Louisville- Downtown recommendations

Travel, Wine Tourism, and Restaurants Forum
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I’m not seeing anything recent.

We are heading to Louisville next week for a music festival.
We only have one night for a dinner out. Many of the top places are already booked. We dropped the ball and forgot to book ahead of time. Currently have a reservation at Mayan Cafe. Thoughts?
Any not to miss cocktail bars to hit before or after dinner?

We have an Old Forester tour set up for late morning before we head to the festival one of the days.

Any other recommendations for cool things to see/do in the morning or early afternoon?
The festival is 4 days, so we’ll be there awhile.

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Mayan Cafe is terrific!

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I should elaborate… The Mayan Cafe is one of the few places in the Midwest doing dishes from the Yucatan. (The longtime owner is from there.) The food is terrific, and the flavors always pop. On the current menu, the Cochinta Pibil is always good, as is the rabbit. Oh, and you must get a side of Tok-sel Lima Beans (I know, trust me). The wine list is just OK but at least there are some interesting bottles.

I live 3 hours from Louisville and hardly ever pass through, but I’ve eaten there probably 20 times in the last 20 years.

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Old Forester visit was very good. Angel’s Envy is just down the street and has a really nice cocktail bar at the end of the tour (or at least they did a few years ago).

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Jealous! Was trying to make it to B&B, but couldn’t make the schedule work.

Peerless is one of my favorite KY distilleries and will be slightly less touristy.

Hell & High Water is a great classy cocktail bar. For fun, slightly rowdier bars, Silver Dollar and Pearl of Germantown. Neat has the best whiskey selection, crowd is hit or miss though.

Feast BBQ, near Mayan, is very very good.

Louisville Slugger tour is neat, speaking as non-baseball fan.

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We just made a reservation for after our dinner. Thank you!

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+1 for Peerless Distillery. Just took around 50 people there for a private tour, and it was a great experience. Compelling story, long history, and low production-samples. Dinner at Proof on Main was great as well.

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We were considering Peerless when we were looking at distilleries nearby our hotel.
Honestly, I’m not sure we are going to be in the mood to visit more distilleries in the mornings before the festival. The festival is going to be a marathon. 4 days, all day til probably 10 or 11pm, and there is no in/out access once you enter the fairgrounds.

The festival is called Bourbon & Beyond, and there will be a large selection of distilleries present with lots of options including vintage and rare bourbons.

I’m going to need a vacation to recover.

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Mayan Cafe was fantastic. Everything we had was delish including the Tok-sel Lima Beans.

My husband had the rabbit (loved it), and I had empanadas.
I would eat there all of the time, if I lived nearby.
The staff was really friendly, as well.

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Some quick notes from a recent weekend.

La Bodeguita - fun, crazy big place, solid Cuban food, not great cocktails/wine. Great ambience and live music when we were there.

Repeal - for an upscale steakhouse, this was a terribly sad wine program (no vintages, no rational order to the wines by the glass list, somm not v helpful). The food menu is cheap compared to Atlanta steakhouse prices, and the food was solid, but it felt very “hotel restaurant” generic. Would not recommend.

Nami Korean BBQ - Ed Lee’s new joint, kind of a slightly more Americanized/semi-upscale Korean BBQ. The bbq mains were great, especially the duck - which they recommended having the kitchen cook vs doing our own at the table. Appetizers were meh - too mild dumplings, a tuna tartare lacking any acidity/salt that fell flat. Still enjoyed it and it’s well priced, too. Had a nice local IPA which was perfect with the food. Fairly basic wine list, more unusual cocktails, some sochu and makgeolli was good to see.

Butcher Town Bakery and Cafe - hot damn, the WAG (wagyu pastrami with runny egg on an onion roll) is killer, as was the bacon egg and cheese biscuit. The sweet pastries looked less appealing. Nice selection of bourbons for sale by the bottle : )

Quill Coffee - local roaster, nice cortado, they get some workers from the local pig slaughterhouse who trek in literally pig shit, makes for a nice experience! (i thank them for their service, that has to be one miserable job)

Michter’s Bar at Fort Nelson - destination worthy cocktail program, seriously among the best I’ve experienced. Reservations recommended.

Justin’s House of Bourbon - bottle shop bar with some nice rarities, more upscale than the more generic liquor stores nearby like Evergreen, where we took a look but were already bourboned out. But Evergreen had a more expansive bar list with slightly better pricing as far as I could tell.

The bars at Old Forester, Elijah Craig, Bardstown tasting rooms… meh.

Didn’t actually go there, but our driver brought us some glazed and chocolate glazed donuts from Jeff’s and they were off the charts good. Among the best glazed I’ve ever had. Great “chew.”

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We had dinner at Decade when we were in Louisville in Sept. for Bourbon & Beyond
Food was very good, and they had a small but interesting wine list.