LEO's Eats with Robin Garr
I settled in, craving a po’boy, and asked the gent behind the counter what seemed like a simple question: “This month doesn’t have an ‘R’ in it. How are the oysters?”
The raspy-voiced guy in the ball cap shot me a grin. “Are you kidding? You’re thinking about Gulf oysters. These are from Chesapeake Bay, and they’re good all year ’round.”
Well, I know something about oysters, too. I broke in: “Chincoteagues?” He reared back, his trim white beard bristling. “Don’t interrupt me while I’m lecturing you about oysters!” He turned to my wife. “Ma’am, does he talk this much all the time? What do you do when he interrupts you like that?”
Mary grinned. “I let him have it,” she said, laughing. The guy laughed, too. And then I sat quietly while Rick Paul, the eponymous owner and short-order chef at Frankfort’s Rick’s White Light, told us (and the rest of the crowd that packs this tiny place) about as much as we probably needed to know about the crafty bivalve.
That’s standard procedure for the wisecracking Rick, whose quirky style and excellent cooking has turned this little spot at the foot of the old Singing Bridge in downtown Frankfort into a destination serious enough to attract reporters from CNN and Southern Living and, perhaps most notably, Food Network’s Guy Fieri, who did a piece about Rick’s on “Diners, Drive Ins and Dives.”
Rick’s White Light is just about as diminutive a venue as New Albany’s Little Chef, and its white porcelain tile building makes the place look something like an antique White Castle. It is indisputably a diner, complete with an eight-stool counter and three tables. The walls — and even the ceiling — are covered with pictures, slogans and political stickers, and a precipitous set of wooden stairs descend into an antique basement, making a trip to the restroom an adventure.
“Really, it is a dive,” the chef likes to say. “But it’s the finest dive in this country.”
Rick Paul’s cooking, indeed, is nothing like White Castle or, to be frank, like Little Chef. Trained at the prestigious Culinary Institute of America and boasting some serious chef credentials, his bill of fare gives new meaning to the term “diner chow.”
Read the full review on LouisvilleHotBytes,
http://www.louisvillehotbytes.com/road- ... -good-eats
And in LEO Weekly:
http://leoweekly.com/dining/road-trip-r ... -good-eats
Rick’s White Light Diner
14 Bridge St.
Frankfort, Ky.
(502) 330-4262
http://www.rickswhitelightdiner.com
Rating: 90
