Louisville’s venerated Café Metro is closing this weekend. For good.

The restaurant’s last day of operation will be Saturday, Sept. 19th.  Despite such heroic rescue efforts like Chef Gary Byler, Jr.’s new small plates menu, a more casual atmosphere in its new piano bar, and specially themed events such as the recent Glenlivet Scotch dinner, the 25-year-old restaurant is succumbing to the nationwide decline of fine dining in general.

Given the closure of other fine dining establishments in the area, it shouldn’t come as a surprise, but it’s a tragedy nonetheless.  Café Metro added white cloth respectability to Bardstown Road long before it became a trendy restaurant row, and helped to revitalize what was once a fairly seedy neighborhood corner into a thriving destination for foodies all over town.

The good news is, the Café’s sister restaurant, the Uptown Café, is still a thriving entity.  A bustling lunch crowd, a solid business-oriented clientele and an iconic shrine of “ladies who lunch,” its smaller portions, casual bar and patio dining options continue to serve with style in the current economic climate.

Also in the good news department, owner Nancy Shepherd is apparently already entertaining proposals from other culinary-oriented lessees for the soon to be vacated Café Metro space, and will be able to transfer at least some of her Café Metro employees across the street to the Uptown.

Bottom line, though – if you want to dine at Café Metro one last time, you’d better make reservations for this weekend.

Here in the heart of bourbon country, even premium single malt scotch whisky can be a tough sell.  The natives – even those of us with Scots-Irish ancestry – have never really been brought up to fully appreciate the subtle nuances of heather and other such woodsy, grassy flavors that scotch embodies (the oak barrels in which the whisky is aged, of course, we understand pretty well).

Or maybe we just gave up on scotch with our first hideous taste of Usher’s Green Stripe, the absolute lowest common denominator blended version of scotch, which I remember upon first tasting surely being something akin to licking an ashtray.

Undaunted by such Bluegrass prejudice, Café Metro‘s Gary Byler, Jr., welcomed the opportunity of creating a scotch themed dinner with help from The Glenlivet Corp. and its delightful, kilted, knowledgeable and entertaining representative, Winston Evans.  I was privileged to be in attendance May 28 for this exclusive presentation, which consisted of a thoughtfully concocted, four-course meal designed to pair exquisitely with a variety of aged Glenlivet vintages.

We were greeted at the bar with a Rob Roy cocktail, which I never even finished, mostly because each successive course was accompanied by an even older, more distinguished pour.  Our caramelized onion and mushroom soup with bacon was served with a Glenlivet 12-year old scotch, which was a perfect match for the sweetness of the onion and the meaty taste and texture of the mushrooms.

An artful pork paté with dried fruit and green olives was served with a 15-year old French Oak Reserve, and our salad of roasted leeks in honey Dijon vinaigrette came with a 16-year old Nàdurra, which is unique even among single malts for its process.  The end result is a slightly more cloudy spirit than its more refined cousins, but it’s the closest one can really come to drinking the stuff straight from the barrel.

If they wanted a marketing slogan for it, it could be “Mother’s Milk for Those in Kilts.”  (You’re welcome; I’ll be sending the invoice soon).

There were four entrée choices – mine was the pan seared duck breast with red chile pear sauce, blue cheese potato cakes and Asian pear relish.  One of my dining companions opted for the orange glazed salmon with parsnips and gingered carrots, and the other two available choices were a scotch and cherry glazed smoked pork chop with creamed leeks and applesauce, and a seared filet of beef with a scotch thyme pan sauce over rice pilaf with cranberries and almonds.  All were presented with a Glenlivet 18-year old, and all of the ingredients and flavors were carefully considered.

Chef Gary’s menu was a masterpiece, even without dessert, for which I wouldn’t have had room, anyway.  As an impoverished student, I don’t really get out much these days, so I ended up spending more time drinking and talking than I did eating, and ended up taking most of my duck home with me.  Fortunately, I just live around the corner, so I could stumble home safely with my to-go box.  It’d been a rather long time since I’d indulged in any scotch . . . and yes, I felt it the next morning.

We were entertained in between each course by the aforementioned Mr. Evans, who has apparently never met a question about scotch he couldn’t answer.  If you have questions about scotch that you’d like answered, The Glenlivet website is packed with information including tasting notes, history, and a “society” for those who are already aficionados.

Given the enthusiastic response from Thursday night’s diners, I think you can look for more such adventurous pairing dinners at Café Metro in the not too distant future.

Thanks to my good friend Denton Randall, I was able to obtain an invitation to the “soft” opening of the Café Metro’s new piano lounge Thursday.  As the former jazz director for WFPL, I’m embarrassed to say I didn’t recognize the pianist at the baby grand, nor could I manage to find out his name, but the music was lovely, not too loud, and the piano was in tune, which is about all I ask of any piano bar.

Of course, the occasion was more about the food than the music.  A long time staple of Bardstown Road’s restaurant row, the Café Metro has thrived for more than 25 years.  A lot more competition exists these days for those high-end restaurant dollars, of course, so to keep up with the times, owner Nancy Shepherd has given her venerated establishment a makeover that extends to both the décor and the menu.

The Metro Piano Lounge will feature a small plates menu that includes spicy calamari and a goat cheese bruschetta, both of which I was happy to sample (and lucky to get, given the huge crowd and the ravenous appetites), along with a tri-color vegetable tart, a BLT cheesecake, coconut shrimp, an asparagus, tomato and country ham fritatta, a muffaletta, and salmon stuffed potato skins.

I was also treated to samples of some of the new specialty drinks – I sipped on a Key Lime Martini (Absolut Vanilla, lime and pineapple juices), and a Southern Rose (Four Roses bourbon with Southern Comfort and Tuaca).  Other tempting options include the Cachaca Cocktail, a refreshing Brazilian concoction, a Cherry Appletini, and a Peaches and Cream Martini which includes a caramel infused vodka.

The biggest treat of the evening, however, was the conversation I had with new chef Gary Byler, Jr., a kind, soft-spoken man who has a long history of work in the restaurant industry but for whom this is his first real chef position.  He is humbled by the challenge before him, but given what I saw and tasted last night, in a good position to restore some of the perhaps somewhat faded glory of the Café Metro.

The Metro Piano Lounge officially opens tonight, July 11.  I’ll be writing a feature on Chef Byler and the Café Metro for the September issue of the Highlander Neighborhood Monthly.

Pantoja’s son, Enrique, president of Rodulfo Realty & Building Co., told the paper, “We’re not trying to cut any corners.”

Click here for more info (subscribers only).

Multiple restaurant changes to Oxmoor Center: Panera Bread, long a tenant of The Mall St. Matthews, is moving to Oxmoor Center and will reopen March 14. The move will place it in a growing group of restaurants, including Yang Kee Noodle (which will add outdoor seating this year), California Pizza Kitchen, and BJ’s Restaurant, a pizza, pasta and craft-brew-centered concept to open Feb. 24. Click here for more info (subscribers only).

And from The Courier-Journal …

Nan better than Royal India: C-J restaurant critic Marty Rosen’s righteous review of Royal India (4123 Oeschli Avenue) led me to put the restaurant at the top my must-visit list. Like Mexican food used to be here long ago, Indian food has largely been hit or miss. Thankfully, the former is now reliably fantastic, and over the past several years, increased competition has forced the latter to improve, as evidenced in this review. Here’s a mouthwatering sample of Rosen’s observations:

“The vegetarian Andhra combo ($10.99) paired savory masala dosa (a fine-textures rice-lentil crepe folded around sautéed potatoes, onions and plenty of fresh green herbs) with the less common idlis (steamed, egg-shaped rice-lentil dumplings). I smeared the dosa with a puréed chutney of coconut, green chilies, and cilantro — and the resulting dish looked like a roll of hay and tasted like the first warm day of spring. I soaked the dumplings in a smoky bowl of sambar, a lentil stew with an elusive spicy bite.”The Indian-food amateurs (yes, count me among them) appreciate the descriptions, Marty. Click here for the full review.

Trivial pursuits: Here’s a blend of two of my favorite things: trivia and food. Every Wednesday night during February and March, the Chick Inn (6325 Upper River Road) is hosting team trivia nights.

More high-end happy hours: Seems 2008 is the year of the happy hour at higher-end restaurants—hard evidence the restaurant industry is more competitive than ever—as more fine-dining spots scramble for pre-dinner market share.

Add Café Metro to the list hawking $5 martini specials and specially priced appetizers. The bargain bevs and bites area available Monday through Thursday (except for Valentine’s Day). Call 458-4830 for more info.

Seiler said she’d achieved all her goals for the restaurant and that her work in the restaurant industry was done.

Terms of the sale have not been released, though Seiler said there won’t be any major changes.

Along with Kathy Cary (owner of Lilly’s Bistro) and Nancy Shepherd (owner of Café Metro and Uptown Café), Seiler has been a standard bearer for women restaurateurs locally and nationally. One could not mention the names of Louisville’s best restaurants without mentioning all the above.

The local restaurant community owes an enormous debt of gratitude to Seiler for the high standards she set, the employees she hired and mentored, and for helping foster the restaurant and business renaissance along Bardstown Road.