I don't get it. Why isn't Louisville, Kentucky, touted as one of our best food and drink towns? Way too often, when talk turns to America's citadels of edible and drinkable achievement, Louisville gets elbowed aside. This river town is not comparable to Chicago.
Or San Francisco. But New Orleans and Nashville and Charleston, three southern sorta-neighbors who get pimped endlessly by the food press, had best keep their eyes on the rearview mirror.
I'm just home from a trip to Louisville. Among the highlights:
Dinner at the Oakroom in the Seelbach Hotel, where Todd Richards and Dwayne Nutter do their damnedest to explode what it means to be African-American chefs cooking in the American South. As in a fat scallop heaped with a "deli salad" of pineapples and carrots and Lord knows what all else, the tumble of goodness held together by a dill aioli.
A colder-than-cold buck-fifty can of PBR at Flabby's in Schnitzelburg, a working-class German enclave set just south of downtown. I want to come back in the summer when the old men of the neighborhood guzzle in the streets while playing Dainty, a local version of stickball.
Two fried eggs, scattered with shredded mozzarella, dribbled with harissa, served on top of brioche toast, from Toast On Market Set in a rapidly gentrifying neighborhood full of hipster boutiques and junk stores, the restaurant also serves a riff on a Monte Cristo: brioche, filled with slices of ham and Swiss, served with a bullet of orange and rosemary syrup.
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