Bourbons Bistro: Reviewed June 2, 2007

Bourbons Bistro goes all out - and occasionally goes too far

By Marty Rosen
Special to The Courier-Journal

The other night at Bourbons Bistro, I came upon the finest piece of fish I've seen in many months. It was a thick, deftly carved piece of grouper ($27). From surface to center it was a pan-seared tribute to technical mastery. Its flesh glowed like marble.

The duck confit strudel appetizer could easily stand as the centerpiece of a meal. Photo By Pam Spaulding, The Courier-Journal

Many chefs would have been content to stop right there, and allow that grouper to speak for itself. But at Bourbons, where Michael Crouch serves as chef, they gild the grouper with a mandarin orange jalapeno cream sauce — and serve it atop a pilaf studded with apricots and whole toasted almonds.

In the end, all those added elements — especially the pallid sauce — added up to less than their parts, and eating that fish was as frustrating as meeting a beautiful woman at a masked ball.

They have a knack for baroque preparations at Bourbons, where the burger ($10) is dressed with jalapeno mayonnaise and apricot bourbon mustard, and a pork chop ($21) is stuffed with chorizo and mozzarella, then topped with bacon and a wine sauce.

Some of those dishes are more effective than the grouper. My pal Joel and I started with a duck confit strudel ($10). It's billed as an appetizer — though such a richly exuberant dish could easily stand as the centerpiece of a meal.

Packed into a boat-shaped wall of flaky pastry were tender chunks of meat, gushing pools of goat cheese, mushrooms, arugula, candied chilies (!) and then, a roasted shallot sherry cream sauce. The result was lush, crisp, sweet and spicy.

Even a devout vegetarian might feel some guilt after putting away a rich, ravishing, over-the-top, potato-asparagus tart ($17) topped with melted slices of brie, a ring of grilled red onion, and a zingy lemon crème fraîche.

As much as I respect the chef's craft — and rare are the dishes that aren't technically flawless — the convoluted baubles don't win me over. And some dishes I just don't understand.

Spilling across a broad bowl, the immaculate leaves of an arugula salad ($8) were as alluring as a cool spring meadow. Dappled with a pearly vinaigrette, spiked up with shards of Gruyère and topped with a voluptuous poached egg, it might have been a perfect salad but for the unattractive cold chunks of fatty smoked bacon scattered hither and yon.

I've eaten enough cold, non-crispy bacon recently to make me wonder whether I've missed out on some culinary trend or other. If so, just for the record, I'm against it.

I am not, however, against dessert, and it will come as no surprise that the house-made desserts at Bourbons (crème brulée, $6, and chocolate pecan bourbon bread pudding with dried Bing cherries and crème anglaise, $7) easily live up to the rich promise of the other dishes.

Nor am I against bourbon — though I wish Bourbons would replace its uninformative alphabetical bourbon list with an annotated guide that includes tasting notes, place of origin, etc.

In the meantime, there's no quibbling with the scope of the bourbon list or the presentation of the bourbon flights, which come to the table on an attractive wooden plank.

As to the whole experience, service is well-paced and very well-informed. The dining area is comfortable and casual, from the distillery photos to the painted brick to the massive, attractive bar and the outdoor patio.

Freelance restaurant critic Marty Rosen's review appears on Saturdays. You can e-mail him at cjdining@gmail.com.

Bourbons Bistro

2255 Frankfort Avenue, Louisville, KY

502-894-8838

www.bourbonsbistro.com

Rating: 3 stars