LEO's Eats with Robin Garr
The New Orleans-style BBQ shrimp at Roux
"With rue my heart is laden,
for golden friends I had,
For many a rose-lipt maiden
And many a lightfoot lad."
There! It's not often that an English major actually gets to bring the fruits of his seldom-used bachelor's degree into the real world. So how, I ask, could I possibly resist dragging the poet A.E. Housman into a "Roux/rue" pun to celebrate our first visit to Roux, a hot newish spot on Bardstown Road?
Now, in fairness, the pun doesn't work all that well. In its second and final verse, Hausman's brief opus turns ruefully dark and cold as a frozen winter stream in an empty landscape:
"By brooks too broad for leaping
The lightfoot boys are laid;
The rose-lipt girls are sleeping
In fields where roses fade."
He's talking about death, you know, and how it comes to us all too soon.
Um. Ready for something a little less depressing? Okay: Roux Louisville is nothing like that!
Roux is a creative New Orleans-style Creole-Cajun restaurant, operated by owner-and-Executive Chef Dustin Staggers and his brother Kyle, with Chef de Cuisine Ethan Ray, some of the same creative young chefs that have brought us the recently departed Rumplings, and more coming soon.
Dustin Staggers loves New Orleans, and has put considerable effort into building a NOLA-like experience into the food and mood of the characterful old house previously occupied by Le Gallo Rosso. It works: Roux gives a good feel of the City That Care Forgot.
So, happily, does the food. Chef Paul Prudhomme once gave me a fascinating insight into Cajun cuisine during a joyous afternoon spent hanging out in the kitchen at his fabled K-Paul's: "Cajuns are poor folks," he said. "We'll kill and eat anything that moves, if we can hit it with a stick." This certainly included rabbit, groundhog, gator, perhaps even nutria rat; although I firmly believe that it excluded old Phideaux. ...
Read the full review on LouisvilleHotBytes,
http://www.louisvillehotbytes.com/?p=5306
See this column also in LEO Weekly:
http://www.leoweekly.com/2015/06/with-r ... -is-laden/
Roux Louisville
1325 Bardstown Road
530-0531
http://rouxlouisville.com
https://facebook.com/rouxlouisville
Robin Garr's rating: 89 points
