Patty M.
Yelp
Paseo is on a short list of Louisville restaurants that can hold the attention of six food-centric friends.
Three couples comprised of two classically trained chefs, two restaurateurs/craft cocktail bar owners, and two creative directors are all writers, directors, curators, conceptual thinkers, gardeners, and cooks. Our collective expectations for a dining experience are admittedly challenging to meet, given that we regularly make and host memorable meals at home. At a restaurant, we are looking for a creative mastery of techniques and flavors applied to the freshest ingredients with clever cocktails and wines to pair with the food, a space that anchors the experience with a conveyance of the brand, and a fun, engrossed team parading the food to the table all at once at the proper temperature- Paseo has all of it. The crew makes it seem effortless, though we know and appreciate that it isn't.
At Paseo, the wood-fired stove brings the familiar yet unexpected addition of campfire smoke to a comfortable, elegant table. The kitchen team knows when an ingredient should be presented as it is and when it should be coaxed along for a maximum complexity of sweet, sour, bitter, spicy, salty, and umami. Nothing looks or tastes like it was added just to impress. Every accompaniment is selected for its quality of color, texture, flavor, and aroma to tie each dish together like the handcrafted gift it is, made with a sensitive human hand and a keen eye for detail.
The six of us made the following selections for the table:
* Whipped Labneh Cream Duo
* Beef Tartare
* Chorizo Octopus
* Seafood Paella
* Grilled NY Strip
* Tandoori Chicken
* Scallops
* Duck
* Grilled Carrots
* Wood-Fired Broccoli
* Baklava with cherries & lemon-rosemary cream
* Soft serve ice cream in a charcoal cone
Wines:
* Cava Brut Rose
* White Rioja
* Cotes du Rhone
We settled in together at a restaurant-center banquette with the Cava Brut Rose, sharing stories from our day. Then, the discussion began about what to order and how much to order, and there was a conference with Tim Quinlan to pair the wines because Tim knows!
The white rioja was poured a few minutes before the labneh, tartare, and octopus starters were set down on our table to set us up for a spotlit dining experience. So much color, texture, richness, flavor, and brightness was everything appetizing. The comforting, interactive labneh presents two creamy renditions, a flatbread and a crudite. The tartare is rich and buttery. The octopus punctuated the course with an exclamation point! It comes from the sea but plates like it's from outer space- hinting at what will follow in the seafood paella. Halfway through the gold and creamy Rioja, the Cotes du Rhone was opened. It deepened my expectations for dinner with the roundness of the tannins.
I was seated in the middle of the banquette and got the full view of the procession of our dishes as they came to our table. Presented as a paragon of individual still-life paintings, it was a harmonious exhibition of surf and turf accompanied by seasonal vegetables from the farm. We all took from every plate: paella, steak, chicken, scallops, duck, carrots, broccoli- chewing was an easy pleasure. Every protein was cooked perfectly, and every vegetable was cooked el dente so I could taste the care taken to select it and bring it from the growers.
Of all the dishes I have eaten as of June, the seafood paella is the one I would choose if I had to eat only one dish for the rest of the year. The presentation and its waft of smoke gave me pause and a rush of camping memories. The anticipation of the taste was exceeded by the breadth and balance it brought, with deep satisfaction and praise for the ability of the line to pull it off! It is elegant, rich, rustic, and approachable, and the smoked roe is an individual touch granting us permission to eat luxe with agrarian, leveling the value of ingredients to their flavor, not their cost.
I could not eat dessert ;-}
Thank you to Paseo for directing a dining experience that felt like a live performance where we were both players and members of the audience. It was an improvisation within the confines of your carefully curated menu. I know we lingered too long, but it was a meal we did not want to end.