He takes a well-fatted Berkshire pork chop, cooks it to succulence, then combines it with green chile-manchego cheese grits, chipotle lime butter and crispy tortillas, and for dessert there’s a coconut mousse with sweet crema and wild berries.  If you have time for one meal in Louisville, make it Seviche.




 
Doc Crow’s Southern Smokehouse & Raw Bar
127 West Main Street, Louisville
502-257-7132

There are a lot of new restaurants behind the cast-iron façade buildings along Main Street, now nicknamed Whiskey Row, and  the newest is Doc Crow’s, whose food resembles what your mother might have cooked if you grew up in Kentucky—mac and cheese,  cornmeal fried catfish,  hushpuppies, and a salad of crisp iceberg lettuce wedge with blue cheese and house-smoked bacon. Then there’s the barbecued ribs, pulled pork, beef brisket, and the turkey breast, all smoked and served up in generous portions.  For dessert, the true glory of Southern sweets are revealed in Doc Crow’s pecan pie and “Wilber’s Sundae,” a delectable mess of brown butter praline ice cream with cinnamon pork rinds, candied bacon, and a bourbon cherry.  God, it somehow really works.
 











Ghyslain Chocolate des Beaux Arts
721 East Market Street, Louisville
502-690-8645
www. ghyyslain.com.

A French-Canadian who goes by the single name Ghyslain runs this bare little eatery that features amazingly good, very beautiful pastries and candies, but you can also drop by and eat very well,  from breakfast on. At lunch, go for the croque monsieur ham-and-cheese sandwich drenched with béchamel, the French dip baguette of sirloin beef and caramelized onions, and his chicken pot pie, on a menu where nothing tops ten bucks.

 

Holly Hill Inn
426 North Winter Street, Midway
859-846-4732
www.hollyhillinn.com

Just outside of Lexington, Chef Ouita and Chris Michel run this exemplary antebellum inn (circa 1845), retaining as much Victorian Americana as possible.  You eat in what was once the family dining room and feast on the most amazing bargain in the South—a $35 three course meal, five courses for $55—that will feature that morning’s vegetables and Kentucky-style dishes like a “spring muddle” of fiddlehead ferns, spring onions, green garlic, Sheltowee mushrooms, and lambs quarters sautéed in olive oil with lemon confit, capers and oregano, set over a jalapeño-and-chive johnnycake with goat’s cheese. Sweet wild jumbo white Canaveral shrimp are crisped up with cornmeal, served on a bed of Three Springs organic friseé tossed with Stone Cross Farm bacon, shallot, little tomatoes and oranges with aïoli. And Hickory Run Farms Cornish game hen is pan-roasted, with Sheltowee shiitakes, organic baby bok choy and crispy spring roll of slow-cooked and pulled dark meat with Bourbon soy vinaigrette. 

    Holly Hill Inn is a respite, a retreat set inn the equestrian countryside and a fine reminder of what Southern genteel really means.  

Dudley’s on Short
259 West Short Street, Lexington, KY
859-233-9761
http://www.dudleysrestaurant.com

Located since 2010 in the downtown historic district, Dudley’s is in its 30^th year and long been pre-eminent among Kentucky’s finest dining rooms.  The majesty of its setting within the former Northern Bank Building, built in 1889, and the striking use of huge modern paintings in the well-lighted dining rooms match the genteel hospitality of owner Debbie Long (left), as does the sumptuous menu that might begin with Chefs Erik Fowler and Philip Cronin’s country ham fritters with fried scallions and red pepper aïoli, then move on to pork loin with cranberry bread pudding, local greens, and spiced cider, all accompanied by a first-rate wine list of breadth and depth.
 
 
Heirloom
125 Main Street, Midway, KY
859-846-5565
http://www.heirloommidway.com.

Mark Womblies opened this impeccable little bistro in the charming horse country town of Midway.  The menu is modeled on French and California lines, and if you’re touring the area, stop by for a terrific crab cake sandwich with jalapeño slaw and really terrific French fries or some superlative buttermilk-brined fried chicken with mashed Yukon potatoes laced with a sage sauce and arugula.  You’d pay $9.95 for that, right?

Jonathan’s at Gratz Park
120 West Second Street, Lexington, KY
859-252-4949
http://www.jagp.info.

If you’re in the mood for brunch, head for Jonathan Lundy’s clubby-looking restaurant for shrimp and grits with green beans and a sauce piquant, or the cornmeal waffles with housemade sausage, cranberry relish and toasted pecans, or the Southern eggs Benedict, which translates as fried green tomatoes and country ham on English muffins topped with poached eggs and rich hollandaise sauce—all good excuses to enjoy a bloody Mary or a mint julep at noontime. 

 
 
Malone’s
3347 Tates Creek Road, Lexington, KY
859-335-6500
http://www.bluegrasshospitality.com/malones

You might start off with oysters on the half shell or a sushi platter or King crab cocktail at Malone’s, but no one debates the USDA Prime quality of the beef here, so if you really need a steak fix, Malone’s, with its long bar and memorabilia of sports figures and celebs living the wall, is the place in Lexington  to consider. Ask for a booth, order the ribeye or the porterhouse, a one-pound baked potato, and some onion rings, and finish off with one, maybe two, of the three dozen bourbons they carry at the bar.
 

 
Yamaguchi’s Sake and Tapas
125 Codell Drive, Lexington
No phone
http://www.sakeandtapas.com

This you won’t believe: Yamaguchi’s, a tiny family-run Japanese small plates eatery in town, has no phone number listed because says chef-owner Hidenori Yamaguchi, “the phone is turned off all the time to provide cozy hideaway experience for our guests.” Isn’t that sweet? Well, it certainly hasn’t hurt business because if you and friends are up for the chef’s omekase selection of many courses and some exceptional aged sakes, this is where you go and hope there’s a table empty. Want some very special ingredient from Japan? Yamaguchi will make a call on Wednesday and get it the following Friday.  Happy to oblige.
 
 

NEW YORK CORNER

by John  Mariani
Photos by Noah Fecks

Salinas
136 Ninth Avenue (at 18th Street)
212-776-1990
salinasnyc.com

    The extravagant experiments of Spanish chef Ferran Adrià have tended to obscure the more cogent expressions of young Spanish chefs who seek to please rather than shock their guests.  Of these, San Sebastian-raised Luis Bollo is exemplary, treating Spanish culinary traditions with respect while refining them with his own imagination. The results first showed themselves back in 1999 at Meigas, a novel restaurant in TriBeCa that was closed in the aftermath of 9/11. Bollo relocated with a partner to restaurants in New Haven and Norwalk, CT, then  moved to Princeton, NJ, to open Meditera.  Now that he is back in NYC, at Salinas, he proves himself the ally and peer of the great José Andres and Julian Serrano as Spanish masters in America.
    In this new Chelsea restaurant, Bollo focuses on the cuisine  of the Mediterranean coast and the Balearic Islands.  Designed by Mary Catherine and Donald Mikula, the 90-seat restaurant's most striking feature is to the rear, past the bar, where a  retractable glass roof is set above a 35-seat garden with a stone fireplace (right). The night I dined there a fierce  thunderstorm pounced on the city and rattled the roof, creating its own drumming sound and a watery shimmer above us. There are plush velvet chairs, walls of limestone, and Brazilian walnut floors, with a tapas bar up front.
    Bollo's indebtedness to his time spent cooking in famous restaurants in Spain like Martín Berasategui in Gipuzkoa and Koldo Royo in Palma de Mallorca,  are clearly evident in his own highly personalized work at Salinas, both in color and taste.  He coaxes more flavors out of  ingredients than most Spanish chefs by deftly spicing them. You will taste it immediately in simple Spanish flatbread with aged Mahon cheese, honey, thyme and sea salt; it increases with one of the finest gazpachos made from heirloom tomatoes, cucumbers, spring onions, yellow bell peppers, cava vinaigrette and olive oil; his heads-on shrimp with garlic, lime juice, albariño wine and mushrooms scores on every ingredient, while crispy quail wrapped in bacon, with sweet red plums, spring onions, mushrooms and a dash of balsamic vinegar has every element of sweet-sour-savory flavors, aroma, and eye appeal, right down to the sense of touch when you pick up the bird's bone and finish every last morsel of meat.  And if you have never tasted true jamón Iberico (at $18 an ounce), try a few slices and be amazed.
    For large plates I highly recommend the rosejat rápida (right), made of crispy noodles, chicken breast, chorizo, cockles and mussels with a saffron aïoli, resembling fideuà, a Valencian noodle version of paella. Salt-crusted striped bass could not have been more lustrous, sided with potato confit, spinach, golden raisins, and pine nuts with a last, wonderful touch--smoked paprika.  And by all means order the porcella, meltingly soft, suckling pig with watercress, frisée, grilled apricot and a reduction of PX sherry.
    Inventiveness riddles the desserts here--quince paste, passionfruit semifreddo and creamy rice pudding is outstanding, and the caramelized Spanish version of French toast--torija caramelizada--with brandy is fine enough on its own, but then Bollo adds a double espresso gelato  for intensity.
     The winelist at Salinas is, obviously, rich in Iberian bottlings, with at least a score under $50.
    The attractive service staff could not be more amiable, and Bollo himself imbues the whole enterprise with his engagingly shy spirit.  If you want to know how far Spanish cuisine has come in America, head for Chelsea. 

Salinas is open nightly for dinner only.  Tapas and starters run $7-$18, large plates $19-$38.

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MAN ABOUT TOWN
by Christopher Mariani

Kin Shop

469 Sixth Avenue
212-675-4295

www.KinShopNYC.com

 

    This past Monday night with the company of my lovely girlfriend and a few friends I dined at Kin Shop in NYC's West Village. Being the first two in our party to arrive, we took a seat at the eight-seat bar and ordered a cocktail. I looked to my right and was pleased to see executive chef and owner Harold Dieterle standing just a few feet away inside his kitchen, examining each and every dish for approval before allowing them to hit the tables. Not only has this become a rarity in most high-profile restaurants in major cities across America but the abandonment by celebrity chefs of their kitchens is more rampant than ever. So it was encouraging to see chef Dieterle still so involved in this,  the second, of his two restaurants in Manhattan. His first was Perilla (I have not dined there yet), opened in 2007, and his latest, Kin Shop, opened last October, just a few blocks from Perilla.

         Dieterle is well-known for winning Season One of Bravo’s Top Chef series in 2006. I had a chance to shake hands and converse with the humble chef prior to my dinner and I was delighted to encounter a young chef who has taken his television exposure and utilized it to open a restaurant that, while open for less than a year,  has already blossomed into a great addition to the booming West Village dining scene. 

         The dining room is medium-sized by NYC standards, seating around 45 guests and filled mostly with two-tops and the occasional table for four. There’s also a tiny counter space where a handful of guests can sit and stare directly into Kin Shop’s open kitchen. Hints of garlic, peanut butter and blasts of chili fill the air of the white brick dining room as waiters whiz by with steaming plates of braised goat  and big bowls of slick egg noodles mixed with tender shreds of fried short ribs. There is a comfortable banquette that lines the wall, dark wood chairs, white ceilings and a few murals. The dining room, while simple in design is filled with an abundance of energy coming from a packed house, even on a Monday night.

         For starters, Dieterle’s roasted bone marrow is one of the the best items on the menu, served with a roti and yellow bean sauce, sided by a rich, buttery, flaky pastry bread to lap up each mouthful of the generous portion of fatty bone marrow. Fried pork belly and oysters come topped with sliced celery, chopped peanuts, diced mint leaves and seasoned with a refreshing, tangy chili-lime vinaigrette. If you love  high spice as I do, order the spicy duck laab salad, a mixture of ground duck meat and chili served inside crisp lettuce leaves. Make sure to order a cold Singha beer and a side of sticky rice; it is the only way you will finish the entire dish  with all that heat.

Our waiter described the menu as family style yet recommended we order five or six appetizers and five or six entrees. We were a party of six, does that make sense to you? Granted the portions truly reflect their price accordingly but they are definitely not family style portions. I think our waiter was trying to say, “share everything,” which would have been correct because each dish was better than the next when passed around the table.

         For entrees, do not miss the chef’s roasted duck breast, cooked medium rare, sliced thick with a savory layer of crispy duck fat along the outside and sided by a subtle tamarind sauce. Pickled garlic and a sweet plum chutney garnish a entire goose leg, steamed to tenderize the dark lean meat served on the bone. House specialties include a pleasant pan roasted halibut that swims in a bright Siamese green curry sauce accompanied by steamed bok choy and bamboo shoots.

         The dessert menu could use some bolstering, though the Thai coffee-chocolate ice cream was very good.

         Harold Dieterle is a young, innovative chef with solid culinary skills. His dishes have explosive and dynamic flavors in impressive balance. I assume with the success of his two restaurants in NYC his empire will soon expand and I hope he stays as involved in his kitchens as he currently is doing so. His first restaurant Perilla is now on my radar, stay tuned.         

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I consider this the best and savviest blog of its kind on the  web. Potter is a columnist for USA Weekend, Diversion, Laptop and Luxury  Spa Finder, a contributing editor for Ski and  a frequent contributor to National  Geographic Traveler, ForbesTraveler.com  and Elle Decor. "I’ve designed this site is for people who take their  travel seriously," says Potter. "For travelers who want to learn about special  places but don’t necessarily want to pay through the nose for the privilege of  staying there. Because at the end of the day, it’s not so much about five-star  places as five-star experiences."  THIS WEEK: Geocaching, Governor's Island, Letter from Paris.

Eating Las Vegas is the new on-line site for Virtual Gourmet contributor John A. Curtas., who since 1995 has been commenting on the Las Vegas food scene and reviewing restaurants for Nevada Public Radio.  He is also the restaurant critic for KLAS TV, Channel 8 in Las Vegas, and his past reviews can be accessed at KNPR.org. Click on the logo below to go directly to his site.

                     

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