<table border="0" align="right" width="310"><tr><td><img src="http://www.louisvillehotbytes.com/cunha.jpg" border="1" align="right"></td></tr><tr><td>Limestone Restaurant chef and co-owner Michael Cunha dresses up Southern fare in a city suit. The suburban restaurant remains up there with the top spots in town. LEO photo by Nicole Pullen.</td></tr></table>LEO's Eats with Louisville HotBytes
We put on that ole Southern drawl at Limestone
Louisville, it is said, is the only Northern city that chose to declare itself "Southern" only after the South had lost the Civil War. This odd decision, some say, led directly to 100 years of stagnation, no major-league sports teams and a slow decline that eventually took us to the bottom of the nation's top 50 media markets.
It was a hefty price to pay for the privilege of adopting an affected drawl and adding fatback, grits and greens to our culinary tradition.
I don't know about you, but our family never ate that stuff at home. Ours was a steak-and-potatoes, spaghetti-and-meatballs, braunschweiger-and-kuchen urban household, and we liked it like that.
Nevertheless, Southern, aka "country," fare dressed up in a city suit has become a staple in some of Louisville's finest upscale eateries, and chefs Jim Gerhardt and Michael Cunha have been among the leaders in making it so.
Gerhardt and Cunha are the guys who turned the Seelbach's Oakroom from a stodgy old hotel dining room into a gourmet-style destination; in 2003, they bailed out of the corporate dining sector to start their own restaurant, Limestone, and they've made it a destination in its own right with a similar formula.
<b>Limestone Restaurant</b>
10001 Forest Green Blvd.
426-7477
http://www.limestonerestaurant.net
Robin Garr's rating: 90 points
Full reports in LEO and on LouisvilleHotBytes.
