Going South for the Winter...

Some news about my journey to “Taste the Ville”; it’s about to take a detour.  I am being given the opportunity to go work in Memphis until March at FedEx Forum home of the Memphis Grizzlies.  While this will put a little bit of a twist on my plan to blog about the amazing culinary landscape of Louisville, it is going to give me the unique opportunity to check into another city’s hot spots.  It is my hope that I will be able to continue writing about amazing food, just in a different location.  I will certainly miss my favorite Ville spots, and will no doubt be comparing everything I eat to somewhere back home.  I just wanted to get the explanation out there before Memphis eateries started popping up.  Hope you continue to enjoy the blog and have a safe and Happy Holiday Season, cheers!

Avalon

Bardstown Road plays host to a plethora of restaurants, bars and shops.  Nestled between Rosewood avenue and Cherokee parkway sits Avalon.  Side note: Avalon in history is the mythical island that King Arthur’s sword Excalibur was forged.  Now back to Louisville’s Avalon.  As a holiday/going away for a while dinner myself and 4 friends ventured to the restaurant to see what was to offer. 

Unbeknownst to us we were walking into the jackpot of specials.  Not only is Tuesday 1/2 off bottles of wine, but they were also running a “Girls Night Out Special”.  This consisted of having 2 or more girls at the table- check, and $5 salads and small plates- double check.  So we started with the Baked Goat Cheese.  We loved the creamy whipped local goat cheese with roasted garlic but wished there was a bit more of the tomato jam on it and a few more flatbread pieces for us to finish it up with.  Of course we also had a few bottles of wine, we were after all celebrating.

Since there were five at the table and we each ordered something different I think the easiest and most comprehensive way to review this is going to be a list, so here it goes:

• Wedge Salad- I always love a wedge salad, great in its simplicity, this was no exception.  The one fault we found with it (two of us ordered this) was that the croutons were super hard, like they were stale, or had been set in the refrigerator, I couldn’t decide.
• Fish and Chips- It came with two giant pieces of cod that were well breaded (almost like a corndog batter, but not in a bad way at all, in a great way actually) and flaky.  The fries were really tasty.
• Mixed Greens- I was told the best part of this was the dressing which was honey balsamic vinaigrette.
• Lobster Mac N Cheese- And I quote “yummers”.  I think that says enough.
• Southern Fried Chicken- The chicken was delicious, the mashed potatoes were too starchy, perhaps needing to be whipped more.
• Avalon Burger- Thought it was mediocre, but that the yam fries she got with them were really good.
• Onion Soup Gratin- Perfect amount of cheese to bread ratio.

Overall we really enjoyed ourselves.  The room was a little too dimly lit for my taste, but I get the vibe they are going for.  Plus with all the specials I ended up saving $34 with the wine and small plate, which in itself is worth another trip, or two.


Update:  This restaurant is now closed.

Hammerheads

Say there is a shotgun house in Germantown, not hard to imagine considering Louisville has the largest number of shotgun houses in the country, and above the door resides a giant hammerhead shark.  Now consider that within this thin building there is what I consider one of the must stop-at destinations for foodies in the city.  Hammerheads looks like it stepped right out of an episode of Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives, with its small interior, long bar and packed status.  We arrived around 7 to a room that had no open tables and 3 people in front of us.  There were two seats at the window bar so we decided to sit there.

This was not by any means my first time to Hammerheads, just the first time I decided to write about it.  On this particular evening I had a ½ rack of BBQ Lamb Ribs.  They were really good, not dry at all
with that perfect BBQ flavor.  I will say that they are small (only 4 spare ribs coming with a ½ rack, but in all fairness the waiter told me that when I ordered).  J was going to order the Soft Shell Crab Sandwich, but the waiter talked her into getting it as the tacos.  She was glad he had talked her into that, she said they were great.  Something you have yet to learn about J is that she loves French Fries, probably more then any other person I know.  Normally when I am there I get a basket of fries to share, this time was no exception, and decided to get spend a little extra and get ours fried in duck fat.  The fries were on point, crispy and golden, my only issue was that every once in a while I got one I thought tasted dirty (I attribute this to the parsley).  J gives them a 9 on a 1-10 scale saying she wished there was something a little tastier to dip them in than ketchup, they were too good for that.  Hammerheads always has a nice beer selection, J having a NABC Elector Imperial Red Ale, myself having a Southern Tier 2x IPA.

The one fault I will give to Hammerheads is that they brought my ribs out a while before they brought J’s tacos or the fries, I like for everything to come out at once.  Other than that it’s always a great experience, I wouldn’t have even minded had we needed to wait for a table.  The service was great, our server always just randomly popped up, he was like a “ninja server”, and the atmosphere is always fun.

The Silver Dollar

Being the new kid on the block can mean a few different things.  For one, people seem to always be talking about you, whispering to all their friends about that place that just moved in.  Also, it sometimes unfortunately means you have that awkward stumbling point where you haven’t quite got your groove, but everyone knows you will have so much to offer when you hit your stride.  That is how I see The Silver Dollar.  Having just opened in the last few weeks over on the downtown end of Frankfort sits The Silver Dollar in the old Albert A. Stoll Firehouse.  By now you all know how much I love anything local, well I happen to also be a history nerd, so if you put a locally owned restaurant in one of America’s oldest intact firehouses I am there.
Being greeted by the reclaimed wood bar as I walked in, I wandered over to my friend who was already seated in a large booth.  The sound of old country and low chatter fills the room and creates a nice background sound to an evening with good friends and house-made cocktails.  Both of my friends decided on the fried oyster sandwich.  Apparently they were good, one going as far to say it was the best oyster sandwich she has had; the other commenting that the bread wasn’t as hard as a normal po’ boy bread, which made the sandwich better.  I had the Barbecue Pork sandwich, it was delicious.  The pork was tender and the coleslaw on top of the sandwich was just right.  What we would like too highly recommend is that you cover your chips in the house-made salsas or ketchup that is brought out to you.  We all had our preference, one thinking the regular salsa was great, one claiming the smokey ketchup was where it was at and myself feeling that the salsa verde was money.  Either way we seemed to demolish all of our chips while simultaneously making the sauces disappear.
What I would like to caution is that the stumbling point with The Silver Dollar seems to be the service.  While we had one server to start with and kept putting off ordering until our third member arrived, we ended with another server.  I am not opposed to switching servers since we had only ordered drinks, but the server we ended up with was not the greatest.  She finally did take our meal order and the food arrived fairly quickly, but after that it was downhill.  We waited for what felt like forever for her to notice that we had been trying to get our checks to leave.  After we gave her our cards it took her 20 minutes to bring them back to us, she had actually forgot that she had them.  I have heard from a few different friends that their service experience was much the same.  Again I am going to contribute this to being new and still working out the kinks.  The food, drinks, and sauce alone is worth the visit, perhaps do as we did and go on an off day (Mon-Thurs) when it is a little slower so the servers have a bit more time.

Troll Pub Under the Bridge

It’s a good day when my parents come to town, and I always make sure we go somewhere new to eat when they are here.  It’s also not very often you will see 61 degree weather on a December Saturday night in Louisville.  So after taking in a play at the Kentucky Center we decided to stroll down Whiskey Row until something popped out at us.  This particular night it happened to be Troll Pub Under the Bridge.  Anything with a whimsical troll beckoning passersby to enter deserves a shot, so we obliged the troll and took a chance.

Seeing as how IPA beers are my favorite, when an IPA beer cheese is on the menu I have to order some.  Served with hot pretzel bread sticks I have to say the beer cheese was the best part of the meal.  The beer did not overpower the cheese as there was a perfect balance of flavors.  Between the three of us we split an order of mild wings and a 10” supreme pizza.  The wings were crispy and flavorsome with in-house made sauce.  The pizza was a big disappointment.  To me it tasted like something that came out of a freezer and was thrown in an oven.  The saving grace of this particular establishment is the building that it’s in.  With giant wooden doors and large gothic handles as you enter, exposed brick walls, and large industrial doors (I decided belonged in a mine somewhere) in the bathroom as art, you can’t help but enjoy the space.  It is my sincere hope that Whiskey Row continues to grow and with it the restaurant scene as well.