Please your palate, polish your Spanish with Palermo's Parrillada
LEO's Eats with Robin Garr
Psst! Señoras y Señores! Want to practice your Spanish? Here's a tip: Go to Palermo Viejo and order the classic Argentine meat platter, La Parrillada.
The name of this dish (literally "The Grill Platter") offers the Spanish-impaired student a double challenge, as it mashes up two of the toughest consonant pairs in Español: double-r and double-l.
To get it right, you've got to roll the "rr" and soften the "ll" into a "y" (or a "zh" for an Argentine accent), coming out with something like "La Parrrreezhada." This will probably impress the staff or maybe make them chuckle; but guess what! You can just say it the way it's spelled in English, and they'll still know exactly what you want.
And you'll get the joy of as truly Argentine a culinary experience as you're going to find in this town. The Parrrreezhada, an edible extravaganza, brings four different parts of grilled cow on a sizzling charcoal grill that sits right on your table. It's Palermo Viejo's house specialty, and surely one of this favorite Highlands eatery's best-selling platos principales. Er, entrees.
After all, if it's meat you want, it's hard to beat the cuisine of Argentina, where caballeros can sing "Home on the Range," or the Spanish equivalent, with just as much nostalgia as our Texas cowboys. Chef Frank Elbl's bill of fare at Palermo Viejo will meat all your meat needs with Latin flair, featuring well over a dozen beef main courses from $13 (for Milanesa de Carne, a.k.a. Argentine chicken-fried steak) to $28 (for a Parillada Completa for one, adding pork and chicken to the all-beef Parillada option).
But here's a surprise, and, I think, an evolutionary development for Palermo Viejo: This temple to all things beefy is also veggie-friendly now. Three of the mains, six of the appetizers and all the sides are marked with a "Vegetarian" icon to indicate their meat-free status.
But wait! There's more! In a seasonal offering that even obligate carnivores may find fascinating, the kitchen is sourcing a variety of freshly picked summer veggies from an employee's Southern Indiana farm to make excellent daily from-the-garden specials.
Read the full review on LouisvilleHotBytes,
http://www.louisvillehotbytes.com/pleas ... parrillada
And in LEO Weekly:
http://leoweekly.com/dining/please-your ... %E2%80%99s
Palermo Viejo
1359 Bardstown Road
456-6461
Facebook: http://bit.do/PalermoViejo
Robin Garr's rating: 90 points