Where To Eat in Louisville: Cafe Lou Lou

In my visits to Cafe Lou Lou I've been rather negligent in terms of gathering information for this review. By that I mean I've eaten the same thing every single time. Oh I've had variety: the veggie calzione, the four cheese calzone, the build your own calzone, and so on. Notice a trend? Yep, I'm in love with their calzone dough and sauce. Each time I visit Cafe Lou Lou I say "hmm let me try a pasta dish, my aunt Ellen says they have really great pastas" or "let me try a sandwich, that sandwich B had last time looked delicious." And each time the server steps to my table an order for a calzone comes out of my mouth. The calzone dough is chewy but not tough, not overly sweet, and...the best way I can think to describe it is as having perfect mouth feel. You just enjoying the actual act of eating it. The sauce is equally tasty and they don't shortchange you on fillings. You can be confident that there is going to plenty of whatever you've ordered inside your calzone. I cannot highly recommend enough getting goat cheese in your calzone. Go on, do it, you'll thank me for it later.

My sister turned 18 years old earlier this month. She came up from our family's farm last weekend to celebrate this momentous change in her years and I took her to Cafe Lou Lou for lunch. My sister is a very picky eater. She knows what she likes and what she doesn't like (the items in the former are fare fewer than in the latter). She likes more plain and common foods that she's familiar with. So I chose Cafe Lou Lou for my her birthday lunch because I knew there would be plenty of choices for her on the menu as well as plenty of choices for more adventurous eaters in our party as well. Cafe Lou Lou has a very diverse menu that has plenty of familiar, comfortable foods that my sister would like but also many creative and different dishes that are either wholly unique or updated takes on familiar items several of which have Louisiana roots (like pasta jambalaya and the muffuletta). I'm only slightly embarrassed to tell you that both my sister and I ordered calzones.

I'm a bad food reviewer for having ordered variations on the same theme at every visit but before I can write I must eat and I can't help always wanting to eat their calzones. However, I'm a pretty good nibbler, meaning that I've sampled bites of various dining companions' dishes (doesn't that sentence just make you want to invite me out to dinner?). Things I've sampled include the smoked pork tenderloin sandwich (massive and interesting, described by the person who actually ordered it as the best pork sandwich she could recall having), the muffuletta (I don't think it was a bad muffuletta, I just think muffulettas are not for me) and the gyro roll (described by its recipient as having the absolute perfect amount of sauce and really tender meat. The flat bread it came wrapped in was a big hit as well). Deliciousness abounded with all the items I sampled (even the muffuletta which we've just discussed as not being for me at a yummy olive component).

My only complaint with Cafe Lou Lou, and it's a slight one, is with the service. Each time I've been to Cafe Lou Lou I've been almost bowled over by the friendliness of the hostess (it has always been a woman) while being greeted and seated almost instantly. In my own personal experience, either the level of attentiveness or friendliness goes down after being seated. That is to say that I've had servers that were incredibly friendly but not particularly attentive and I've had servers that are quite attentive but not particularly friendly. No one else I've spoken to about Cafe Lou Lou has this complaint so really it must just be my bad luck instead of a service issue at Cafe Lou Lou. The last time I dined there, for my sister's birthday, we were seated at a table in the bar area. The bartender, an incredibly friendly young man, took care of us. I should say he did his best to take care of us. Either because of understaffing or unexpected rush or something he was apparently in charge of all the tables in the bar area as well as people eating at the actual bar. This was too much for one person to try and handle.  A couple tables that ordered after us received their food before us and I literally had to go to the bar to get drink refills because the poor guy just didn't have time to do everything. Did this negatively color my experience? A little bit but I was enjoying hanging out with my sister so much I was much more ok with the situation than I would have been under other circumstances. It doesn't matter because I really like the food and atmosphere at Cafe Lou Lou so I have no plans to stop going. I'll just try to not sit in the bar next time.

Cafe Lou Lou
106 Sears Avenue
Louisville, KY 40206
893-7776

I know I seem to complain about service a lot but I'm really not as surly about it as I might come across and I'm a better than average tipper. Boy, that sounds a lot like rationalization doesn't it?