Relish Food Hall // Pickleball — Local services in Louisville

Top Pickleball Destination with Room to Improve 🎾 ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ (4/5)

Relish Club in Louisville has quickly become one of my favorite places to play pickleball. The facility is top-notch with 18 beautiful indoor courts, a welcoming vibe, and a lively market food hall that makes it feel like more than just a pickleball club. It’s truly a destination where you can play, connect, and hang out.

The membership model is what originally set Relish apart — it included a wide range of programming based on your level, from open play to drills to competitive match play. That made it feel fresh and different from other clubs that mainly charge for court time. Unfortunately, within just three months of grand opening, they changed the membership benefits after contracts were signed. That part felt like a bait-and-switch and is disappointing. I’d love to see them honor the agreements they started with and “grandfather in” the early supporting members, rather than changing terms midstream. I don’t disagree with their right to change benefits, but most great brands building from ground up would only enact that with NEW member acquisition starting at the point of benefit changes NOT your early supporters.

That said, the staff and pros are excellent, the Playsight cameras for game film are a huge plus, and the social side — food, cocktails, space — is unmatched in Colorado. It’s a well-thought-out experience and, despite the lack of ‘doing good business for your early supporters and members’, I still think it’s the best pickleball destination in the Front Range and appreciate the teams’ work.

Market tip: Don’t miss the Magic Food Bus smashburger 🍔 (yes, even the veggie version is fantastic and GF buns) or the Cubano panini at Soup Smith or salads & nosh boards at Salt & Vinegar. Plenty more vendors to explore, and poke bowls are...

I'm reviewing the pickleball experience, because we did not eat here. I'm going to be very critical, so mosts of these are nits, and the sum of all of these take off only a single star for this review. The court surface holds spin, so I feel the ball jumps a bunch more than I'm used to, especially on return of serve. One time I completely whiffed (which is rare). But that's minor. Then the ball definitely skids off white painted lines, but that happens at many other courts. The courts are too narrow for my taste, and it eliminates the ATP possibilities often - I guess they are regulation size, but a very noticeable and does-affect-play narrowness. The worst trait is the lighting (although they said they were going to face the existing lights upward rather than downward, the actual lights have not bothered me when playing in the daytime) and visibility. Often there are streaks of sunlight coming from the skylights and you can lose the ball in that light. The walls are painted white and light green, and I simply cannot see the ball well when facing one direction (on court 15). I prefer by far, the Picklr black walls, which have amazing contrast to pick up the yellow ball. I really want to like Relish, and I do, but I doubt they're going to re-color code then entire set of walls black. I've heard that it's hard to get high level players to play here, as in open play. I don't think there are many 4.5+ players "local", and it's a trek to get the younger kids from Denver to this location. Ideally there'd be 4.5+ open play, where someone could just drop in and get 2 hours of good play, but I don't think that is happening.

On the positive side, I like the staff, especially Ben, the convenience, and the dedication to building such a luxury eatery and first class...

Overall, I think they did a good job with the facility. It's pretty, the courts are high quality, I head the food hall is awesome. I do have some frustrations... The courts are laid out awkwardly, like they tried to cram too many in the space. Some courts, there's no room to store your belongings. These same courts, it can be difficult to walk to your court because of people socializing in a narrow space. The half walls surrounding the courts seem dangerous and don't prevent balls from flying everywhere. One court(#8) is near a door where, I guess, everything from events gets stored. Don't play on that court if there's an event. We had people constantly walking on our court to put things away after an event. We had to move courts 3 times to find a court that worked. Another frustrating thing... Don't leave your stuff there accidentally! Apparently, they purge everything the last day of the month and donate it. So, if you leave your water bottle there on 6/29, it will get donated one day later. Maybe consider having a box for May and a box for June and then dispose of May at the end of June and keep newer lost and found stuff for a month. My water bottle was there for one day and it's long gone now. My name and phone number were on it too. So, it's nice to have a facility near by. I'm not convinced the courts are set up in a way that players will be comfortable. I am looking forward to trying...