LEO's Eats with Robin Garr
The Garage Bar looks so much like an old, run-down country gas station that I can barely go in without feeling tempted to pick up a few packages of peanut butter crackers and a cheap six-pack and go out back with my buddies to smoke, tell dirty jokes and drink beer in the dark.
This impulse seems reasonable enough when you consider that this hot new spot really was an auto repair shop and gas station back in the day (and a neighborhood tavern before that).
Steve Wilson and Laura Lee Brown, who lavishly rebuilt the 21c Museum Hotel and Proof on Main, recently renovated this garage with retro flair. Proof executive chef Michael Paley joins them as co-owner and boss chef of Garage.
Where 21c and Proof are upscale and classy, though, Garage Bar is tongue-in-cheek downscale. But trust me — although one needn’t don jacket and tie for a dinner out at Garage Bar, the blue-collar vibe is largely illusory. Paley’s award-winning creativity, played out as Kentucky-accented Tuscan at Proof, shows up here as a gently frou-frou spin on country eats. That is, if country folks regularly dined on designer pizzas that run $15 for a personal-size pie, as well as country hams and oysters bearing fancy appellations.
Speaking of pig meat, Garage’s “ham bar” comprises a row of bar seats along a window offering a direct view of the chefs at work, sort of like a sushi bar but without the raw fish. You’ll see ham slicers and oyster shuckers at work, and cook-acolytes processing around a tile-lined, wood-burning pizza oven with flames rising behind an open door, just like the ovens you’ll find in Naples, which by no coincidence is the birthplace of the noble pie. Pizza, that is.
Read the full review on LouisvilleHotBytes,
http://www.louisvillehotbytes.com/fill- ... garage-bar
And in LEO Weekly:
http://leoweekly.com/dining/fill-%E2%80%99er-garage-bar
Garage Bar
700 E. Market St.
749-7100
www.garageonmarket.com
Rating: 93