Tag: 21c museum hotel

Traveler: Louisville, Kentucky with Ben Sollee

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We’re on our way to the Bluegrass State for this weekend’s Bourbon & Beyond, but there’s so much more to explore beyond the two day festival in beautiful Champions Park. For the very best local recommendations we spoke to Kentucky native Ben Sollee (who plays the BGS Bluegrass Stage at B&B on Sunday).

According to Ben, who was born in Lexington and moved his family to Louisville in 2015, “For me, the arts community is a little more cohesive, a little more collaborative. I never really had an instance where I had an idea that I couldn’t accomplish in this city. Whether that’s something as small as collaborating with some dancers for a storytelling event, or something as big as developing a virtual reality app for music. I’ve been able to pull all that off in this little city. And of course being able to travel – Louisville is manageable for me as a touring music. As an artist who is adventurous, I can live affordably. It’s not a hard hustle.”

EAT & DRINK

Ben says: “I’d start with stopping by Quills Coffee, probably the one in the Nulu area. It’s based out of an old firehouse. Pretty cool. In the fall and wintertime, I like getting a miele – a good, honey-based drink with cinnamon and nutmeg. It warms the belly a little bit. So I’d get that and pick up the LEO – the Louisville Eccentric Observer – and check out what shows are happening, and what artists are doing around town. And of course what silly business is trying to do something wild. That’s how I’d get my day started.

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Sunday mood.

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“Lately I’ve been going to an Ethiopian spot here in town called Abyssinia. They’ve got a really fantastic buffet. It touches on Louisville’s amazing international food scene. And if I wasn’t close to downtown, I’d probably swing by the south end of Louisville and hit up Vietnam Kitchen, which is probably our most famous international fare food place. It’s a really, really, really good spot! I like to order K-8 – their spicy pork noodle soup.

“The place that comes to mind for dinner is a place called MilkWood in downtown Louisville on Main Street. It’s a place by the chef Edward Lee, who was featured on Iron Chef. It’s a mixture of Korean and soul food cooking. I like to go there whenever I can. They have really good drinks, and it’s next to Actors Theatre so if the theater is in season, you can catch a really cool show.”

BGS ALSO RECOMMENDS:
Proof on Main (at 21c)
Jeff Ruby’s Steakhouse
Pizza Lupo
The Silver Dollar

STAY

BGS says: Louisville is the home base of 21c Museum Hotels and this location is one of our favorite boutique hotels in the country. While there are several 21c locations you can visit throughout the South, the original Louisville location is like none other (even if you just get a chance to stop in for a bite at Proof on Main, check out the modern artwork collection, and ogle the giant copy of the David out front…. It’s worth the visit).

 

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Good morning, Louisville.

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BGS ALSO RECOMMENDS:
The Brown Hotel
Seelbach Hotel

SHOP

Ben says: “I certainly love thrifting and there’s the Flea Off Market that happens every once in a while. That’s a cool thing to look for when it happens. It’s a moving, modular market – Louisville’s bazaar in a way. And my favorite picking shop is over in Middletown (a suburb of Louisville) and it’s called the Middletown Peddlers Mall. I always find really good stuff in there.”

SEE & DO

Parks
Ben says: “Louisville’s got a huge, wonderful park system and we’ve got a bunch of parks designed by Frederick Law Olmsted, the very fellow who designed places like Central Park. He did a lot of park design in Louisville. You can easily swing up to Shelby Park, which is an Olmsted Park, and do a loop through there. If it was a nice day, you could hang out there for a little bit and then stop by Red Top, which is a new boutique hot dog place. It’s in Smoketown, which is a working-class neighborhood. They make some really fantastic hot dogs and they’ve got a lot of local beers on tap.

 

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Let’s be frank: these were pretty tasty. #redtopdogs #hotdogs #louisvilleeats #latergram

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“A lot of people like to go visit the Colonel and see where Colonel Sanders is buried, and now Muhammed Ali’s there too, in Cave Hill Cemetery. I think walking the Big Four Bridge is a nice tourist attraction. That’s a nice spot because you can walk over to Indiana.”

Museums
Ben says: “Everybody needs to visit the Louisville Slugger Museum. You gotta go see how the bats are made and you gotta get yourself a little bat. I think that one of our most unique museums is the Portland Museum. And of course the Speed Art Museum is incredible. They just finished that. It’s really, really beautiful.”

MUSICAL POINTS OF INTEREST

Ben says: “I like to go play music as much as I like to listen to it. So, I’d hop in the car, or hop the bus, and go to Guitar Emporium and check out their guitars and maybe some of the pedals, and see what they’ve got in stock. Right next to that is Louisville’s famed Books & Music Exchange. That’s a great place to get used records and movies and comic books and all that jazz. You can ruffle through the stacks as long as your heart desires. It just goes on and on and on.”

You can still join us this weekend, September 22-23, in Louisville for Bourbon & Beyond! Get tickets.

Check out Ben’s Sitch Session below, and discover more of his music at BenSollee.com.

Don’t miss the full BGS Stage Schedule for Bourbon & Beyond.

Photo of Big Four Bridge courtesy of GoToLouisville.com

SHIFT LIST: Levon Wallace

Posted on by Editor

For Levon Wallace, whipping up a signature dish in the kitchen isn’t unlike songwriting.

“Some of the best cooking happens when it’s freeform, when it’s fluid, when it comes from the heart,” Wallace says. “Sure, we’re relying on things like muscle memory and technique, which any musician worth their weight would, as well. I mean, you practice and practice and practice, but some of those best songs — or some of those best dishes — really are just coming from a sense of place inside. You can’t train that. That has to be, I think, from the heart.”

Wallace exercises that same care in his current post as executive chef of Gray & Dudley, located in the 21c Museum Hotel in downtown Nashville. Housed in the historic Gray and Dudley building that dates back to 1899, the restaurant draws not only its name, but also its aesthetic from the founding tenants by focusing on communal plates and pioneering dishes.

“The Dudley family is super prominent here in Nashville. Ms. Dudley was an avid, strong activist for women’s rights in the South back in the day, and the Gray and Dudley Manufacturing Company, which was the original name of this building, was the hub for commerce. If you needed anything — whether it was a cast-iron stove, shaving kit, hunting apparel, or baby carriage — you went to Gray and Dudley. It was like the Sears, Roebuck of its time,” Wallace explains. “We came into the space and we were developing menus and developing service concepts and food concepts for this restaurant, and that name really just resonated with what’s going on with our food.”

Born in Los Angeles, Wallace dove head-first into the world of culinary arts when he moved to San Francisco at the age of 18. “I just fully immersed myself in the food culture and chef culture and restaurant culture,” he explains. “Produce, artisans, makers, cheesers, wine — you can’t walk down the street without being hit in the face with something amazing. It’s a culinary revelation. My life experience in the Bay Area was this fast and furious romance with every cuisine under the sun.”

Wallace attended school full-time and spent in-between hours working at a catering company and volunteering at any restaurant that would have him for the day. He eventually made his way down the California coast, landing as the chef de cuisine at the Ojai Valley Inn and Spa, a luxury resort near Santa Barbara. The resort’s idyllic grounds boast orchards and herb gardens — a lush haven of fresh ingredients.

“I made it a part of daily preparation to use the walk to work to pick bay leaves from the bay trees for service,” says Wallace. “[I decided] whatever it is that I do, I want to make sure that the care in the attention to ingredients is there.” It’s a guiding principle that Wallace has applied throughout his career, which has taken him to Nashville by way of Martha’s Vineyard and Louisville.

“I’ve always kind of had this wanderlust, but something about this place, particularly Nashville or middle Tennessee, really truly does feel like home,” Wallace says. “I’ve been very fortunate to travel and see a lot of different places and this beautiful region we call the South, it’s absolutely consistent, you know, the welcoming, warm personalities, the hospitality. But I do feel like it’s just a little bit sweeter here in Nashville.”

In order to create heartfelt dishes that tap into Nashville’s profound sense of community, Wallace relied on his philosophies about ingredient sourcing.

“We talked about the importance of ingredients, and I’m a firm believer in supporting our local makers, our local ranchers and farmers, but I also think that it’s important to include regional accountability and regional support,” he says. “In this region, if we have seafood at all, it should come from the Gulf. We should be eating the right stuff. Chefs, especially nowadays, we have a platform which we didn’t have before where people actually give a shit about what we have to say, and so we have an opportunity to use that platform, whether it’s in menus or whether it’s in advocacy.”

Crafting a menu, Wallace says, is a creative process. “The approach to the food at Gray & Dudley is really about [being] soulful,” he explains. “I think a lot of us go through that phase where you’re trying to discover yourself and find your style and find your voice and cooking is like playing a lot of chords just to make one song … That’s kind of what we’re trying to hit — just the right chords.”