Vampin' in Bellarmine University's Concord

Bellarmine University's Newspaper, The Concord, started a new feature called "What the Locals Are Doing," and asked TVL to contribute for the inaugural installment.  I join DJ and record shop owner Matt Anthony as we talk about what we're listening to (Matt) and eating (me.)  My contributions include descriptions of a couple of my favorite menu items at two local places, and a shout-out to a neighborhood market I dearly love that is closing its doors for good next month.

What the Locals Are Doing.

Que Viva La Bodega

La Bodega has long been one of my favorite spots, and we stop in periodically.  I finally got tired of cooking and decided to venture out.  Friday night in this gorgeous autumn weather demanded that we hoof it through the Highlands and up Bardstown Road for dinner.

We were greeted at the door by a sandwich board advertising their Spanish rosé for six bucks a glass.  I had bid a fond farewell to rosé about a month or so ago, but here it was again.  The day was warm, so what the hey; welcome back, rosé.  This one was of a darker color and fuller flavor, more suitable for early autumn than the lighter shades of rosé preferred on the dog days of summer.

Mr. Hits opted for a cocktail sporting his favorite booze + flavor combination: bourbon and ginger.  The Ginger Snap combines Old Forester and Domaine de Canton Liqueur and was served on the rocks.

Tapas-wise, we typically order a showcase of our favorite tapas and audition a couple of newbies.

M1
From the Montaditos list.  Montaditos are small bites served on a slice of baguette.

Chorizo, serrano ham, goat cheese, dollop of mayonnaise and topped with a fried quail egg.
Just let that sink in for a mo.
I always order this right off the bat.  I cited it as my favorite tapa in town for the Best of Louisville Critics Panel.  The fun part of this trip was now that Mr. Hits is eating a bit of meat here and there, he could try his first M1...and his second.  Yes.  He ordered another, later in the meal.  They're that good, I tell you.  It's the richest, most decadent little bite of food there is.

Endive Salad
Yet another item I order without fail.  Crisp, bitter endive, crunchy walnuts and a light, tart blue cheese vinaigrette.  A super salad.

Patatas Bravas
These are boiled potato chunks that are then lightly sauteed.  This current version is quite different from the one we'd had many times in the past. Previously, they had been served in a cream sauce - this time, they were flavored with something spicier and drier.  We loved the old version, but didn't miss it at all.  This incarnation gets two thumbs up. 

Grilled Scallops with Romesco Sauce
This we didn't love.  Something sharp in the sauce just turned me off.  I rarely run into something I actually dislike at La Bodega - I guess I was due.

P6
From the Pintxos list.  They're called pintxos because they are stabbed with a toothpick, or literally, a spike.
Spanish tuna, boiled egg, anchovy, and piquillo pepper.
It's actually all that stuff piled onto a hard boiled egg.  A fishy, funky, salty explosion - totally up my alley.

Shrimp Sauteed in Olive Oil and Garlic
This newbie may just have landed itself a spot in our rotation.  The shrimp was served in a little crockery full of a highly garlicky and spicy olive oil.  Suspended in the oil were slices of garlic and flecks of red pepper. 

• Vampin' Lady True Confession: I don't like shrimp.  I have tried and tried and tried for years to like it, but I can't make it work.  They remain in the small category of foods I actively do not like but fervently wish I did.

I valianty tried these shrimp, and actually found them to be pretty nice (for shrimp).  Mr. Hits has always loved shrimp, so he devoured them.  The real winner for me was the garlic-red-pepper-olive-oil shrimp bath.  Another basket of bread was procured and promptly used to sop up as much of the oil as polite society allowed. I want a bottle of it to use at home.  I'd use it as a pasta sauce, drizzle it on steamed vegetables, brush it onto pieces of lavash before baking them into crispy snacks, perhaps even take a bath in it myself.

We left tapas-ed out and glowing with an olive oil sheen.  Until next time...

Vampin' Lady Bits

Here are a couple links to some other bits of food writing I've done:

A new restaurant specializing in grilled cheese sanwiches and soups opened in the Highlands, and I covered their preview night.
Tom + Chee and Goetta Makes Three


St. Charles Exchange is a swanky new "1900's hotel lobby bar" styled joint downtown, and I covered their grand opening.
Go West... to St. Charles Exchange


And I participated in a Critics' Panel for Louisville Magazine.

Louisville Magazine Best of Louisvlle Food Panel

Happy Hour at Hillbilly Tea

Drop yourself somewhere between the downtown arena and the downtown White Castle, and you'll end up at Hillbilly Tea: a disarmingly charming spot for food, tea, and for a little while now, booze.








Via their website, I discovered they had a happy hour.  The site says only "tea and hooch - happy hour - wed thru sun - 4pm-6pm!"  With that scant description, we were left to trundle on down there to see about the offerings. 

I settled on a tea-infused vodka flight to start.  With help from our server, I chose my three:

• Smoked, 
• The Good Earth, and 
• Big Earl's. 

      I hardly need to describe to you what smoked tea vodka tastes like.  It tastes, you know, like smoke.  Smoke that gets you drunk.  Smoked tea vodka was definitely worth a try, but it wasn't something I truly savored. 

The Big Earl's was a nice, easy drinking infusion.  It obviously resembled Earl Grey tea in its flavor profile.  The aroma was flowery and the taste mild.

The Good Earth, quite simply, must have been what the fairies in A Midsummer Night's Dream mixed their cocktails with.  (The vodka may have gone to my head a bit by the time I had this revelation.  You'll have to just go with me.)  To the nose, it was slightly minty, and it tasted like nectar in vodka form.

Speaking of going to my head: let's get some snacks.



We tried the white bean and sage fritters and the corn fried tofu; both were delicious.  The fritters were creamy and chewy, perfectly round fried balls of richness.  Reminiscent of hush puppies.  The tofu was a completely different texture: firm on the inside, slightly crisp on the outside.  The BBQ sauce that came with the tofu was divinely sweet and smoky.

A couple of cocktail offerings tickled my fancy, but with my fancy tickled enough already by the vodka flight, saving them for our next visit seemed appropriate.  The Big Early (Big Earl's vodka, soda and lemony syrup) sounded tailor-made to sip on one's front porch.  The Old Rose (bourbon and house made tea bitters, muddled with orange and a moonshine cherry) had me picturing myself draped in a shawl, winding a Victrola and tugging on the drink in my etched glass tumbler.

Hillbilly Tea serves up consistently great and creative food in a casually funky atmosphere.  The service is always friendly and chill, but very competent.  Their Happy Hour is yet another reason to stop in.

Vampin' on BourbonBlog

Thanks to BourbonBlog for picking up my story about Majid's Miracle Berry Feast.

Tripping the Berry Fantastic at Majid's St. Matthews, Louisville

"Hey there!" to anyone visiting from BourbonBlog.

Tripping the Berry Fantastic at Majid's

Majid’s hosted The Miracle Feast this past Thursday evening, serving a tasting menu and various cocktails in order to illustrate nature’s power to alter how flavors are received. Four cocktails and nine food tastings... twice. A gastronomical "Groundhog Day.” Except in this case, the second time around, things didn't taste the same as they did the first. I would have the Miracle Berry Tablet to blame for the transformation. For the uninitiated, the Miracle Berry tablet’s active ingredient is miraculin, a glycoprotein that causes sour foods to be perceived as sweet.

It all started out innocently enough. We began with the Violet Hour and a tasting of The Countess, a special cocktail prepared by our guide for the evening, bartender Stephen Dennison. The Countess, he explained, was a great way to get an aperitif into our bellies in advance of the oncoming barrage of flavors and richness. A divine starter, it was comprised of the ingredients for a Negroni dry shaken with black peppercorns, thereby infusing the drink with essential oils.

Nine dishes were served via a combination of family style and waiter presentation: Portuguese kale salpicon, kimchi Brussels sprouts, chimichurri flank steak rouladen, double-fried chicken wings, duck bruschetta, cucumber strata with pimento goat cheese, braised pork belly, calamari ceviche, and whiskey sour bread pudding.

Four beverages were in place when we sat down - three artisan cocktails and a glass of pinot grigio. My favorite of the mixed drinks was the Thanks for the Memories, aptly described by Dennison as a cross between a mint julep and a champagne cocktail. Two of my favorite drinks melded into one.

After the first tastings were concluded, we received our assignment: eat the tablet provided and allow it to transform our conceptions of taste. Each of us was given a spoon (all the better to scrape the surface of our tongues, so as to help the miracle tablet work its magic) and one Miracle Berry Tablet. The trick was to make sure it coated the tongue as it dissolved, so as to thoroughly confuse the taste buds.

The test was a lemon wedge; if tasting it felt like you were licking the sugar rim of a lemon drop martini, you were in business. I was off and running. For the remainder of the evening, I continued to use the lemon as a barometer, checking periodically to make sure the miraculin was still working.

Not much of a pinot grigio fan in general, I had sipped the wine after first sitting down to get my initial impression: kind of flat and not much to it, said my taste buds. However, post-miracle berry, it assumed the flavor profile of a semi-sweet Riesling.

Some of the food tastings didn’t change on my palate: the kale salpicon was just as creamy and the pork belly just as smoky and delicious as they were the first time around.

Others, however, changed dramatically. The kimchi Brussels sprouts were stripped of all their acidity, leaving only sweet, earthy sprouts behind. The chimichurri on the flank steak paired with the daikon inside the roulade were sugary. Even the fruity-hot chicken wings, with their fresh lime juice coating, gave off waves of extra sweetness. The Kool-Aid explosion came from the likely suspect: the ceviche. The calamari tasted like it had been marinating for days in a Skittles vinaigrette.

The night concluded with Dennison handing everybody one more spoon, this one containing a couple mouthfuls of hibiscus granita - yet another welcome aperitif. I took a final hit of lemon wedge, only to find that the miracle berry's effect was, by that time, at about 50%. The pinot was starting to taste like pinot again. “Lick a snozzbery; it tastes like a snozzberry,” I thought. The Miracle Berry trip nearing its conclusion, I realized the ride I had just been on wasn’t a dinner at all. It was a mouth-watering science experiment.