RETURN TRIP - LOUISVILLE CUISINE

Louisville, Kentucky

3/27/2010

The best part about visiting Louisville in September was the food! So we made sure to sample some more. This time, we had dinner at Lynn’s Paradise Café – one of the other “Louisville Cuisine” recommendations in the book. Apparently, the Paradise Café is famous for its kitschy ugliness. If you’ve heard of it, everything you’ve heard is true. The place is painted in horrendously jarring colors and each table has a distinctive “ugly lamp.” Somehow it all works.

The closest description I can give for the Paradise Café is some sort of demented ‘50s diner. In fact, based on the décor we expected the food to be the greasy-spoon variety. We were dead wrong. The food was an outstanding, fine-dining experience. A fine-dining experience with funhouse mirrors next to the urinals in the bathroom.

After we left the Paradise Café we headed to Shangri-la. Yes. The Homemade Ice Cream and Pie Kitchen. A return trip for some chess pie was the only way I could trick Laura into going to a sly comedy in the first place! Because it is still Lent we couldn’t actually eat a slice of pie. So we bought a whole pie to stick in the freezer. On April 4th it will be devoured! While we were there a little girl was playing Christmas carols on the jukebox and dancing. We wished Daniel was there.

Leaving the Homemade Ice Cream and Pie Kitchen we had one final, pleasant stop-off (after our car was egged by some durned teenagers. KEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEN-tucky!) Matthew and Emily – now-married college-friends of Laura’s – live in Louisville. We only discovered they lived there when they read about our last trip to Louisville. Emily is a teacher at a Catholic school and that night the school was hosting an event, so we met Matthew, Emily and their new son Anthony at the school. The guest speaker: Laura’s old boss! This must be that six degrees of separation I keep hearing about. Thanks, Matthew, Emily and Anthony! It was great to see you.

After we said our goodbyes we made the long trek home. By now we were missing Daniel desperately. It didn’t help that “Danny’s Song” was playing on the radio. We made it home safely, and my mom reported that Daniel had been fine and didn’t even notice we were gone. Sure, it was easy for him, but what about us?