And I... am her Spirit.
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Dec. 26th, 2008 | 09:03 pm
music: an annoying purring cat
(Surprisingly good movie, I must say. Still definitely Frank Miller, but there was a lot of stuff there I never would have expected from the guy. SLJ was fantastic, unsurprisingly.)
So, about my city: Louisville, Kentucky. Kentucky is a Southern state by everyone's account, but Louisville itself is so heavily influenced by the Midwest that it's been called both the northernmost Southern city and the southernmost Northern city. It is either the 17th largest or 27th largest city in the country, depending on how you calculate population. (The city and the county merged into a single entity a while back, so the 17th includes the entire county and the 27th includes only those parts of the county that aren't semi-independent. Personally, I consider places like Anchorage and J-town just as much a part of the city as the rest, so I usually quote the 17th figure.) There's a variety of other interesting things about the place, from the Derby to Louis Brandeis to Slugger bats to artificial heart transplants, but if you really want to know about all of that I suggest reading the Wikipedia page.
The statistic I am currently most interested in, however, isn't listed on that page. At the last count I'm aware of, Louisville, Kentucky had the fourth most restaurants per capita of any city in the country. Now, I know I haven't explored Boston nearly enough, but I must admit to missing my food here, and in part to give myself a list of places to visit before I go back to school and in part because I'd like to recommend places to![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif?v=92.1)
bronzite , I have decided to compile a list of what I consider some of the best places in the city to eat. (Note that this list shall be heavily biased by where I live in the city, where I hang out, and what budget I had at the time that I was eating out a lot, which isn't much.)
So let's see... The place I ate tonight was WW. Cousins. Cousins has regularly been voted the best burger place in Louisville, but I've never eaten a burger there so I guess I can't say. I will say this, however. The place is part bakery and not only do they have a constant collection of fresh cookies and pies, but they bake all of their own buns. Then they cut the delicious things open, smear them with butter, toast them and slap your cooked-to-order patty on top. (Or, in my case, a deliciously moist and tender chicken breast.) Then they serve it to you, likely with a side of fresh potato wedges or something. If you want toppings, you make your way over to the topping bar, where they've got just about everything you could want on a burger, including three different types of pickle. (Unless you count relishes, in which case make that five.) But really, it's the buns that make it delicious.
Now, you may have noticed that Cousins isn't a good place to eat if you keep Kosher, and I'm afraid much of my list will be like that. If you interpret Kosher as vegetarian when eating out, however, Indian is always an excellent option. My favorite Indian restaurant is Kashmir on Bardstown Road. My father would probably argue for Shalimar or Indian Palace, but he likes their buffets, and I've never been particularly fond of buffets. No, Kashmir is the place to go.
There's a fair amount on Bardstown Road in general. It's the most eccentric part of town, really. All the eclectic little stores can be found there. The only other place I like to eat there, though, is Omar's, which is a little gyro shop. It's really only good in the summer, though, when you plan to eat and walk. So I haven't been there in a while.
In terms of Asian cuisine, Liang's currently seems to be the best Chinese food in town. I really wish we had a decent Chinese place anywhere near Waltham, but I settle for trying to avoid it entirely until I get home. Thai Siam and the other Thai place over in Holiday manor are probably two of the best Thai restaurants around, but I'm generally not enthused by Thai and the apparent saturation of Waltham with Thai and Indian restaurants has made me even less interested. We used to have a flat out amazing Vietnamese place a while back, but its location was apparently poorly chosen, so it closed. There are a couple sushi places I'm particularly fond of, but the management of one changed, (they used to be family of some of our friends) so everything's more expensive and less interesting. Dad has apparently found another good one farther out, though.
In terms of Mexican, the best Mexican restaurant I've ever eaten at, (and no, I can't say I'm at all impressed with that place in Waltham), is El Nopal. We've got a couple of those scattered around the city, but the one closest to where I used to live is the best. The only thing I wish they had on their menu were better flautas, but I haven't had a decent flauta since I left Wisconsin, (weird, right?) and I'm not sure I'd choose that over the quesadilla roja con pollo.
For Cajun, J. Gumbo's is the place to go. It's a tiny place with a small menu and no atmosphere to speak of, but whether you like your food hot or mild it'll be delicious. Apparently there was an even better place downtown a couple years ago, but it shut down. J. Gumbo's might not be as good, but it's run by family of the lady who ran the other one and it at least seems more financially stable.
For Irish, I have to recommend the Irish Rover. It's half-bar, as it should be, and the shepard's pie is excellent. On the other hand, if I were given the choice between lunch at the Rover and lunch at the Pub, I'd end up choosing the Pub. The Pub's food isn't particularly amazing, unless you really want a fried pickle or appreciate an overly chocolate-y dessert, and I probably shouldn't even mention it here, as it's not Irish, Scottish or British to any real extent. But damn it, all the waitors wear kilts, and this pleases me.
I don't really know what Shiraz counts as, sounds Iranian, but it's a new kebab place in town. Delicious. If you don't want meat on a stick, though, don't eat there. (Also, I've just been corrected. It is Mediterranean.)
If you want Caribbean food, you might be suckered into going to Bahama Breeze. And I have to admit their food is pretty good and the building itself is very cool. (They make the roof look like giant umbrellas.) But the food isn't worth the price and the atmosphere isn't worth the wait and bad service, so I'd only recommend the place to someone I wasn't particularly fond of. (Excellent! I've just been informed that it closed down while I was away. Finally.)
There are a variety of little cafes around town, and dropping into a random one for soup and a sandwich is normally a pleasant experience, but the only one I pay much attention to is the Cheddar Box, (not to be confused with Cheddars, which is a cookie-cutter family restaurant that I can't recommend to anyone). It has the tomato-artichoke soup I one day hope to successfully copy. Nice atmosphere, too. Along similar lines, Dooley's is a simple chain that sells good bagels and bagel sandwiches and is irritatingly only open during the middle of the day.
For barbecue, I recommend Mark's Feed Store, and for steaks I recommend Longhorn. Not necessarily because either are the best at what they do, but for what I want, specifically, they're both fantastic. (For Mark's, this means the sides more than the meat, and for Longhorn this means a perfectly cooked medium-rare ribeye with asparagus.)
For desserts, there are various ice cream chains scattered around, and we finally have two frozen custard places, but the Pie Kitchen's more interesting in my opinion. It's not as good as it used to be, but you can't go wrong with a warm slice of chocolate chess pie and a scoop of cinammon ice cream. Bakeries are good for that kind of thing, as well, but I don't know many of them. Just Heitzman's. And we go there for very specific things. Butter kuchens and jam cakes and the like.
As the last restaurant I'll mention specifically, Gasthaus, is hands down my and my family's favorite. It's German, if you couldn't tell, and as far as I'm concerned it's the only German restaurant we've ever had in Louisville. (Another one opened up a few years ago, but it was so mediocre we never ate there again.) All I can say about Gasthaus is that everything I've ever eaten there was delicious, and even if the food wasn't amazing, I'd go there again and again just for the fallen chocolate souffle.
I didn't mention the best Italian restaurant because you can hardly drive a block without running into one, and ever since the last Indigo closed none of them really stand out from the pack. The Spaghetti Factory probably has the most history, but its food is pretty simple. There are Japanese steakhouses all over the place too, and I'd have to say the same applies. There are all of the usual chains around, from Qdoba to Quiznos to Penn Station to the Cheesecake Factory to every fast food restaurant chain you could desire (Yum has headquarters here, after all), and barraunts galor, but those are the same everywhere and not really interesting enough to bother with.
Breakfast places, meanwhile, get a whole other category. When I last came home the hot new one was Toast, and I must admit that everything I had there was delicious. The wait is long, unfortunately and the place itself is rather noisy. Brunch at Bristol is always nice. It's one of the few buffet-style things I enjoy and also the only time I'll happily eat there. Now, apparently, the new one is something called Wild Eggs, but I haven't gotten the chance to check it out yet.
These are all just places I've eaten or eat regularly, mind. So everything I say should be taken with a grain of salt. There's yet another new shopping center built in the past year that's packed with restaurants I haven't tried yet. According to my parents, it's the site of the best coffeeshop in the city (I think my loyalty shall remain with my usual place), and the Cuban restaurant in it has what my father considers the best burger in the city. Or perhaps he meant that tapas place over near my mom's office.... Either way.
I will add one more section, however, restaurants that are too high end to enter my thoughts commonly. Most of these are downtown or on Bardstown Road. I've eaten at a couple of them and have my opinions, but I'll just say that I'm rarely thrilled to see tiny birds stuffed with things on menus. White chocolate mousse, on the other hand.... The former was something called Cafe Metro and the latter was Uptown Cafe. Of course, the names are both boring and similar and the two restaurants are right next to each other, so I might have confused them. That's about all I know about that particular type of restaurant, but they apparently exist and thrive about the city for those who are interested.
The sad thing is, I could continue rambling about food and good places to go in the city, but that covers all of my favorites and least favorites, so I'll cut myself off here.
----------------------------------------
On a more important note, we checked on my grandmother again today, and she looked more like her old self again, even grumbling and snarking affectionately. So it's looking like she might get out of the hospital soon, and won't need quite as much looking after while she's there.
On a... well, I guess still more important than food note, I desire clothing. I should finally have money again around mid-to-late January, and if anyone feels like shopping with me I fully intend to finally stock up on argyle sweater vests, button up shirts, slacks and hopefully a decent tie or two.
Edit: I need a to do list again.
So, about my city: Louisville, Kentucky. Kentucky is a Southern state by everyone's account, but Louisville itself is so heavily influenced by the Midwest that it's been called both the northernmost Southern city and the southernmost Northern city. It is either the 17th largest or 27th largest city in the country, depending on how you calculate population. (The city and the county merged into a single entity a while back, so the 17th includes the entire county and the 27th includes only those parts of the county that aren't semi-independent. Personally, I consider places like Anchorage and J-town just as much a part of the city as the rest, so I usually quote the 17th figure.) There's a variety of other interesting things about the place, from the Derby to Louis Brandeis to Slugger bats to artificial heart transplants, but if you really want to know about all of that I suggest reading the Wikipedia page.
The statistic I am currently most interested in, however, isn't listed on that page. At the last count I'm aware of, Louisville, Kentucky had the fourth most restaurants per capita of any city in the country. Now, I know I haven't explored Boston nearly enough, but I must admit to missing my food here, and in part to give myself a list of places to visit before I go back to school and in part because I'd like to recommend places to
bronzite , I have decided to compile a list of what I consider some of the best places in the city to eat. (Note that this list shall be heavily biased by where I live in the city, where I hang out, and what budget I had at the time that I was eating out a lot, which isn't much.) So let's see... The place I ate tonight was WW. Cousins. Cousins has regularly been voted the best burger place in Louisville, but I've never eaten a burger there so I guess I can't say. I will say this, however. The place is part bakery and not only do they have a constant collection of fresh cookies and pies, but they bake all of their own buns. Then they cut the delicious things open, smear them with butter, toast them and slap your cooked-to-order patty on top. (Or, in my case, a deliciously moist and tender chicken breast.) Then they serve it to you, likely with a side of fresh potato wedges or something. If you want toppings, you make your way over to the topping bar, where they've got just about everything you could want on a burger, including three different types of pickle. (Unless you count relishes, in which case make that five.) But really, it's the buns that make it delicious.
Now, you may have noticed that Cousins isn't a good place to eat if you keep Kosher, and I'm afraid much of my list will be like that. If you interpret Kosher as vegetarian when eating out, however, Indian is always an excellent option. My favorite Indian restaurant is Kashmir on Bardstown Road. My father would probably argue for Shalimar or Indian Palace, but he likes their buffets, and I've never been particularly fond of buffets. No, Kashmir is the place to go.
There's a fair amount on Bardstown Road in general. It's the most eccentric part of town, really. All the eclectic little stores can be found there. The only other place I like to eat there, though, is Omar's, which is a little gyro shop. It's really only good in the summer, though, when you plan to eat and walk. So I haven't been there in a while.
In terms of Asian cuisine, Liang's currently seems to be the best Chinese food in town. I really wish we had a decent Chinese place anywhere near Waltham, but I settle for trying to avoid it entirely until I get home. Thai Siam and the other Thai place over in Holiday manor are probably two of the best Thai restaurants around, but I'm generally not enthused by Thai and the apparent saturation of Waltham with Thai and Indian restaurants has made me even less interested. We used to have a flat out amazing Vietnamese place a while back, but its location was apparently poorly chosen, so it closed. There are a couple sushi places I'm particularly fond of, but the management of one changed, (they used to be family of some of our friends) so everything's more expensive and less interesting. Dad has apparently found another good one farther out, though.
In terms of Mexican, the best Mexican restaurant I've ever eaten at, (and no, I can't say I'm at all impressed with that place in Waltham), is El Nopal. We've got a couple of those scattered around the city, but the one closest to where I used to live is the best. The only thing I wish they had on their menu were better flautas, but I haven't had a decent flauta since I left Wisconsin, (weird, right?) and I'm not sure I'd choose that over the quesadilla roja con pollo.
For Cajun, J. Gumbo's is the place to go. It's a tiny place with a small menu and no atmosphere to speak of, but whether you like your food hot or mild it'll be delicious. Apparently there was an even better place downtown a couple years ago, but it shut down. J. Gumbo's might not be as good, but it's run by family of the lady who ran the other one and it at least seems more financially stable.
For Irish, I have to recommend the Irish Rover. It's half-bar, as it should be, and the shepard's pie is excellent. On the other hand, if I were given the choice between lunch at the Rover and lunch at the Pub, I'd end up choosing the Pub. The Pub's food isn't particularly amazing, unless you really want a fried pickle or appreciate an overly chocolate-y dessert, and I probably shouldn't even mention it here, as it's not Irish, Scottish or British to any real extent. But damn it, all the waitors wear kilts, and this pleases me.
I don't really know what Shiraz counts as, sounds Iranian, but it's a new kebab place in town. Delicious. If you don't want meat on a stick, though, don't eat there. (Also, I've just been corrected. It is Mediterranean.)
If you want Caribbean food, you might be suckered into going to Bahama Breeze. And I have to admit their food is pretty good and the building itself is very cool. (They make the roof look like giant umbrellas.) But the food isn't worth the price and the atmosphere isn't worth the wait and bad service, so I'd only recommend the place to someone I wasn't particularly fond of. (Excellent! I've just been informed that it closed down while I was away. Finally.)
There are a variety of little cafes around town, and dropping into a random one for soup and a sandwich is normally a pleasant experience, but the only one I pay much attention to is the Cheddar Box, (not to be confused with Cheddars, which is a cookie-cutter family restaurant that I can't recommend to anyone). It has the tomato-artichoke soup I one day hope to successfully copy. Nice atmosphere, too. Along similar lines, Dooley's is a simple chain that sells good bagels and bagel sandwiches and is irritatingly only open during the middle of the day.
For barbecue, I recommend Mark's Feed Store, and for steaks I recommend Longhorn. Not necessarily because either are the best at what they do, but for what I want, specifically, they're both fantastic. (For Mark's, this means the sides more than the meat, and for Longhorn this means a perfectly cooked medium-rare ribeye with asparagus.)
For desserts, there are various ice cream chains scattered around, and we finally have two frozen custard places, but the Pie Kitchen's more interesting in my opinion. It's not as good as it used to be, but you can't go wrong with a warm slice of chocolate chess pie and a scoop of cinammon ice cream. Bakeries are good for that kind of thing, as well, but I don't know many of them. Just Heitzman's. And we go there for very specific things. Butter kuchens and jam cakes and the like.
As the last restaurant I'll mention specifically, Gasthaus, is hands down my and my family's favorite. It's German, if you couldn't tell, and as far as I'm concerned it's the only German restaurant we've ever had in Louisville. (Another one opened up a few years ago, but it was so mediocre we never ate there again.) All I can say about Gasthaus is that everything I've ever eaten there was delicious, and even if the food wasn't amazing, I'd go there again and again just for the fallen chocolate souffle.
I didn't mention the best Italian restaurant because you can hardly drive a block without running into one, and ever since the last Indigo closed none of them really stand out from the pack. The Spaghetti Factory probably has the most history, but its food is pretty simple. There are Japanese steakhouses all over the place too, and I'd have to say the same applies. There are all of the usual chains around, from Qdoba to Quiznos to Penn Station to the Cheesecake Factory to every fast food restaurant chain you could desire (Yum has headquarters here, after all), and barraunts galor, but those are the same everywhere and not really interesting enough to bother with.
Breakfast places, meanwhile, get a whole other category. When I last came home the hot new one was Toast, and I must admit that everything I had there was delicious. The wait is long, unfortunately and the place itself is rather noisy. Brunch at Bristol is always nice. It's one of the few buffet-style things I enjoy and also the only time I'll happily eat there. Now, apparently, the new one is something called Wild Eggs, but I haven't gotten the chance to check it out yet.
These are all just places I've eaten or eat regularly, mind. So everything I say should be taken with a grain of salt. There's yet another new shopping center built in the past year that's packed with restaurants I haven't tried yet. According to my parents, it's the site of the best coffeeshop in the city (I think my loyalty shall remain with my usual place), and the Cuban restaurant in it has what my father considers the best burger in the city. Or perhaps he meant that tapas place over near my mom's office.... Either way.
I will add one more section, however, restaurants that are too high end to enter my thoughts commonly. Most of these are downtown or on Bardstown Road. I've eaten at a couple of them and have my opinions, but I'll just say that I'm rarely thrilled to see tiny birds stuffed with things on menus. White chocolate mousse, on the other hand.... The former was something called Cafe Metro and the latter was Uptown Cafe. Of course, the names are both boring and similar and the two restaurants are right next to each other, so I might have confused them. That's about all I know about that particular type of restaurant, but they apparently exist and thrive about the city for those who are interested.
The sad thing is, I could continue rambling about food and good places to go in the city, but that covers all of my favorites and least favorites, so I'll cut myself off here.
----------------------------------------
On a more important note, we checked on my grandmother again today, and she looked more like her old self again, even grumbling and snarking affectionately. So it's looking like she might get out of the hospital soon, and won't need quite as much looking after while she's there.
On a... well, I guess still more important than food note, I desire clothing. I should finally have money again around mid-to-late January, and if anyone feels like shopping with me I fully intend to finally stock up on argyle sweater vests, button up shirts, slacks and hopefully a decent tie or two.
Edit: I need a to do list again.
To Do:
Laundry
Grocery
Check on Grandma
Send zapf rent
Clean
Check on Cyn
Apply for internships
Exercise
Clean up Computer
Catch up with everyone (home, TUA, TIP)
Send Endgame back story and build
Write EG journal
Strange Boston character
Buffy retroactive scene?
Work on Nicholas*
*I stumbled across a couple of his old nightmares and realized he hasn't been dealing with any of that of late. I need to get his personality and actions back into focus and probably talk to zapf some about his family.
