LEO's Eats with Robin Garr
A tasting of Col. Newsom’s aged ham from the ham bar at Garage Bar.
Garage Bar: It’s noisy, it’s fun, it’s all about artisanal pizza and fine country ham, not to mention a companionable bar scene in a cheekily renovated old auto service station. What’s so Zen about that?
Bear with me, Grasshopper, and I shall explain. This is a connection worth knowing, as it does not merely help explain the excellence that is Garage Bar, but provides us a useful tool to take along whenever we dine, if we have the wisdom to take it up and use it.
So, let’s buckle up and circle around the scenic route to get to our review. I’ll try and make it worth while. It begins with the words of the Buddha, who, asked what he and his disciples practiced, replied, “We sit, we walk, and we eat.” Invited to expand on that, the Buddha explained, “When we sit, we know we are sitting. When we walk, we know we are walking. When we eat, we know we are eating.”
When we are mindful, in other words, deeply in touch with the present moment, our understanding of what is going on around us deepens, and, in the words of the Zen master Thich Nhat Hanh, “we begin to be filled with acceptance, joy, peace, and love.”
Mindfulness - making a conscious effort to slow down and pay careful attention to what’s going on around you and how that makes you feel - can kick your enjoyment of life in general up a notch, including your enjoyment of what’s on your dinner plate.
That’s the zen of mindful fine dining. Sometimes you’ll take a random bite, and suddenly the food will grab you by the mind and slow you down and make you pay very close attention. The surprisng flavor combinations and fascinating complexity that the chef has built into the dish makes you hear an orchestra where you had been expecting only a solo.
Here’s how that worked with a small plate at Garage Bar. As I often do, I intentionally chose an item that didn’t look particularly appealing, hoping to discern something about what the chef does when he’s far awau from the most popular menu pages.
So, roasted spaghetti squash! Seriously? I haven’t had spaghetti squash since it was briefly trendy around 1981, and I couldn’t even imagine what roasting might do for this terminally bland stringy squash. I ordered it, got myself centered, approached it mindfully, and … whoa! Wait! What’s this? ...
Read the full review on LouisvilleHotBytes,
http://www.louisvillehotbytes.com/garag ... indfulness
You'll also find this review in LEO Weekly’s Food & Drink section today.
http://www.leoweekly.com/category/food-drink/
Garage Bar
700 E. Market St.
749-7100
http://garageonmarket.com
https://facebook.com/GarageOnMarket
Robin Garr’s rating: 91 points