Insiders Guide  Restaurant Reviews
for Old Louisville Restaurants

Buck’s
$$$-$$$$ • 425 W. Ormsby Ave. • 637-5284
This eclectic spot in the Mayflower Apartments (formerly Hotel) is among the city’s prettiest places for dining, inside or out. Al fresco-ing it on the wide, columned porch is one of the city’s great fresh-air treats. The dining room has dark green walls, white tablecloths, artfully mismatched antique china and so many white flowers the monthly florists’ bill approaches $1000. Customer-favorite dishes include spicy noodles (a Thai-style dish with a choice of chicken, shrimp or pork) and soft-shell crab. Dinner is served Tuesday through Saturday.

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Cunningham’s
$ • 900 S. Fifth St. • 587-0526
Local legend has it that Cunningham’s was once a bordello (all those small rooms upstairs, with the saloon doors); it’s been a restaurant since 1870, and some of the waiters look to have been here since the kitchen fired up. The food wouldn’t be too confusing to anyone who’d skipped forward a century from its opening: Corned beef and cabbage, turtle soup and pan-fried oysters are among the specialties; many people swear by the fish sandwich. Lunch and dinner are served Monday through Saturday.

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Dizzy Whizz Drive-In
$, no credit cards • 217 W. St. Catherine • 583-3828
Dizzy Whizz is a classic drive-in from the late ’40s, one of the few places in town to still offer curb service. The house specialty is the — why would we make this up? — Whizz Burger: a doubledecker with cheese, lettuce and special sauce; there are also especially good milk shakes. They’re open for lunch Monday through Saturday, dinner and late nights daily.

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Masterson’s
$$ • 1830 S. Third St. • 636-2511
Huge — it claims to be the state’s largest full-service restaurant and serves as a food service option for students at nearby U of L; it also has a number of different rooms to suit almost every dining situation and an inspiringly massive bar room. The menu is pretty straightforward, featuring steaks, pastas, salads and the like. The best bets go against the grain of the Tudor architecture and toward the owners’ ethnic background: Masterson comes from Mastoras, a Greek name, and the gyros and Greek salads are pretty fair. Lunch and dinner are served daily, with a 9 AM opening on the weekends.

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Rudyard Kipling
$$ • 422 W. Oak St. • 636-1311
This restaurant is as eclectic as Old Louisville itself: a mixture of Kentucky, vegetarian, British Isles, Italian, French and a few other cuisines, pulled together with a loose funkiness that’s (to use the restaurant’s preferred term) “idiosyncratique.” One of the city’s best lunch spots — the pub plates always make a tasty, surprising and nutritious impression — it’s also the only place in town that treats burgoo with proper seriousness. There are also Cornish pasties (pastry crusts stuffed with various fillings), curries and stews and a signature dish for the ages: Crepes Delbert — crepes filled with black beans and the incomparable Gatton Farms country ham, in a dijon-chablis veloute sauce. Late nights, it’s one of the city’s most interesting nightspots, with a booking policy as eclectic as the food. Lunch and dinner are served Monday through Friday; it’s dinner only Saturday.

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