LEO's Eats with Robin Garr
When baby boomers were kids, our parents overcooked our veggies until they were mushy and bland. A generation later, baby millennials got their veggies crisp and barely cooked, reflecting the then-trendy restaurant style. You'd think that by 2014, some kind of balance might have been achieved between the extremes of '70s mush and '90s crunch, but noooo ...
Or, at least noooo, not as far as the otherwise excellent cuisine at the Highlands' newish Loop 22 restaurant is concerned. We enjoyed a fine dinner there recently, but I couldn't help noticing that it was mighty hard to find an asparagus spear, a brussels sprout or a chunk of carrot that didn't go "crunch" when I munched.
Before we get down to this week's review, the question must be asked: Whose parents were right? The keep-them-crisp wisdom holds that long cooking not only drains flavor and toothy texture out of veggies, but also saps their nutrients.
Modern research, however, questions that. Raw or barely cooked veggies retain most of their healthy fiber, and that's not a bad thing. But longer cooking breaks down the plants' cell walls, unlocking cancer-fighting antioxidants like lycopene and lutein. These magical goodies become available with some cooking time, and that might be an even better thing.
I'm not much of a scientist, but I can cook, and I'll tell you this: Cooking veggies - within reason, anyway - can make for richer, more succulent texture; allow flavors to blend; and foster the Maillard reaction, bringing the tempting deliciousness of caramelization and browning to the dinner party.
Enough said! I like Loop 22. I like it a lot. But turn me loose in that kitchen, and I'd probably fire those veggies a little bit more.
Read the full review on LouisvilleHotBytes,
http://www.louisvillehotbytes.com/loop- ... rant-scene
and in LEO Weekly:
http://leoweekly.com/dining/loop-22-fin ... rant-scene
Loop 22
2222 Dundee Road
882-3279
http://facebook.com/Loop22
Robin Garr's rating: 89 points