Discussion of Robin Garr's Lilly's review

[Robin Garr]

Lilly's was locavore before locavore was cool
LEO's Eats with Robin Garr



Turn the hands of your food-memory clock, if you will, back to 1987 or 1988. It was a very good time for Louisville restaurants - and when hasn't it been?

The upscale bistro movement that had started with the Bristol, Formally Myra's, Jack Fry's and others a decade earlier had matured and blossomed. Our chop suey Chinese-American tradition had evolved into spicy regional eateries serving fare from Hunan and Sichuan. Fine French dining was here in the form of Le Relais. Authentic New Mexico cooking had arrived with Chico's; our first sushi with Sachicoma, our first Korean hidden in the back room at Lee's, and our first Thai at Thai Siam.

Frankly, local food lovers figured that we'd gone about as far as we could go. Oh, sure. Alice Waters had been doing some amazing things out at Berkeley's Chez Panisse, buying her produce direct from local farmers and making their colors pop and their flavors sing. But that was California. No use pining for it here.

And then Kathy Cary came onto the scene. Building on her popular catering shop La Peche, Cary amazed us with Lilly's, a stylish, suave establishment boasting a farm-to-table menu (we didn't have that term for it then) that made us forget all about faraway Chez Panisse.

The word about Lilly's quickly spread. Cary was the first Louisville chef invited to New York's James Beard House, in 1993, then returned for command performances in 1994, 1995, 1996 and 1999.

But what has Lilly's done for us lately? Well ... quite a lot. Restaurants come and restaurants go, and sometimes an early peak segues into a long, slow slide downhill. Lilly's, though, just keeps on keeping on. I realized to my surprise the other night that I hadn't been back for way too long, so we got together with our friends David and Catherine, who are big fans of the place, and claimed a table for four.

Read the full review on LouisvilleHotBytes,
http://www.louisvillehotbytes.com/lilly ... e-was-cool

And in LEO Weekly:
http://leoweekly.com/dining/lilly%E2%80 ... e-was-cool

Lilly's - A Kentucky Bistro
1147 Bardstown Road
451-0447
lillyslapeche.com
Rating: 91

Seems like some of the older places like Lilly's are sometimes overlooked, but we have great food every time we go there.

[Robin Garr]

Seems like some of the older places like Lilly's are sometimes overlooked, but we have great food every time we go there.

Yeah, that's the point I was trying to make. Cafe Metro, conversely, had been on a long slow slide for years before it shut down, and I might argue that Vincenzo's has seen a similar trajectory. But in general it seems to me that Lilly's has kept its edge. I did get exasperated with their wine list a few years back, but the current model is very much the style I like.

I remember eating at Lilly's a lot in the 2007-2008 timeframe after I moved back here from St. Louis, and it was very good, but for some reason it fell off our radar for a few years. I've had lunch and dinner there a few times over the last 2 years, and each time it's been exceptional, and probably better than I remember it being a few years ago.