Perso — Restaurant in Louisville

First time here, we walked in around 5:30 and immediately stood around for a few second looking around while the staff were all standing around and we were the only customers atm. First issue we had was we asked the waitress details about what a couple ingredients were in two different drinks and not only did she not know, she didn’t offer to ask/find out…. So we had to take more time to decide (and not get either of the drinks we asked about because we didn’t get an answer) and my girl got the Columbo ($15 drink) and it was mid at best. Far from worth $15’s but ok, not a big deal. We ordered the cauliflower 3 ways, summer squash velute, and the vegetarian baked pasta and had them course them out as we were sharing it all (mind you we were both very hungry coming in). The menu doesn’t clearly say that the summer squash was a soup, so that was a fun surprise, and it definitely wasn’t enough for two people to share. Which I bring up because there are several food and drink items that a very vague in description, so much so you actually have no idea what the dish/drink is going to be when it comes out. 1st dish we got was the Squash soup & it had good flavor & mushrooms were cooked perfectly and very tasty. The crispy orzo was pointless and leant nothing to the dish (I get it was to add crunch but it didn’t work and wasn’t eaten because they were legit super hard and difficult to even chew). It then took probably 45mins (with the waitress coming over around 20-25 mins telling us that the cauliflower takes awhile) to get the cauliflower to our table. It came out on a thin charcuterie board (a whole roasted head of cauliflower) and it had a almost non existent smear of yogurt and two small “preserved” cauliflower florets. 1. The cauliflower needed to be on a much larger dish.. as you started cutting into it, it immediately started to spill over on the table because of this 2. The cauliflower had a light dry rub on it so it 100% needed 4-5x the amount of yogurt otherwise you were just eating lightly flavored cooked cauliflower, so much so we had to ask the waitress for some kind of sauce to dip it in- which we were given a very tasty chimichurri sauce and to me the dish should have just had that on top to begin with (when we make this dish at home we have a generous amount of yogurt on the plate that the cauliflower sits in and then a generous pour of chimichurri ) in addition to wayyyyyy more yogurt sauce. 3. The cauliflower wasn’t cooked properly and was very difficult to even cut through. The last dish arrived at the same time as the cauliflower and it was definitely the most disappointing. Probably the worst pasta dish I’ve had at a restaurant before. The noodles were cheap store bought noodles( or if they weren’t we couldn’t tell a difference), the sauce was bland and flavorless, and the peas also didn’t make sense to the dish. We thought that the dish had other veggies in it, when it was just a red sauce and a boat load of cheese. We hardly touched the cauliflower dish & the pasta and after another 15 mins of waiting for a waiter/waitress to come and take the dishes/plates we finally get our waitress who sees us having not touched both dishes and doesn’t say a word about it. Just grabs the used dishes and takes them away. We then had to ask another person for the check and again… no follow up about how the food was or why we didn’t touch 2 out of the 3 dishes we had. We were still starving by the time we left. Definitely the worst $100’s+ I’ve spent in awhile. We left and went to toastys to grab a burger and fries if that tells you about how the experience was. Also… the main dining room chairs are horribly uncomfortable.. to the point I was dying to leave by the end of our almost two our dining experience. We also had to ask for plates to eat on one time and then forks a separate time. Will not be back, but glad we checked it...

One of the finest restaurants in town is nestled in Shelby Park. I have been to Perso twice now and will return at least quarterly for as long as possible. Perso elevates a rustic Italian vibe by mixing hyper-fresh ingredients with innovative takes on traditional preservation techniques like canning and fermentation.

I cannot recommend the Chef's Table prix-fixe meal enough. It is a selection of plates from elsewhere on the menu served family style to all at the table for $55 per person. It really gives you an unrivaled variety at a pretty astounding value proposition.

At both of my visits, we were served an esquite house-made ricotta with a flaky, crispy flatbread, a seasonal "deformed quiche" and a seasonal carpaccio for our starter course. It is here that I will mention the magic of things like the carpaccio; I have never had beets in a remotely interesting way, but pickled in a lovely salad somehow turned beets in their preserved form into a fresh and light experience while being far more interesting than roasting. The texture of all three of these starters again belies traditional preservation techniques and is an experience for the whole mouth, not just the tongue.

In my most recent trip to Perso, our main course consisted of shared portions of cod and turnips in a clam sauce and a duck confit on a barley-based take on risotto. The cod was light, flaky, and buttery without being at all greasy, and the turnips again provided a nice crispness to the dish. The duck was as tender as can be without being oily, and the risotto made the dish hearty and warming on an early spring evening.

The desert course is the chef's choice and is a bit of a blind gamble. I've won both that bet both times, though. The most recent dessert course was a single, shared dish of caramel and custard topped with meringues and mint for an incredibly interesting combination of flavors and textures.

This place is a conversion factory for people who say that they don't like a given food. I am not generally a fan of ricotta but I could eat their house ricotta every day. My wife does not care for either fish or duck, but raved about the quality of both family-style entrees. And again, I'll return to texture. A lot of kitchens would put a crème brûlée topping on that caramel dessert and call it done, but while I don't frequently love meringues in my desserts, the contrast in texture with the soft custard and gooey caramel was phenomenal.

The staff is generally very pleasant and attentive. They know their menus well and communicate well with the kitchen on timing courses. I would not recommend arriving even 10 minutes early to a 5 pm reservation, as the staff will turn you away from what will be a fully closed dining room until precisely 5 pm. The restaurant is tastefully decorated in a way that reminds you that these plants come from nature, while largely otherwise trafficking in decor that would not be out of place in Brooklyn...

After seeing the good reviews for Perso, my husband and I were excited to try it. Unfortunately, it was underwhelming.

Our waitress was very nice and knowledgeable, but it looked like she had to manage a great deal of tables. As a result we found ourselves waiting a lot. Especially for our food. We ordered the pork belly appetizer, my husband ordered the short rib, and I got their shrimp and grits. Despite asking for the pork belly as an appetizer, everything came together. I was surprised that a place with a prix fixe menu wouldn't try to pace things better.

The pork belly was rubbery and the fat wasn't rendered at all. We love a good fatty pork belly, but there was no crisp and it was bland. There was way too much of it.

The shrimp and grits was so disappointing because the shrimp themselves were excellent. Perfectly cooked and on their own they tasted great. Unfortunately they were stuck in a pool of what tasted like vinegary hot sauce that overwhelmed the flavor. I was also perplexed that I was only given 5 shrimp of varying sizes for the cost of the meal. Another review showed a picture with NINE shrimp. I am fine with five shrimp if they were all that same large size, but the fifth one was literally half the size of the first. They hid them under a pile of wilted herbs.

My husband's short rib was under seasoned and he had a small portion of short rib drowned in their puree. The red wine reduction was thin and sparse disappointingly.

But hey their brownie was good. I wouldn't call that a tiramisu and it was like two bites. But it was a decent two bites.

The biggest thing for us was just all of those issues for the cost. My shrimp and grits was $39. $39 for mismatched shrimp, wilted herbs, a bunch of vinegar, and some ok grits. There weren't even vegetables or anything to contrast it, it was poorly composed for $39. Similarly, my husband's short rib was $45 and he remarked that our favorite short rib across town gives triple the portion, double the seasoning, and is under $30.

This place is so loud when it fills up and the tables crammed together. We learned all about the business investments of the table across our partition, good luck to them. Maybe we just got a bad night for Perso, but I'm really not willing to go back and see if it...