From Louisville Barista:

What’s going on exactly? Nothing formal… just a reason to get together and geek out about coffee! Latte art extraordinaire, Kenny Smith, has offered up a machine and some demonstrations! Plus, our “Hawaiian import” (thanks, MB-Dubs) John Letoto will be there with vacuum pots in tow to demo brewing techniques and as always- offer up exquisite conversations and discussions. Feel free to bring anyone and everyone. We’re encouraging everyone (if you can) to bring a bag of their favorite roast along with a press-pot (or other brewing device) to assist in a sort of ‘pot-luck’ coffee tasting.

Sounds like tons of fun!

A little rain never hurt no one: Maybe Pamela Campbell, the owner of the Old Louisville Coffee Shop on Fourth Street, had that Tom Waits song in her head yesterday when she helped customers and strangers alike to find higher ground inside her store.  Campbell spent the worst of yesterday morning’s storm venturing out into the small rivers that overtook downtown to help pedestrians to safer footing.  As a customer put it, “it would have been really easy to lock her doors.”  But she didn’t. [Courier]

New Green Blossoms: Rainbow Blossom will be hosting a party on August 8 to celebrate the opening of its new store in the Highlands.  They plan on having food samples, music, yoga, and info sessions on herbal medicine, sustainable food production, and environmental protection.  Speaking of the latter, Summer Auerbach, Rainbow Blossom’s VP of operations, said the new store will receive LEED certification for its building design, which features energy-saving lights and appliances and recycled building materials.  Plus they sell Café Kilimanjaro’s sauces and syrups! [Rainbow Blossom]

Threes at Z’s Fusion: Z’s Fusion is trying something different every Wednesday night—a promotion called “Creative Cocktails.” Pair three tapas with three cocktails for $10 each.  The menus will have comment cards on the back so patrons can offer their own creative input.  Hey, I love experimenting with food, and I’ll drink anything they put in front of me—as long as it’s bourbon on the rocks.

Wick’s Still Waiting: Wick’s Pizza has delayed the opening of its new New Albany location until at least the fall, according to owner Michael Wickliffe, as it endures a long wait for a state liquor license. New Albany mayor Doug England says he’s petitioned the state government to pick up the pace, but an inspection and a comprehensive background check has to be completed before Wick’s can buy the license.  Wickliffe said he had hoped to move into the southern Indiana riverfront location, which had been home to the former Speakeasy jazz club, by the end of this summer.  Now it’s looking more like late September.  Until Wick’s can sell beer there, I’ll be enjoying Fat Tire with my pizza at Rocky’s. [News-Trib]

Pencils for Pies?: North End Café has teamed with Kentucky Refugee Ministries, Teen Challenge, and Neighborhood House in a promotion aimed at helping local children with their back-to-school shopping.  The Frankfort Avenue restaurant is offering a free dessert coupon to customers who donate back-to-school items.  In September, North End will offer a similar promotion to benefit Louisville health charities.  [LEO]

Mayor Dr. Couzin?

Dr. Nimbus Couzin, the owner of Ray’s Monkey House Café, who also teaches physics at U of L’s med school, says he’ll be tossing his hat into the Louisville mayoral race as independent candidate.

A press release issued yesterday says Couzin wants to change the way the city does business, and that he will propose tax breaks and other benefits for local, independent, and environmentally sustainable businesses.

He has also proposed putting more cops on the street—literally—to improve relations between police and the people who live and work on their beat.

Couzin sees himself as an alternative to other candidates who “will do business as usual.”  The 43-year old Couzin said he is “kind of running against the suits and ties; against the business as usual,” and that he will be himself in his campaign.

Couzin is known best in Louisville for his ownership of Ray’s Monkey House Café, which he opened in 2007 as a “community gathering place with a focus on kids and progressive issues.”

The best part is, you sit down and let a server pamper you for a bit. Even if it’s only a soft drink or piece of pastry, you get it with full service in most European cafés. To prove this point, your cup of coffee or tea even comes served on its own little tray with an accompanying glass of water and – get this – the cup of tea or coffee usually sits atop a dainty paper doily with a cute little bar of chocolate or delicate butter cookie as a garnish. You don’t get that at Starbuck’s. Or Java Brewing Company or even at Heine Brothers, no matter how good the coffee is. The average American coffeehouse definitely has a more laid-back atmosphere, to say the least.

Until I can make it back for my next fix of European luxury, it’s nice to know that I can at least get an authentic taste of Austria in the ‘Ville at Caffé Classico on Frankfort Avenue: They’re one of the only places in the entire Midwest I’ve found that serves coffee by Julius Meinl, one of the Continent’s most famous coffees.

Read the rest after the jump…

(Pronunciation note: Meinl is pronounced “mine-(d)uhl” with a slight “d” sound before the “l”.)

You can order their coffee online at the official Meinl website and learn a little more about this Austrian delicacy. According to information provided there, the first store was founded in 1862 Vienna when a boy from the country came to the capital of the Austro-Hungarian Empire looking for work. Since coffee drinkers back then normally purchased raw beans and roasted them on wood burning stoves in their homes, the young Meinl opened a small shop that sold green coffee. Recognizing that the process required a lot of care due to the risk of burning beans, Julius Meinl eventually came up with the idea of roasting the coffee himself and selling the ready-to-be-ground beans.

His idea met with great success and the java-loving Viennese enthusiastically embraced Meinl coffee, a fortuitous event that garnered the young boy no small amount of fame. In the 1890s, Julius Meinl opened a state-of-the-art roasting plant on the very site where invading Turks under the command of Pasha Kara Mustafa had introduced unroasted coffee beans to Vienna 200 years earlier. The Fez, the black-tasseled red hat worn by many of the invaders and a symbol of the sovereignty of the Sultan in Constantinople, would become a key part of the Meinl logo. Today, all Meinl products bear the familiar silhouette of the “little Meinl boy” gazing down into his cup of coffee.

Over the years, five generations of the Meinl family have supplied discerning coffee drinkers around the world with choice coffees, keeping alive a tradition that has lasted more than 14 decades. Known for its complete lack of bitterness and heady aromas, Meinl’s gourmet coffee comes from Arabica beans, and farmers are encouraged to plant only the highest quality coffee and carefully hand-pick the berries. Before making purchases, an extensive series of chemical analyses is run to guarantee quality, something that is ensured by a requisite background check on each coffee shipment that arrives in the Meinl factories in Vienna.

Three basic degrees of roasting – light, medium and dark – are used for Meinl’s main lineup, which includes standard blends such as “President Mild,” a temperate, flavorful grind perfect for late-afternoon drinking, and “King Hadhramaut,” a medium-bodied brew that is perfect with a piece of cake or pastry. More robust selections, such as the “Caffé del Moro,” make the perfect breakfast cup or late-morning pick-me-up.

Although Caffé Classico doesn’t carry the entire Meinl line-up of products, they do have a decent assortment of this elusive treat. If you’re a true coffee lover, you’ll probably want to head out and get a pound or two now.

by David Dominé, The Bluegrass Peasant

Although a distinct coffeehouse culture has steadily evolved in this country, most Americans would be hard-pressed to find an authentic European-style café in their neighborhoods. Across the pond, cafés from Portugal to Poland are typically casual watering holes where guests can pop in for a quick coffee break or else linger for an hour or two with a good book and piece of pastry.

Aside from an assortment of hot and cold drinks, most cafés on the Continent also offer their patrons wine, beer and spirits, in addition to some light fare such as salads and sandwiches. When Caffé Classico appeared on the Louisville coffeehouse scene several years ago, most assumed it would fall in the same category of self-service establishments that have become de rigueur in this country: You walk in and order your drink, take it to your table, if you stay, and perhaps grab a cookie or sandwich to go with it. But, enter Caffé Classico in the ‘Ville and you’ll notice it’s different cup of tea all together.

First, sit down and relax a bit. This isn’t an eat-and-run kind of place. A server will take your drink order, and bring you a menu if you want a bite to eat. The lunch menu includes several seasonal soup selections and salads such as the Greek with cucumber, tomato, red onion, black olives and feta cheese, the ensalada fresca – a mix of greens with balsamic vinegar, tangerine slices and pine nuts – and the “Tortoni Buenos Aires,” a layered chef creation with tomato, hard-cooked egg, cucumber, avocado, mozzarella and carrots.

Also available are number of specialty sandwiches and panini. Sandwiches include tuna salad with wasabi and ginger mayo, smoked turkey club, curried chicken salad, and the West Coast with cucumber, avocado, lettuce and chipotle mayonnaise. Panini favorites are the Prosciutto with the namesake Italian ham grilled with fresh mozzarella, tomato and spinach on ciabatta, and the Americano with smoked ham and Swiss cheese. All salads are $8.50 and the sandwiches are $8.

Dinner guests at Caffé Classico can opt for appetizers such as salmon croquettes, Belgian fries with three dipping sauces, mussels steamed with white wine, shallots and garlic, and empanadas with beef, chicken or vegetarian fillings.

(If the menu seems a little heavy on the flavors of Argentina and Italy, that no doubt lies with the fact that Claudia, the wife of Tom, the owner, comes from Buenos Aires – Argentine cities are known for their café culture and large numbers of Italian immigrants.)

Apart from several salad and pizza choices, the dinner menu includes an entrée section with five items: vegetable pasta with red onions, feta, pine nuts, black olives, tomatoes, spinach and Parmesan; flank steak grilled and sliced thin, served with seasonal vegetables and rustic mashed potatoes; linguini and shrimp tossed with garlic, white wine and butter; pan-seared salmon with leek sauce, roasted sweet potatoes, egg plant and grilled tomatoes; and sirloin steak with roasted new reds, asparagus and zucchini. All entrees cost $15-$16, and the pizzas and salads average $10.50 and $6.75, respectively.

To wash it all down, some 20 white and red wine selections can be had by the bottle or glass – all in the $20-$30 price range per bottle – and close to ten European brews are on offer, including Stella Artois and Duvel from Belgium and Peroni from Italy. And, an added bonus: espresso drinks feature hard-to-come-by Meinl coffee from Austria – read the post tomorrow and I’ll tell you more about this great coffee.

Saturdays often see the addition of live entertainment at Caffé Classico, including musical ensembles and dance performances. Saturday, August 23 will feature Alma Gitana (Gypsy Soul) in a Flamenco fusion show. Located at 2144 Frankfort Avenue in Louisville, Caffé Classico serves lunch and dinner six days a week. For more information, call (502) 894 9689 or go online at .

Sweet Surrender Dessert Café & Coffee Shop just introduced a new summer vegetarian lunch menu, which has been expanded to include several vegan options as well. Available Tuesday through Saturday from 11:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m., the new menu features a variety of hearty sandwiches, salads and soups.

Patrons will find standard lunch favorites such as the curried egg salad sandwich ($7.49) and portabella panini ($7.49), but they will notice several new highlights such as the edamame salad ($5.99) with shelled soybeans tossed with fresh cucumbers, red peppers and wasabi dressing on a mesclun bed, and a black bean pita ($7.99) with red peppers, salad greens, sun-dried tomato and chipotle mayonnaise. Other lunchtime options include the quiche of the week served with a side salad ($7.99), hummus plate ($7.99) and orange pecan salad ($6.99). For a mid-day treat guests can sample a half slice of cake ($3.59), which can be had only during lunch.

As a Louisville Wireless Hotspot, Sweet Surrender is a great place for a business meeting (reservations appreciated for parties of eight or more) or a quiet study lunch. It’s at 1416 Bardstown Road in the Highlands or 1804 Frankfort Ave.

Toast This: We all know that the weight of an out-of-towner’s opinion weighs heavily on our own view. That’s why consultants make so much money. We came across this ultra-positive review of Toast on Market from a traveling St. Louis couple.

Reviews: In the C-J, Marty Rosen tried the new Calabash seafood at Son of a Sailor in LaGrange.  In the Voice-Tribune, Steve Kaufman reminds us of the history of the cheeseburger at Kaelin’s. Here’s a C-J piece on Sitar, the new Indian place in the Highlands. I tried it recently with my son Nick, a vegeterian, who approved wholeheartedly. A secret no more, Kevin Gibson reviews Cafe Perrusa in J-town.

Moves: The Seelbach is going to be hiring soon. Three execs are in the process of opening a restaurant in the Atlanta airport called One Flew South.

Openings:  Another one of those buildings endlessly trying out restaurant concepts — 9501 Shelbyville Road — is making a comeback as Furlong’s, the same Louisiana-themed former hotspot on Frankfort Ave. The new Furlong’s occupies the building that once housed Frank’s and Garrett’s. Meanwhile, Quills is making a comeback somewhere on Baxter Ave., though its owner isn’t saying exactly where. In August, you should be able to get one of those amazing pizza pies from Impellizeri’s from its new location in Holiday Manor. That’s certainly an upgrade from the Pizza Hut that used to be there.  Something called the Ri Ra Irish Pub is coming to Fourth Street Live this fall, for those who want a chain version of Molly Malone’s or Irish Rover. The Connecticut-based chain takes the spot formerly occupied by Felt, where for about $20 you could play a round of pool.

Starbuck Update: We told you the Starbucks on Westport Road was on the closing list. Now the relatively new one on Poplar Level Road is closing up as well.

Capuccinos, Lattes and Mocha drinks will be on the menu,  and sure to be priced at a level to compete with coffee houses such as Starbucks and Heine Bros. McDonald’s thinks the new line of business will result in $1 billion in additional sales.

Meanwhile, Starbucks is staying silent about which of its stores will be closing. The Seattle-based company announced recently that it would close 600 stores, putting some 12,000 baristas out of work.

“If you want to know if you’re in a recession, ask a small business owner,” Jewell said Saturday.

Jewell, president of the Greater Louisville Hotel Lodging Association, said that he’s seen customers who once came in daily cut back to twice a week. Other customers are bringing their coffee from home, and he said he knows it can be an expensive habit. He said that a customer who buys a latte every day could rack up a $900 a year habit.

After April 25, Jewell said he plans to publicize a sale of the business’s equipment and furnishings.