2012 Humana Fest, Part Two - the food

Of course, because I'm me, when I'm in a new town, I like to try lots of different restaurants.  I would never eat out so much around home, but when I want to sample as much of a town as I can, that rule goes out the window.  Even with our teeny tiny per diem.  :)

The restaurant I really wanted to try was 610 Magnolia, with executive chef Edward Lee, who was just on Top Chef: Texas.  I thought he was terrific on the show.  But, of course, the restaurant was fully booked for the times I had available.  Next year, as soon as we decide we're going to Humana, I'm booking a table there.  First thing.

When we arrived in Louisville, we were starving, so we wandered around a bit until we found Dish on Market.  We didn't really have a lot of choices - quite a few restaurants are closed between lunch and dinner.  Dish on Market was a pub-type place, with a pretty good menu.  I didn't want to eat a huge meal, since we were going to do a meeting for work later in the evening, so I just got a fried egg and cheddar sandwich.  What really sold the sandwich to me, though, was that it was served on a pretzel bread croissant.  OK, yum!  I love pretzel bread and I love croissants.  I figured the combination would be a winner!  And it was!  Though the bread could've been a tad saltier.  The homemade chips were also yummy, as was the sweet tea.  I had a lot of sweet tea on this trip.  Our server was quite sweet and wanted us to come back for the live music later that night, but we just didn't make it. 

Our boss had a lot of travel agita that day (he flew out of a different airport), so he was desperate to get dinner right away after our meetings were completed.  The hotel concierge tried to get us into 610 Magnolia, but it was impossible.  So we ate at Blu, the Italian restaurant in the hotel.  It was quite nice.  The homemade foccacia was delicious, as was the antipasti platter (I was sad to miss out on the delicious-looking prosciutto, but the mozzarella and the balsamic vinaigrette were nice).   The malbec wine I got was also delicious.

My main course was a tad disappointing.  I got the rigatoni in vodka sauce.  I have to say the sauce was pretty bland, and so were the cherry tomatoes and the eggplant inside.  Plus, everything in the dish was so soft.  There needed to be another texture somewhere, I think.  I actually ended up taking a little bit of the crust from my work chum's pizza to add a little crunch.  I think I would've preferred the dish with a regular tomato sauce, which I was going to ask for, but forgot.  Oh well.  Next time.  The restaurant itself was lovely and our server was excellent.  If we go back, maybe I'll try some fish.  Another work chum got the salmon and said it was great.

We ate the breakfast buffet in the hotel the next morning (sorry, no photos), which was quite nice.  They had delicious biscuits and I got an omelet at the omelet station, plus some very nice fresh fruit.  We worked through lunch, but then ate dinner at a very fun place, Doc Crow's.  Another work chum commented that it would be a good idea to eat BBQ since we were in the south, so I made a reservation at Doc Crow's which was 1) a BBQ place, and 2) near the theater since we had to be back in a couple of hours for more shows.  I was worried it would be crazy, since we would be there at the same time as the Louisville/Kentucky basketball game, but we were in the dining room in the back and away from the bar and the TVs. 

We started with some DELICIOUS fried green tomatoes.  Oh my, they were good.  A crispy breading, with still-firm sweet and tart green tomatoes.  Delicious.  They were served with a yummy remoulade.  I also got a very tasty margarita on the rocks.  I don't normally have a drink right before seeing a show (especially after having seen three other plays!), but I thought a cocktail was in order.  :)

Even though I had a fried appetizer, I still wanted to get a po' boy.  They had a combination oyster shrimp sandwich, served with yet another delicious remoulade.  I also got some hush puppies, which were tasty, if a little spicy for my tastes.  Thumbs up on the po-boy.  I even put some of the housemade tomato-based barbecue sauce on the sandwich - that may have made it inauthentic, but it sure made it tasty.  The restaurant also had a vinegar-based sauce on the table, but I forgot to try that one.  Darn it.  Next time.  (We were going to go back there for lunch the next day, but they're closed for lunch.  Darn it again.)   And, if I still ate meat, I would've gotten their dessert called Wilber's Sundae, which had cinnamon pork rinds and candied bacon atop bourbon praline ice cream.  Oh. My. God.  No one else was brave enough to try it, darn them.  How can a vaguely-vegetarian person live vicariously through others if they won't order the dessert with cinnamon pork rinds?!?!  Oh, the humanity!!!  ;)

I met a dear pal from undergrad for breakfast the next morning.  She drove me to a place I'd heard about from a lot of people, but since our work crowd didn't have a car, I didn't think I'd get to try it.  Hooray for college pals with cars!  Lynn's Paradise Cafe has been featured on the Food Network several times, apparently.  Bobby Flay has done a couple of 'throwdowns' there, but I haven't seen those episodes.  I'll have to keep my eyes open for them.  The restaurant is adorable and quirky, with a very fun menu.  There are disco balls, and really fun lamps all around.  I liked it there.  Of course, I became the boring one and just ordered eggs with biscuits, because I love me some biscuits and can never get them in NYC.  I also ordered a side dish of fried apples.  YUM.   Thumbs way up for the food and for the fun shop attached to the restaurant.  I bought some souvenirs, along with a tiara cookie cutter for myself!  Look for some tiara-shaped cookies in the near future...

We snuck out and got some pizza for lunch at Impellizzeri's.  The pizza was ok, nothing special.  We ordered the thin crust pizza, but the crust wasn't really very thin.  I'd hate to see what the regular crust pie looked like.  Their sweet tea was quite good, though, as were their breadsticks.  Tons of butter and garlic - just the way I like them. 

[OK, you're thinking that all we did was eat, right?  Not really - we also saw a lot of plays. :) ]

For dinner, I made a reservation for our group at a nice place called Proof on Main.  It's inside a very funky hotel and art museum.  There's something to look at everwhere you turn.  Even the trip to the bathroom is an experience.  The restaurant has a very nice cocktail list, but I couldn't decide which one I wanted, so I got a glass of falanghina.  It was delicious.  Even though we had had pizza just a few hours earlier, I went ahead and ordered the soft shell crab for dinner.  It was DELICIOUS!  It was fried in a light tempura, on top of gnocchi, mushy peas and a carrot reduction.  I really loved it.  It was light and yummy and didn't make me feel full at all.  Everyone seemed to like Proof, so I'm glad I picked it.  Their dessert menu wasn't anything to write home about, though, so we didn't try any.  Again, next time.

Oh, and to end the evening, we went to the Maker's Mark Bourbon Bar.  I had my first mint julep, which was yum yummy.  If I hadn't had to get up at the crack of dawn the next morning, I would've had two.  :)  The trip was a lot of fun, both theater-wise and food-wise.  I'm looking forward to heading back to Louisville next year.  To end, I'll add some Louisville-local-flavor photos.  Enjoy...