North of Bourbon Has Deep Roots Down South
Photography by Thomas Johns
About a decade ago now, the cinder block-sized building located at 935 Goss Ave in Louisville’s Schnitzelburg neighborhood was home to a karaoke bar named Groucho’s. On any given night, you could find swaths of servers and chefs unwinding with bottled beer and a Totino’s Party Pizza™ heated in a microwave behind the bar. We loved that place.
Groucho’s was replaced by an upscale cocktail lounge called Mr. Lee’s that served an ambitious (and expensive) menu to a neighborhood that, despite all its changes in recent years, still firmly prefers a can of Stroh’s and a shot of Old Fo’. It didn’t last long. We all crossed our fingers and prayed that something special would move into that odd little building that held so many memories and were a bit deflated when we saw the news that a bourbon bar serving southern food called North of Bourbon was in the works. We have plenty of those. The Courier-Journal pulled out a quote from one of the proprietors to serve as their headline. The words “Unapologetically Southern” felt almost foreboding. Is this what we really need? How many failed cajun restaurants must we suffer?
As construction was nearing completion, I got a message from Lawrence Weeks telling me he was moving back to Louisville to be the Executive Chef at North of Bourbon. I felt a wave of relief and messaged one of my old Groucho’s karaoke buddies, “Forget everything I said about that North of Bourbon place. They hired Lawrence. They’re going to do it right.”
THE BIG EASY
The restaurant’s name is a nod to the historic trade route between Kentucky’s bourbon producers and New Orleans’ massive shipping port. In fact, bourbon whiskey is most likely named after Bourbon Street in New Orleans, not the other way around. After centuries of cultural and commercial exchange, Louisville and New Orleans feel very much like sister cities but that kinship has historically not spelled success for cajun concepts. “New Orleans just does that to people,” said Lawrence in between shifts on a rainy night when I visited him recently. “It gets in your blood and you feel like you’re part of it, but some of those spots were just missing the soul. I’ve been waiting for an opportunity like this to come home and do it right.”
Lawrence is like a walking embodiment of New Orleans’ city slogan. He’s well over 6 feet tall and speaks with a relaxed cool that rarely breaks its measured pace. Despite my early apprehensions around the phrase “unapologetically southern,” that’s exactly what Lawrence is and he’s the best of us. In the same way the proprietors built the restaurant itself with well-researched intention, Lawrence has put together a menu that deserves its own educational companion. So, let’s take it from the top.
“Oysters are sustainable as hell,” said Lawrence. “We should all be eating more oysters.” The accompaniments change based on where the oysters were sourced. Oysters harvested from slower-moving water tend to be saltier and get paired with something sweet or creamy. Open water oysters have a fresh, clean flavor and can roll with some punches from pepper and strong vinegar. They’re a perfect way to start your meal along with the “lagniappe” (a gift from the house), which is often boiled peanuts.
The next item that drew my interest was the shaved mirliton salad because I had never seen that word in my life and butchered the pronunciation when I asked about it. Lawrence laughed and said, “It’s just chayote squash, maybe I should change the name but that’s what they’re called in Louisiana.” And, they love these things in Louisiana. You can find them growing on vines in backyards and along the sidewalks. The Bywater neighborhood in New Orleans even started an annual festival to celebrate mirliton, so don’t shy away from trying it.
Even the menu items that you will most certainly recognize, like red beans and gumbo, are stewed with a bit more intention here. The red beans are made with house-cured and spiced tasso, a traditional Delta delicacy made from pork shoulder, and an andouille sausage sourced from nearby Marksbury Farm to continue that perfect thread of connecting Louisville and New Orleans. It tastes like it has a bit more soul because building a menu with this exact mission statement comes from a part of Lawrence’s soul; his father’s family is from Kentucky and his mother’s is from Louisiana. “My aunt taught me how to make gumbo, but my grandmother taught me how to make a roux and that’s where it all started for me,” said Lawrence. “We serve a ‘filé’ gumbo here because okra isn’t always in season and it thickens it up the same way okra would and that’s what I was taught. It’s just a powder, made from ground-up dried sassafras leaves. You’ll have to check me on this, but I’m pretty sure the Cajuns learned it from the Choctaw tribe when they first arrived in Louisiana.” I did check him and he was right.
Cajun and Creole are often used interchangeably or erroneously when discussing the cuisine of New Orleans. The Cajuns were originally a French Canadian community called the Acadians before they were driven out by the conquering English in cruel and deadly mass deportation in the early 1700s. Some of them settled in Appalachia and it’s rumored that they were instrumental in establishing what would eventually be called Bourbon County in Kentucky by the turn of the next century. Creole is a bit harder to define and covers a wide range of mixed ethnicities including West African, Spanish, Caribbean, French, and Indigenous Americans. And if those two cultures make up ⅔ of New Orleans’ culinary Holy Trinity, Lawrence argues that the third is “literally everyone else.”
“Something I want people to notice is that I will always have a pasta dish on the menu here. My great-great-great-grandfather was actually Chinese and came to Louisiana to work on the railroads along with thousands of others. There was a large Sicilian community in the French Quarter at one point. That influence is still there and I think it gets overshadowed by the more stereotypical dishes,” said Lawrence. The menu concludes with dessert, specifically rice calas. Calas are sweetened rice fritters attributed to West African communities in Louisiana, selling these sweet treats around Mardi Gras even helped some enslaved peoples buy their way to freedom. In reference to calas, Chef Poppy Tooker said to NPR in 2013 “Once you know the history, who would want a boring old beignet?”
Speaking of desserts, Chef Lauren Schoen, LEE Initiative Mentee and former cannoli queen of bar Vetti, recently accepted the sous chef position at North of Bourbon after completing her externship at VAGA in San Diego with Chef Claudette Zepeda. Lauren, another Kentucky chef with familial ties to Louisiana, couldn’t pass up the opportunity to try her hand at the food her grandfather used to make for her.
SHELBY, DRINK YOUR JUICE
Listen. If you name a cocktail after a line from Steel Magnolias, I will be ordering it immediately. The “Shelby Drink Your Juice” house cocktail at North of Bourbon follows the same flawless formula as the rest of the concept combining Kentucky’s Old Forester Bourbon and Ale-8-One ginger soda along with Passion Fruit Reàl and fresh lemon juice to take it back down to the bayou for a sip of something that would fit right in on the menu at Latitude 29. I could have had four more.
The proprietors of North of Bourbon, the married Holyfields and brothers Jennings, are close friends whose shared passion for bourbon culture and the spirits of the deep south are most evident on the house cocktail list. Other favorites include an ode to the famous frozen coffee with Irish whisky available at Erin Rose in the French Quarter but made with Kentucky bourbon, of course. I also recommend trying the “What’s Mr. Peanut’s First Name.” If you didn’t grow up with family in the rural south, this one might sound weird but my eyes lit up upon reading the simple list of ingredients: Maker’s Mark Bourbon, Coca-Cola, Peanut Orgeat. This one is a nod to the blue collar workers, most often in agriculture and coal, who began dumping bags of salty peanuts directly into bottles of Coca-Cola for a midday snack without having to find somewhere to wash up before digging in. The combination of sweet and salty is so delightful and the peanuts maintain their integrity so well that the snack stuck around and was passed down through generations before ending up on this cocktail menu. We love to see it.
North of Bourbon officially opened on New Year’s Eve and the buzz is only growing. Another thing they’re doing right? Being open for dinner and lunch every Tuesday-Saturday. Want somewhere to grab a po’boy or peppered catfish nuggets and catch up on emails in a privacy booth made from reclaimed Maker’s Mark barrels? Look no further! You can’t beat the soundtrack either. Can anyone be in a bad mood listening to New Orleans jazz?
I’m happy to see so much life back in this building and look forward to making new memories here without worrying about anyone taking a video of my awful singing. On my way out, I asked Lawrence if he had anything coming up that should be on my radar and in his usual, Big Easy way, he said, “Man, I guess Mardi Gras is coming up soon. I should probably figure something out for that, huh?”
Chef Lawrence Weeks is welcoming Chef Ashleigh Shanti to the kitchen for a special dinner on February 26, a week before her season of Top Chef premieres on Bravo. Follow North of Bourbon on Instagram or call (502)749-3305 for more information.
