About five years ago, I was in Atlanta with some co-workers when I admitted this omission. Soon I found myself staring into my first bowl of grits -- shrimp and jalapeno grits, to be exact. They were fantastic, and I was hooked. Ever since then I've kept my eye out for grits at restaurants when I'm on travel. Last year in New Orleans I had grits with shrimp (on purpose) and crawfish (on accident) and they were pretty good too.
Yesterday morning my family and I set out in search of breakfast in Louisville, Kentucky. We didn't get out and about until around 9am and didn't arrive at our original breakfast destination (Wild Eggs) until 9:30am. There we found a 45 minute wait, so we decided to look elsewhere. A couple of blocks away, we discovered Hillbilly Tea. Knowing absolutely nothing about the place, we walked in.
Now as far as breakfast goes, nothing would make my daughter happier than a place that serves Lucky Charms by the bowl full. My son likes bacon and pancakes, in that order. My wife likes biscuits and gravy and I usually order an omelette or a skillet, something like that. As the waiter is handing us "brunch" menus I begin scanning them and realize that almost everything on the menu contains at least one word I don't recognize. Here are the seasonal specials:
- Winter veggie plant w/whipped balsamic & tobasco yogurt
- Crawdad grit fritters w/comeback billy sauce
- Chicken Liver silk spread w/pickled veg and grilled bread
- Bourbon bread pudding
I can't tell you how quickly alarms were going off in my head. I knew we were in the wrong place when the waiter told us "the chef is a genius." I don't need a chef who is a genius for breakfast. All I need is a guy who can keep the shells out of the scrambled eggs.
I ask about eggs and the waiter recommends High on the Billy (scramble w/foie gras & goat cheese, biscuit & jam on the side). I don't know what foie gras is. I know what goats are. The kids ask about pancakes. They have a wheat pancake ("it's crunchy," he says) with powdered sugar and bourbon honey. The kids order those; I hope the bourbon helps them forget this misadventure. Susan orders the bread pudding, because we know what that is. I am just about to panic and order the winter baby kale salad (with parsnip, celery root, smoked tea croutons and Duke & mustard) when I spot grits! I love grits! And they have fish and grits on the menu! This is what it says: "cast iron seared ruby red trout, weisenberger bourbon cheese grits, poached egg, arugula, and pickled fennel."
So, just to set the scene here: everybody in the whole place (customers and staff) are wearing skinny jeans with either t-shirts or flannel shirts. We stick out like four sore thumbs. We order four waters, one tea (for Morgan) and two coffees. It takes about 7 minutes to get the water. The coffee is painstakingly made by hand. The tea is some kind of tea soda, also hand made. This takes like 15 minutes. Out the window I can see a White Castle and I keep thinking before our food arrives I could make my way over there and get a steak, egg and cheese slider and be so happy.
Skipping to the punchline, 20 minutes later our food arrives and here is my fish and grits:
I mean, that's literally just a fish, lying on top of my grits! What the hell is this!? It felt like that scene at the end of Christmas Story where the waiter brings out the duck and its head it still on it!
I suck it up and dive in with a fork and I have to say, it was pretty amazing. I figured out to eat around the tail pretty quickly. The cheesy grits were good, the egg was good, and the other crap was weird pickled crap.
No refills on the coffee or the tea. Or the water, apparently.
With tip we got out for $65 for breakfast. For anyone still reading, that's roughly 30 breakfast sandwiches at White Castle.
Hillbilly Tea is a very trendy and fancy restaurant that serves wonderful food. The food was very delicious and we were glad to have tried it.
We had White Castles for lunch.
