We feast without meat at V-Grits LEO's Eats with Robin Garr V-Grits’ fried chicken is actually oyster mushrooms, beautifully breaded and fried.Frankly, it’s not that hard to be a vegetarian cook. Armed with all the world’s fruits and vegetables and a bounty of dairy products, it’s easy to produce a vegetarian dish so rich and succulent that your diners won’t miss meat.
But the vegan chef – like Chef Kristina Addington and the black-clad geniuses who toil in her open kitchen at the new V-Grits – faces a far steeper challenge. They must give up not only the flesh of animals, poultry, seafood and fish, but also decline to use anything that animals produce, from milk, cream, butter and cheese to eggs, honey, even gelatin.
All these ethically-based restrictions might seem to limit the vegan restaurant to a simple selection of bland side dishes. You might expect that to go double for V-Grits, which doesn’t even use tofu or newfangled fake meats.
Or so it would seem. But V-Grits, a stylish new eatery in the former home of Monkey Wrench, will overturn all your negative vegan expectations. (If you’re already a vegan, you didn’t need this explanation, and you’ve probably been chowing down there ever since it opened in early October.)
V-Grits, an Addington-created acronym for “Vegan Girl Raised in the South,” works in partnership and shares space with False Idol Independent Brewers brewpub. They’ve made over the space with a cool, stylish look within glass window walls. Stylized murals show happy animals. A short bar and counter clad in subway tile surround one end of the long room. Impressive looking shiny stainless-steel brewing tanks and high-tech equipment glisten behind a chest-high black planter wall at the other end.
Having been impressed with V-Grits as a popular, award-winning food truck and purveyor of periodic vegan dinners in the ChefSpace restaurant incubator in West Louisville (LEO Weekly, Nov. 8, 2017), I was prepared for a treat; and by and large we got one when we dropped in for dinner with our friend Scott the other night.
At its best, the fare was stunningly good. One or two items fell short of that standard, perhaps testing the limits of vegan approaches to dishes that traditionally depend on dairy. But I’d absolutely go back for more; and I’d call for another False Idol pint, too. ...
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http://www.louisvillehotbytes.com/feast ... at-v-gritsYou'll also find this review in LEO Weekly's Food & Drink section today.
http://www.leoweekly.com/category/food-drink/V-Grits1025 Barret Ave.
742-1714
http://vgrits.comhttps://facebook.com/vgritshttps://instagram.com/vgritsRobin Garr's rating: 86 points
Noise level: Conversation was easy for us, but hard edges of glass, tile and concrete will kick up the noise when every table is filled. (Average sound level 76dB. with peaks to 84dB)
Accessibility: Entrances are level, and we so no apparent barriers to wheelchair users.