so nice, we ate there twice

One of the great discoveries of Louisville is Lynn's Paradise Cafe. It's basically a diner with crazy cool decorations, including a giant teapot and teacups out front. We had read about it in Roadfood.com. Last year the art car folks took us all to dinner there after the illuminated cruise. Unfortunately, the cruise ran really late last year, and we ate so late that despite the wonderful food and company, Lisa and I didn't really enjoy our meal.

This year I was prepared for the late night, and so Georg and I ate dinner at 6. I had meant to eat a light dinner, but once I start eating it's hard to stop while I'm still hungry. So I ended up eating a pretty full meal. And then, they tricked us and did everything on time! We got to Lynn's around 9:30, and had food on the table by 10! I wasn't hungry at all, ordered just an appetizer, and couldn't finish it. At least we still had great company. We sat with Tim McNally and Paul McRae and I really enjoyed the conversation. Tim had brought his new art car, which is painted, but in a freeform style that's very different from the Plaidmobile. Paul didn't bring his art car but he was full of enthusiasm for the event. I can't wait to see his photos.

Today our art car obligations ended around 4:30. We went back to the hotel room and rested for a little while, and then decided to go back to Lynn's. What the heck: we know it's good, the atmosphere is really fun, and I wanted the chance to appreciate my dinner the way I hadn't last night.

We loved examining the kooky decorations all over Lynn's. Like tall tree trunks in the dining room covered with garlands, paper butterflies and Christmas tree decorations. Or the manniquins on the walls wearing op art pajama pants. Their annual "ugly lamp contest" is happening in a few days so we got to view the entries. I must say, those were some ugly lamps. The grand prize is one free breakfast every week for a year! That would be worth searching for the perfect ugly lamp.

Georg had the "hot brown," which we hear is a Louisville specialty. I had it last year; it's basically a bowl of turkey, tomato and bacon covered with cheese and cream sauce. I think there's some bread in there too. It's really good, but really rich. I had meatloaf with macaroni and cheese and green beans. Yum. The mac and cheese was particularly good.

After dinner we swung by another Roadfood.com recommendation: the Homemade Ice Cream and Pie Kitchen. As you might guess from the name, they sell pie and ice cream. And also cake. We were full from dinner so we got desserts to take back to the hotel room. Georg got a slice of devil's food cake and I got strawberry rhubarb pie. They both got a little melty in the car because we stopped by Nod's camper-van on the way back to conduct our business transaction. (In other words, to buy the solar panels.) But still, both pie and cake were excellent. The crust on my pie tasted like it was mostly shortening rather than butter. Really tender. And the filling was very nice, not too sweet. Rhubarb pie should not have too much sugar. If you want a super-sweet fruit pie, get cherry. Or forget the fruit and get shoofly pie for the total sugar bomb. (In point of fact, the place in Louisville doesn't sell shoofly pie. In fact I don't know if I've seen shoofly pie outside of PA. But seeing as shoofly filling is almost pure sugar, it's hard to imagine a sweeter dessert.)