We
finished 2015 in Nashville, Tennessee. We started 2016 in Louisville, Kentucky. Of our three-stop Southern road trip, Louisville was the only city I'd visited before. In fact I'd been there a few times, but only on work-related matters, and never saw much other than the New Albany, Indiana courthouse (just on the other side of the Ohio River) and my hotel.
That hotel, though, was a pretty special one. The
21c Museum Hotel in Louisville is very possibly one of the greatest places I've ever stayed.
[1] Its name is not just a marketing ploy: the basement is a gallery dedicated to 21st century art featuring both rotating exhibitions and selections from the hotel's own collection, and the focus on contemporary art permeates the entire space.
In addition to the gallery downstairs, artworks are incorporated throughout the property. Their signature red penguins (originally a commissioned art work for the 2005
Venice Biennale created by
Cracking Art Group) lurk everywhere (and the staff regularly moves them around, so that you may exit your room in the morning and find one staring at you). The area in front of the elevators features an interactive digital video installation called "Text Rain" by
Camille Utterback, in which letters cascade down upon a projected silhouette of the people standing in front of it. A
chandelier festooned with menacingly pointed manicure scissors hangs in an upper floor common space.
(You can see all my pictures of the hotel in this
21c Museum Hotel flickr set).
The 21c also has a great restaurant –
Proof on Main. During my earlier visits, the chef was Levon Wallace – who recently left Louisville to open a
Cochon Butcher with Donald Link in our last stop, Nashville. The Proof kitchen has since changed hands a couple times, first to Michael Paley (who recently moved on to Austin, TX to open
Central Standard), and now is run by Mike Wajda. Despite all the turnover, it's as strong as ever.
The food at Proof has a southern accent, but not an overwhelmingly strong one: enough that you can tell where it's from. It's also picked up several other curious inflections along the way: Chef Wajda plays around with Korean, Caribbean, even North African flavors, but the patois somehow feels natural, not contrived.
These "roasted bones" are a good example. It seems like 90% of the bone marrow dishes I see on restaurant menus simply recite the Fergus Henderson liturgy of parsley salad and coarse salt. Here, instead, Wajda brushes the bones with an XO butter, then plates them with an assortment of pungent house-made kimchis. There's a subtle nod back Fergus' way with a light salad dressed in a sesame miso vinaigrette, but also a bunch of strong, assertive flavors to play against the sticky richness of the marrow. It was an outstanding dish.
(All my pictures from the restaurant are in this
Proof On Main flickr set).
Other appetizers are equally creative, like a
sweet potato pop-tart with a chicken liver pâté "frosting" and a sprinkle of crispy cracklings, which was a hit even among the non-offal fans at the table. Even the more traditional stuff, like a
smoked catfish dip or the
house-made charcuterie, is well done and tasty.
I'm accustomed to a fall-off from the appetizers to the mains, but that wasn't the case at Proof. In fact, even a potentially nebbish dish like a stuffed chicken was done exceptionally well. This hen roulade (the bird came from
Marksbury Farm in Lancaster, Kentucky) was one of the best iterations I've ever had: flavorful, juicy chicken, crisp skin, a savory smoked pork stuffing, a dappling of jus, some roasted and fresh winter vegetables underneath. The "
hog and dumplings" was also great, a Caribbean -Southern hybrid with a brightly jerk-spiced pork sausage ragu topped with big puffy featherweight dumplings that were like oversized gnudi.
Pecan pie can be cloyingly sugary, but Proof's finds a nice balance with a shot of Kentucky bourbon for a bit of an edge, and a scoop of buttermilk gelato for some creamy tang. If that's not sweet enough for you, every dinner finishes with a
big pouf of pink cotton candy.
While many hotel restaurants mail it in for breakfast, we ate well in the mornings at Proof too, like their southern take on eggs benedict with a cornmeal biscuit, country ham and red-eye hollandaise, and an inspired
smoked salmon and egg salad sandwich on everything-spice brioche. The bar at Proof also lives up to the name, and stocks one of the broadest – and most fairly priced – bourbon selections I've encountered, some of which can be sampled in themed tastings like the "
Bottled In Bond" flight.
[2]
Proof On Main
702 West Main Street, Louisville, Kentucky
502.217.6360
The following day featured more bourbon, as we started the morning at the
Frazier History Museum down the street. In addition to a nice
Lewis and Clark exhibition (I am a sucker for things Lewis and Clark related), there was also an exhibition on
Prohibition and Kentucky, sponsored by the (completely impartial)
Kentucky Distillers Association. It featured some great pieces of temperance propaganda, like this "Moral and Physical Thermometer" of temperance and intemperance. Clearly, the descent is quick from idleness and peevishness to suicide, death and the gallows. It was also interesting to see the
federal prohibition permit issued to Frankfort Distillery, then the producer of
Four Roses Bourbon, which allowed it to be one of the few distilleries that could continue selling bourbon for "medicinal" purposes throughout prohibition.
The exhibition makes a pretty compelling argument that prohibition was counter-productive in many ways: it depressed the economy, encouraged excessive illicit drinking, fostered organized crime, and overtaxed the court and penal systems, which spent an overwhelming proportion of their resources dealing with prohibition-related crimes.
All of which just made me want to have a nip of the stuff. Fortunately, we'd made arrangements to do a tour at
Willett Distillery in Bardstown that afternoon.
(continued ...)
