Lexington, KY - Horse Capital of the World

Bluegrass Flavors and Feel: 4/16/12

I seem to feel compelled to blog about at least half of the restaurants I review for the Lexington Herald-Leader ...

http://www.kentucky.com/restaurants/#navlink=subnav

... because so many are off the beaten path and harder to learn about any other way.

This week, my current obsession is Mi'irie Mon, translated loosely as "I feel good, mon" (not "man").

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Miirie-Mon-Caribbean-Restaurant/162384547186997

Part of its charm is the incongruity of its location in the backwaters of an industrial park downtown. There is just such a disconnect between the sterility of such purposefully anonymous architecture and the call of one on the northern hemisphere's most laid back and hedonistic cultures. Once you get past all the geographic oddness, a real feel of the island awaits.

You will sense it in cadence of retro reggae. You will experience it in the relaxed service that forces you to take off your watch and shut off your smart phone. You will know it by the clove-laced goat curries--

http://www.npr.org/2012/02/07/146527674/jamaican-goat-curry

the doughy, piping hot johnny cakes--

http://www.saveur.com/article/Recipes/Jamaican-Johnnycakes

(Saveur recommends them with saltfish, and Mi'irie Mon has that on the menu sometimes)

and braised cabbage and and jerk chicken and oxtail and coconut rice and gingery soft drinks and hard candy.

The presence of delicious exotic foods in crazy locations like mini-malls and back streets is further proof that Lexington's ethnic dining scene resembles that of larger cities...and this is a very good thing.

I'm still struggling with a few, but DA if you're litniseng, a quick thankyou for apparently giving us a week off the excessive dependence on general knowledge that I've been complaining about. There's a lot of satisfying clues here, even though I needed help with many of them.I agree with RB about 11A Despite the fact that I missed it !! That darn lav-ender exemplifies the satisfaction I get when finally understanding a cryptic clue. I had a chance of soving it in my head, with the information available. The fact I missed it, only makes me want to try harder next week.Contrast that with the deflated sense of, Oh, it's another Geography/Art/History lesson with a twist that I get when I discover that I never had a chance anyway, because I never heard of some Dutch artist named Bosch. Too many of those and there's no incentive to come back next week, because it's not something I can try harder at, and why bother with a crossword that requires more luck than skill/sweat to solve especially if it's meant to be a cryptic?But I'm chuffed because by myself I solved about 50% this week (don't laugh that's good for me!)Having done the weekly DAtrippers check-in I now know another 30-40% I could have solved given enough tenacity.Which leaves only 10%-20% as new words which seems a reasonable amount expanding my vocabulary without leaving me feeling defeated.So my vote is to keep the balance of future ones just like this one!!
by: Malika
Friday May 18, 2012