is a blog by Brendan
The Mayan Gypsy, probably our favorite restaurant, gets a nice writeup from the deplorably-named Louisville HotBytes (the closest thing we have to a Zagat’s). The critic (Paige A. Moore, according to the reprint in LEO) even praises the famous Beef and Shrimp Diablo.
Man, we haven’t been back there in a while. Want to take some guests next weekend, Maria?
I am a big fan of refurbished electronics and appliances, despite the fact that they are maybe the worst things to get refurbished (rapid depreciation, complicated things that if they broke once, etc). I also display a startling brand loyalty to KitchenAid. Thanks to Simply Recipes, I found a refurbished, fairly high-end KitchenAid blender on Amazon for less than half price, with free shipping. You can guess the result.
Tuesday everybody brought stuff to try in smoothies, and Wednesday Maria and I experimented with chocolate pseudomalts and strawberry-orange slushies. Last night I found it difficult to establish a decent texture for a real milkshake; Maria found recommendations online that say if you’re using skim milk (we do), stick it in the freezer for ten minutes first. I firmly intend to do so.
Basically, I’ve enabled myself to drink ice cream. If I were a betting man, and I were in a boxing match against getting fat? I would put my money on getting fat.
Maria: “This is your favorite recipe ever! ‘Cook some butter. Eat it.'”
David Flora requested restaurant recommendations of me for a nice, sit-down, dress-up dinner with his family. Lisa had already plugged the Mayan Gypsy, which I could only second, but I tagged in a few of the other places Maria and I have come to regard with naked hunger in the past couple years. I’ve never done a broad-spectrum restaurant writeup before, so I’m stealing my letter back; if you are in Louisville looking for great food, these places will not do you wrong.
The Gypsy has my highest recommendation, especially the dish which is either called the “Tierra y Mar” or the “Beef and Shrimp Diablo,” depending on the day, with the beef cooked medium rare. It is god-food. Be sure to order the fried plantains, and Maria recommends the sangria if you’re drinking.
I also had some fantastic food (baked provolone, fresh bread and a steak) at Palermo on Bardstown, which is one of Evan’s favorite restaurants–you may want to ask him about it, since I’ve only been there once. Lilly’s, also on Bardstown, is fantastic, but dinner there will cost you a shit ton (lunch is more affordable). Palermo is Argentinian, I think, with a lot of spicy pasta; Lilly’s is a kind of combination of French and Kentuckian (eg duck spring rolls and chicken pot pie).
If you want something simple like really good barbecue, the best onion rings in the world and microbrewed beer, there’s the Bluegrass Brewing Company (BBC) on Fourth Street–did you go with us last time you were in town? I can also recommend Third Avenue Cafe in Old Louisville, which has imaginative sandwiches and sweet potato french fries, Trivial Pursuit cards on the tables, and Elvis.
My personal favorite restaurant in Louisville is North End Cafe on Frankfort, which has a little of everything; its specialty is tapas (Spanish-style appetizers), of which you can get three or four and make a meal for three people–the baby back ribs are amazing. They also have salmon, half a roast chicken, cheeseburgers, etc.
Oh, and you know about Lynn’s Paradise Cafe on Barret, right? It’s… different. Breakfast is their specialty, as is being very brightly colored. Maybe not the place for a nice dinner, but atmospheric and fun.
You’ll definitely want to make a reservation ahead of time at any of these except maybe BBC and Third Avenue, and maybe there too, for a Friday. Also, next time you’re in town alone and want to try something farther afield, remind me and Maria to take you to Saffron’s, Safier, Maido, Le Relais or Ramsi’s Cafe on the World (have you been to Ramsi’s? Everybody’s been to Ramsi’s…).
Lisa has invented a Euro-Japanese pastry, by which I mean that she learned how to cook nikuman dumplings and then replaced the meat with Nutella.
I am not normally a huge fan of Nutella, but damn. Damn.
No, I mean DAMN.
Yesterday my sister Caitlan arrived in Cincinnati, home safe from a three-week (I think) trip to Greece and Italy. Caitlan sucks. But actually she rules.
Before we let her sleep, my family went to dinner at Le Relais, where Ian’s roommate Jesse is a chef. Jesse had arranged a “tasting” for us, which was pretty cool–we got VIP treatment at what is widely considered the best restaurant in Louisville, if not Kentucky.
I was expecting a selection of small courses, which is kind of what we got, only there were six courses plus dessert, and even with small portions that was still a tremendous amount of food. Every bite was incredible. Duck breast and paté with whole-grain dijon, pan-seared sea scallops and hyacinth bulbs (!), medium-rare fillet in veal reduction sauce, five kinds of cheese and pistachio pound cake with saffron ice cream. And I don’t even like cheese! My favorite was the pan-fried red grouper in lobster stock reduction, which was like eating butter if butter was a fish.
Like the first Epiphany Meal, I felt a bit transformed afterward (and not just because I could barely move). I never really knew I liked French food. Maybe it would have been better for my waistline if I still didn’t.
Bee and Graham are here! We ate some tremendous meals and toured our favorite parts of Bardstown, which entailed me buying a lot of crap. One of those meals was my second time eating the Tierra y Mar, now called the Beef and Shrimp Diablo; I also talked Michael, Lisa and Graham into trying it. We unanimously agreed that it did not put the lie to my earlier ravings. If you are in Louisville and looking to find maybe the best single meal in the city, you need to go to the Mayan Gypsy and order the Beef and Shrimp Diablo with corn cakes and fried plantains. Get the goat cheese and black bean empanadas, too, and try the exceptionally rich chocolate mousselike cake.
I felt expanded in more ways than one after that meal: as if my consciousness were enriched, my senses stretched out and switched on. I felt taller. I felt really, really full.
Maria and I went to San Francisco last weekend, and it was pretty great. We left very early Saturday morning and got back very late Monday night, and although we unfortunately missed hanging out with Kris, we did get to play games and bum around with Leonard and Sumana a lot.
It was like every few hours we gained a new and spectacular privilege: aside from Leonard’s food, to which I’ll get in a moment, we discovered the mafia geese of Fairyland; we gained admittance to the residence of Kevin (more on this soon too); we got a quick-but-personal tour of Berkeley; we spent big wads of money at Games of Berkeley; and we played arcade games both vintage and new. Hell, Maria attended the national American Academy of Pediatrics conference practically by accident, and I got to have one of the first looks at Leonard’s newest awesome secret project (so awesome, he got banned from the API of at least one site!). It was that kind of weekend.
Now, Leonard’s food. It should be sufficient to say that Leonard’s fondue made me–the guy who hates cheese–like fondue, but I’m going to say more. We also got to eat his first-ever attempt at home fries, which were unfairly perfect, and his first-ever attempt at pie ice cream, which was also pretty freaking great. Leonard’s food is world peace. Leonard’s food is the answer.
As for Kevin’s house: when Ian and I were younger, we had on our 386 Magnavox computer a program called Floorplan Plus. Because we were dorks–huge dorks, the budding dorks of legend–we spent hours on that thing, designing about a million floor plans so that both of us could completely fail to go into architecture.
My houses were silly, but I always tried to make them sensible. Ian, on the other hand, was constantly reinventing a place he called Jamhouse. You can pretty much imagine what it was like: the perfect residence, as envisioned by a ten-year-old boy. And Kevin’s house is that house, but with a better sound system and more art. It is my future house’s role model.
I need to say something about Sumana too, because she was a major part of the weekend and I’ve barely mentioned her. We stopped for lunch in Berkeley at De La Paz; it was warm and we’d already walked a lot, and Maria (who is hypoglycemic) was getting kind of dizzy. Sumana got up, ostensibly to go to the bathroom, but first snuck over to the bar to have the lone waiter express-deliver a Coke to replenish her blood sugar. That is the kind of friend Sumana is.
Before February of this year I’d never been west of Minnesota, and now I’ve been to California three times in eight months. Two-thirds of that is due entirely to Leonard and Sumana, whose hospitality and thoughtfulness are boundless and unfailing.
Here’s some things.
Thing One I never write about my life in here anymore, because I’m increasingly disconnected from school (a drive-through with occasional stressfalls) and work (a drive-through). Of the interesting things I do in my free time, everybody who’s interested in them is, well, already there (see Blognomic, Anacrusis and Tuesday now Thursday Night Basketball).
Thing Two But there is something I need to write about my life, which is that last Tuesday, Maria and I accompanied her mother on a trip to Sam’s Club. While hungry.
Never do this.
You can pretty much guess the results. We got all American on that place, and will never be able to eat everything we bought before it spoils. Anybody need, oh, an acre of croissants or two stone of grated parmesan? Come on over! We ran out of cabinet room!
Thing C I can’t figure out if I like Buttercup Festival or not, but it’s hard to resist a Sharpie-drawn strip that features Space Björk and mouth harp-loving frogs.
Thing F I have succumbed to clickolinko.
Thing Last Ergo, PUPPY!