Mellow Mushroom opening soon

The Mellow Mushroom on Blankenbaker plans to open Aug. 27. The St. Matthews location is scheduled to open Sept. 3.

Their menus are available online, but neither one has posted a draft beer list yet.

http://www.mellowmushroom.com/stmatthew ... stmatthews

http://www.mellowmushroom.com/middletow ... middletown

I for one am so glad we're FINALLY getting a pizza place in St. Matthew's! We've got great Thai, a good little Vietnamese place, and a pretty nice little bar scene going, but many of us have bemoaned the absolute dearth of pizza places for years. The drought is over!

Thanks for the laugh, Lauren. I wish Alwatan would come to the hood. I hate driving to Hikes Point for that Baba.

I for one am so glad we're FINALLY getting a pizza place in St. Matthew's! We've got great Thai, a good little Vietnamese place, and a pretty nice little bar scene going, but many of us have bemoaned the absolute dearth of pizza places for years. The drought is over!

[Robin Garr]

Bear in mind that pizza is a natural companion with drinking too much, almost as much so as White Castles.

Accordingly, has St. Matthews truly achieved pizza parity with Baxter/Bardstown? Or do we need a few more before the neighborhoods draw even? I'm thinking from west to east we've got Boombozz, DiOrio's, Coals, Naked, oops, it's gone; Saints? And now Mellow Mushroom, then Spinelli's, and Papa John's and that's pretty much it, unless you count all the way out to Puccini's Smiling Teeth. Or Lou Lou, which has a good pie but isn't really a pizzeria.

There's the Domino's on Breckenridge, too. That brings my count to 8, including Magic Mushroom & Saint's! Nine if you count BBC, 10 if you count Cafe Lou Lou. Whew.

Bear in mind that pizza is a natural companion with drinking too much, almost as much so as White Castles.

Accordingly, has St. Matthews truly achieved pizza parity with Baxter/Bardstown? Or do we need a few more before the neighborhoods draw even? I'm thinking from west to east we've got Boombozz, DiOrio's, Coals, Naked, oops, it's gone; Saints? And now Mellow Mushroom, then Spinelli's, and Papa John's and that's pretty much it, unless you count all the way out to Puccini's Smiling Teeth. Or Lou Lou, which has a good pie but isn't really a pizzeria.

The Homemade Pie and Ice Cream Kitchen, at least the one on Frankfort now has "neo-neopolitan" pizza. I'd be glad if the one on Lexington has it. I shared a Medditerranean with a friend last night, and it was good! It reminded me of Coals, though I honestly thought it was better!

Lou Lou's of course has a great pie too!! And Boombozz also delivers!

[Robin Garr]

The Homemade Pie and Ice Cream Kitchen, at least the one on Frankfort now has "neo-neopolitan" pizza.

Oooh! If we are going to take it that far in Frankfort, Caffe Classico has one of the best pizzas in town. They got a recipe from a Bosnian guy, which may sound odd, but Yugoslavia is just around the bend from Northern Italy, and this pizza is really authentic Italian style. (One of the best pizzas I've ever had in Europe was in Slovenia, also part of the former Yugoslavia ... but I digress.)

The Blankenbaker location has its draft and bottled beer lists on its website now. The 34 taps include some interesting choices, like Arrogant Bastard, Bell's Two Hearted and Green Flash Hop Head Red. There are also a number of beers from BBC, New Albanian and Cumberland, and one from Country Boy in Lexington.

I am pretty stoked about this. Maddio's is rad, but now we'll have some competition for truly "vegan" pizzas: http://www.mellowmushroom.com/promotions/vegan (i.e. not just sauce and veggies)

MM seems to take the whole allergen thing seriously which is good for a variety of folks.

The Homemade Pie and Ice Cream Kitchen, at least the one on Frankfort now has "neo-neopolitan" pizza.

Oooh! If we are going to take it that far in Frankfort, Caffe Classico has one of the best pizzas in town. They got a recipe from a Bosnian guy, which may sound odd, but Yugoslavia is just around the bend from Northern Italy, and this pizza is really authentic Italian style. (One of the best pizzas I've ever had in Europe was in Slovenia, also part of the former Yugoslavia ... but I digress.)

Classico is actually closer to Spinelli's than it is to, say, BoomBozz - so if it's getting included in a pizza corridor it should probably be the Bardstown-Baxter one, no?

[Robin Garr]

Classico is actually closer to Spinelli's than it is to, say, BoomBozz - so if it's getting included in a pizza corridor it should probably be the Bardstown-Baxter one, no?

Maybe I have tunnel vision as a resident of Crescent Hill, but to me the Frankfort Avenue-Shelbyville Road corridor is essentially contiguous. Bardstown-Baxter is an entirely different channel.

Classico is actually closer to Spinelli's than it is to, say, BoomBozz - so if it's getting included in a pizza corridor it should probably be the Bardstown-Baxter one, no?

Maybe I have tunnel vision as a resident of Crescent Hill, but to me the Frankfort Avenue-Shelbyville Road corridor is essentially contiguous. Bardstown-Baxter is an entirely different channel.

Of course I'm from outside the Watterson but I certainly agree with Robin's opinion on this issue. They certainly seem like distinctly different areas to me.

I actually agree with you about Frankfort and Bardstown-Baxter being separate, but as I think of it the Crescent Hill/Clifton and St. Matthews parts of the corridor are almost as distinct. In my mind they run, respectively, from Story to Stilz and Bauer to wherever, with the places in between (FABD, Bluegrass Burgers, BoomBozz) being in a sort of no-man's-land.

[Robin Garr]

I actually agree with you about Frankfort and Bardstown-Baxter being separate, but as I think of it the Crescent Hill/Clifton and St. Matthews parts of the corridor are almost as distinct. In my mind they run, respectively, from Story to Stilz and Bauer to wherever, with the places in between (FABD, Bluegrass Burgers, BoomBozz) being in a sort of no-man's-land.

I take your point, Jeff, but I do think our own frequent paths guide our instincts on this. Since I live off Frankfort near Heine Bros and Porcini and spend a lot of time in St. Matthews, that route is so familiar to me that I see it as unitary. But I certainly agree that the built environment and the streetscape do a significant shift around the water company, and again from around Bauer outward.

Come to think of it, even the core of the Frankfort strip has distinct personalities east (from maybe Galt to Stilts), center (Ewing to Haldeman) and west (lower Frankfort).

(On the other hand, some might argue that Baxter and the inner end of the Bardstown strip is equally distinct from Bardstown beyond Eastern Parkway, particularly past Speed. No big political-debate issues here just a fun urban analysis.