by John LaFollette
Ville Voice Eats Correspondent

Gerstle’s set to grow; Vikings set to still suck: Having cleared its final re-zoning hurdle last week, Gerstle’s is poised to begin an expansion project that will allow the St. Matthews/Crescent Hill bar to accommodate a great deal many more Vikings fans this football season.  The plan is to use the property next door, vacated by a Christian bookstore, for indoor-outdoor seating, while adding angled parking and a new side door.  [Courier]

Shiraz has got us surrounded: From Poplar Level Road, good news for lovers of Mediterranean food.  Shiraz, the sprawling Louisville micro-chain (I mean that in a good way), is opening a new location in the Quarry Center, about a mile south of Audobon Hospital.  Besides the Frankfort Avenue location, there are locations on English Station Road (near the Gene Snyder), on Hurstbourne Parkway near Shelbyville Road, and in Holiday Manor.   The fifth store’s grand opening is in the about-a-week range, but it looks like there’s still plenty of work to do.

Monkeys can do tofu?  Who knew?: Ray’s Monkey House (Bardstown Road) will begin serving hot breakfast food from 10 a.m.-2 p.m. on the weekends, starting this Saturday, July 25.  The quirky, family-extra-friendly café (they have kids open mic night every Friday!) will sell made-to-order omelettes and tofu dishes in the neighborhood of $5, according to owner Nimbus Couzin.  If business booms on the weekends, they may start serving breakfast during the week as well.

Raising glasses, funds at O’Shea’s pub family: Highlands block brothers O’Shea’s and Flanagan’s, along with their St. Matthews cousin Brendan’s, have raised more than $202,000 in their three-year history of community fundraising.  The most recent Monday “FUND Day” garnered about $4,300 for Louisville Habitat.  The next one is on Monday, August 3, and will benefit the Volunteers of America Emergency Shelter.

There’s a reason it’s called a ‘secret recipe, Yankee: Another signature Kentucky industry is in danger of being overrun by New York-based entrepreneurs!  Ron Douglas, of Long Island, claims he’s cracked the secret recipe for KFC’s 11 herbs and spices and is about to publish his findings, as well as other imitations of famous recipes, in a new book.  Apparently, he only needed six tries to figure it out.  The Colonel must be pissed, right?  Wrong.  “Plenty of people have tried to duplicate the recipe over the years,” says KFC spokesman Rick Maynard.  “There is still only one place to get authentic Original Recipe Chicken.”  Maynard didn’t bother to point out (but I will) that one of Douglas’s ingredients, monosodium glutamate, couldn’t be purchased in the U.S. until 1947, a full seven years after Harland David Sanders developed his original recipe. [MSNBC]

Cure for a Case of the Mondays. This week’s LEO review of North End Café omitted that the Tuesday-Sunday restaurant is now open for limited hours on Mondays, from 8 a.m. until 2:30 p.m. Those breakfast tapas sound pretty tasty. [LEO]

John LaFollette is a Louisville writer.