LEO's Eats with Robin Garr
I rolled north along Frankfort Avenue, on through Butchertown and down the hill toward the river, getting ready to hang a left on … hey! What fresh hell is this? I know I haven’t been around here for a while, but nothing looks right.
“Siri? Siri! Where am I?”
My iPhone’s robotic voice responded: “You are on River Road.”
“I don’t think so. This doesn’t look like River Road to me! It’s got four lanes, and it’s in the wrong place. So many new things! Strip malls! The front of an old house! And where is the Stop Lite?”
“I found 12 places matching ‘The Stop’ fairly close to you.”
“Never mind! Forget it! Just take me to Relish restaurant!”
“Sorry, Robin, I can’t do that. You’re not listening to the music app.”
“Aaagggh!”
This wasn’t working out. So I put Siri back in my pocket and, adjusting to the radically renovated landscape of inner River Road, found my way soon enough to Relish, just down the road from the Big Four Bridge. Relish shares space in a short new strip mall with the reincarnated Stop Lite Liquors, which looks a lot more classy than its predecessor but, sadly, has lost its iconic traffic light.
“They didn’t want it,” the Stop Lite clerk said, cocking one eye toward the ceiling in the direction, I assume, of building management. This is a real loss. If the old Stop Lite’s flashing red, yellow and green beacon was still around, I wouldn’t have had to summon Siri in the first place. Perhaps we should start a Facebook movement to Restore The Historic Stop Lite?
Relish, however, needs no beacon. Word of mouth alone surrounded this new spot with a trendy buzz since it opened right after Thanksgiving. It’s hard to imagine how it could have done otherwise. It represents the re-entry into the Louisville dining scene of Susan Seiller, who owned and put her stamp on the popular Jack Fry’s restaurant from 1987 until 2008.
Seiller, who also ran the short-lived but much-loved Paloma on Brownsboro Road in the early ’90s before turning it over to Azalea, has brought the style that informed Fry’s and Paloma to infuse what could have been a bland shopping center space for Relish with cool, techno-industrial decor. Walls are pure white, as are the simple but stylish plastic chairs; tabletops are streaky black. No shortcuts were taken with glasses or silverware, and even the heavy paper napkins feel like cloth.
And that location amid River Road’s new look may prove foresighted, as it’s neatly situated to serve both business diners on lunch break or commuters who choose the River Road option on their way home from work.
Read the full review on LouisvilleHotBytes,
http://www.louisvillehotbytes.com/relis ... riverfront
And in LEO Weekly:
http://leoweekly.com/dining/relish-gene ... riverfront
Relish
1346 River Road
587-7007
http://relishlouisville.com
Rating: 92
