610 Magnolia — Restaurant in Louisville

Tl;Dr: great restaurant, I liked how it was casual without sacrificing complexity of ingredients/dishes. Great value, I think it's kind of a no brainer. If you are the type to raise your nose at this type of establishment, I promise you'll leave full!

I visited here on 10/29/22.

Service was wonderful, staff were friendly, talkative and helpful. They were happy to cater to me with classic recommendations that hit the spot. I asked one staff member (was his name John?) to completely improvise a mocktail and it was simple in a good way, tasty, and even a little nostalgic which was nice. I didn't really know how to order a mocktail, so I just asked him to wing it and really, considering the ambiguity of my order I was absolutely satisfied with a sweet fizzy soda drink. However, although the staff might pick up on this, I think if you do not drink alcohol for whatever reason, and/or would want something more true to a spirited version you should probably specify that so it's less sweet/more pungent/more complex and sip-able. Overall Id say that everyone did their job very well, and although I regret that I do not know or remember anybody's names, I would absolutely like to say that there was a brunette (?) woman who made wonderful conversation with me and was polite, hospitable and helpful. She made me a French 75 cocktail, which she recommended after I told her I wanted something bubbly. I really appreciated that after I briefly mentioned an increasing interest in enjoying more cocktails, she walked me through how the cocktail was made, why she was doing certain things, and how I could likely improve my own. I hope her co-workers who were scheduled tonight can shout her out to management! I wish she didn't run off to a break or other business, I couldn't give her a tip due to being in a relative hurry, for a restaurant like this.

Food was generally great. Some things were better than others, as is probably the case at like every restaurant in the world. Overall, it was very complex and well thought out, but not overly pretentious, which I really appreciate. I assume it's a really hard balance to reach because I've never really had a balanced meal and atmosphere like this before.

The BLT was great, absolutely perfectly balanced, in a way which is almost uncanny. Another standout was the rye pasta with the duck ragu, was really just an amazingly interesting dish, which is the reason I'd come to a restaurant like this. It was a nice fruity sweet and savory, which worked great with duck! On a sadder note, I had the "tempura fried" cod with papaya salad and it really stood out as disappointing. The "tempura fried" cod just kinda tasted like any other battered and fried fish, it's coating was not really noticably different than fish and chips or something similar, and the coating was actually a little hard to cut through with my fork; so in general not light and airy like tempura and instead thick and glutinous (not necessarily a bad thing) with no seasonings or anything unique about it at all, so it was just lost next to the salad. I love the idea of using papaya salad as a sort of slaw, which is absolutely brilliant, and I feel like there is much, much more to it. However, in this instance it was just kinda bland, and didn't feel like like the papaya was truly tenderized, it was really pretty crunchy for a papaya salad, and although it had the aroma of fish sauce it didn't have that wonderful toothsome savory/spicy combo which I'm used to from papaya salad, and instead it was kinda chewy and kinda bland, there was definitely no padaek, which is the kind of touch I was expecting :(

I didn't like the bourbon aficionado desert. It tasted like smoky s'mores, and felt like a take on Eaton mess. For me personally, it just read as too much for eating after five courses. It was flat out hard to finish due to how sweet and rich it was after such a rich and filling dinner (good problems, right!). Next time I'm gonna get the cheese platter with that cocktail, that sounded super...

As a long time fan of Chef Ed Lee, I was really excited to try 610 on a recent trip to Louisville, but was left wanting more. A few things that I found interesting about the experience before I get into the actual food.

Reservations are by phone only. I sort of like this because you interact with a person rather than just some random online reservation system. Since the website doesn’t have a menu or pricing, this does allow you to ask questions. But in case you are wondering, it’s a five course meal for $110, not including drinks, service, and taxes. They were pretty communicative when I called and left a VM and they confirmed day of via text. I really like the human touches in an era of dining when service is being sacrificed because of staffing shortages.

The five course menu is pre-fixe, but what’s interesting is that you can choose between two options for each course, in 4 of 5 cases. You can do an optional wine pairing, which is an additional 65, which are four pretty healthy pours, plus a dessert cocktail. Pours are a bubbly, two whites, and a red. The value on the pairing is quite good, many of our party left feeling quite cheerful, shall we say.

The server and wait staff were really friendly, informative, and good spirited. They didn’t talk too much and were pretty happy to engage with us as a group when we had questions. As a party of six, we effectively tried every dish on the menu except one dessert. There were some clear winners amongst the group including the amuse bouche and the quail (4th course). Both seafood courses, one of sea scallop and the other of hake, were a bit underwhelming. The lamb, which was an alternate to the quail, was very rare. I don’t mind rare lamb personally, but the other person in my party who got it didn’t care for the temp of the meat. I personally was a big fan of the dessert, which was an interesting take on a s’more, which smoke and chocolate and freeze dried corn and marshmallow. It comes actually smoking to you, but my wife really didn’t care for the smoke smell and flavor.

Overall I felt like some of the dishes had too many components that it was hard to get one fork full of all the pieces, so it didn’t all harmonize. We did appreciate the contrast in textures in the dishes, but found the flavor to be understated in some dishes. Oh! The bread and butter. Forgot that. The butter is out of this world good. It’s mixed with sorghum and topped with flaky sea salt on a really delicious sourdough bread made locally.

Overall, a pretty good experience, but not the best dining experience I have ever had. I can see why it would rank as one of the best in Louisville, but I likely wouldn’t come back on a...

Disappointing 25th Wedding Anniversary Dinner

It was our first time in Louisville and we were looking forward to celebrating our 25th anniversary at 610. Unfortunately, we should have gone somewhere else. It was a Thursday dinner reservation. No issues with parking. It’s in Old Louisville so it doesn’t look like your typical restaurant and the signage is very small which can be missed. We walked in and were not greeted. A server came by and I mentioned we had reservations and we were ushered to a table. Our server was very soft spoken that it was hard to hear the quick rundown of the menu. There was no acknowledgement of our anniversary from the reservation email exchange I had with the manager (Liz) nor were we asked if we were celebrating anything. After selecting our dinner choices from the progressive menu and our wine selection, we noticed Liz, the manager, visiting tables. We’ll come back to that. Dinner started with a foie gras deconstructed BLT amuse bouchée which was ok, followed by soup that was good , salad (not great), onto the main courses which were ok but not memorable, ending with ok desserts. We were at 610 for 3 hours and during that time, Liz was visiting multiple tables over and over again. There was one large table that she was constantly at and going above and beyond for. The only reason she came to our table is because I made eye contact with her. It was a brief visit asking if everything was ok but again, not asking if we were celebrating anything. After quickly being at our table, she continued visiting the other tables over and over again. It felt like we were being ignored the entire time. Our server came over at the end to ask if we wanted anything else. We asked for the bill and when leaving, just as we arrived, there was no acknowledgment of visiting the restaurant. With the high prices for subpar food and high expectations for service, this was a huge disappointment. There are better restaurants in the Louisville area to...