After an investment of one million dollars, Whiskey Row is now home to yet another restaurant/bar. The basement of the building facing the KFC Yum Center is now home to the Troll Pub Under the Bridge. It's quite hard to miss, since there is a giant troll guarding the entrance ramp. The troll itself is 10-ft tall.
Main Street is just days away from adding yet another restaurant to its roster. Doc Crow's Smokehouse will open its doors on February 10th in the Whiskey Row development next to the KFC Yum! Center. The restaurant will feature southern style barbecue and seafood. It will also include a raw bar for oysters on the half shell. Their bourbon list will be quite impressive as the owners will offer 60 of them. The restaurant is just next door to O'Sheas and a future Sol Azteca Mexican restaurant. The restaurant is funded through a low interest loan of $120,000 by the city 
After breaking ground in August, the Cardinal Towne apartment development near the U of L campus is taking shape. As you can see in the picture, the elevator shafts have been completed as well as the underground parking garage. Once finished the project situated on the old Masterson's property will feature four stories with 360,000 square feet of student housing and retail. As many as 540 student can find a place to live there. Some of the tenants already signed on for the retail portion include Jimmy John's Sandwiches, Qdoba, Heine Brothers Coffee, Comfy Cow, Papalinos Pizza, Le Peep, and Home Run Burgers and Fries. The building will be completed in phases with the first students moving in for the fall of 2011. 
As I was driving around town last weekend, I saw a new restaurant opening up at Cobalt Marketplace on East Market Street. It's called Mozz. It uses the space previously occupied by Primo. With the restaurant in place it looks like the retail part of the Cobalt Marketplace is fully leased ever since AAA rented the space of the former Fresh Market. According to their website, Mozz is an Italian supper club and a Neopolitan pizza counter. Their website also says they're now open. Their prices range from $12 Tortellini to $95 porterhouse steak for two or four. 
The Fourth street location of Eddie Merlot's added signage over the weekend. The steak house also added black awnings to the Starks Building. Interior work on the steak house's fifth location is still in full swing. The restaurant also added two revolving doors. One of them is facing Fourth street, the other one faces Muhammad Ali boulevard. Earlier this year I thought they tried to paint part of the Starks building brown. Turns out that was probably just the primer for a new black coat of paint. 
As you have probably heard the Frickle Pickle at Genny's Diner on Frankfort Avenue will soon close it's doors. The restaurant and the adjacent historic home were bought by the Comfy Cow Ice Cream parlor owners a few weeks ago. They have plans to turn the Frickle Pickle into a modern 1950's Diner. There are not that many of those around. The closest one I can think of is the Denny's at the first E-Town Exit. I found a rendering of the future diner. 
Construction on the future Eddie Merlot's steak house in the Starks Building on Fourth and Muhammad Ali is coming along nicely. Interior construction is in full swing. After tearing out all the old windows facing the sidewalk most of the new windows have been installed. They are nice floor to ceiling windows. Over the last week I've noticed that painters were working hard on the outside of the Starks Building. They are painting the ornamental facade just above the new windows. They used to be black. The color of choice this time around is reddish-brown. I guess that color goes better with steak.
Over at Shelbyville Plaza near Mall St. Mathews exterior construction of the addition has been completed. Workers are currently working on the interior of a couple new restaurants. As I have mentioned earlier, Jason's Deli as well as Buffalo Wild Wings will set up shop over here. BW3's will be moving here from there other St. Mathew location. 
The Buffalo Wild Wings in Clarksville has finally opened its doors. Its grand opening happened last week's day after Thanksgiving, which I think is a great day to open a restaurant, because when you have family at the house you don't want to cook, so you go out to eat. The store is located behind the new Rite-Aid drugstore on Veterans Parkway across the way from Best Buy. As I have mentioned before, the wings restaurants is a pretty looking true stand-alone version with a nice porch on the side. 
Downtown Louisville's latest eatery is now in business. Einstein Bros Bagel's location at the Hyatt opened its door last week to welcome its first customers. Obviously people will flock to new places, but it looked like they seemed to be doing great business over the weekend. As you can see in the picture, almost all the seats are taken. But then on the other hand, how can you go wrong with opening a bagel shop outside a large hotel.
The first Louisville Einstein Bros. Bagel store is nearing completion of the interior work. The new store is located street side at the Hyatt hotel on 4th Street. The bagel shop will serve breakfast all day. It also has a lunch menu containing open face deli melts, wraps, pizza bagels, bagel dogs (sounds interesting) and other stuff. It'll be the second bagel place (if you count Panera as a bagel place) that will open up shop on 4th street within the last couple of weeks.
The Villages of Audubon (near Audubon Hospital and St.X) are are on the verge of welcoming a new stand-alone tenant. Louisville's newest Chili's restaurant is about to open its doors at the shopping center. The building is complete and the chain is hiring. Yet another restaurant about to start interior construction in the Villages is a J.Gumbo. So far, there's only a sign in the window.
Louisville's Joe's Crab Shack is getting a new coat of paint. Painters have been covering the riverside restaurant in white paint for the past couple of weeks. I don't really think it was necessary, since it looked kind of shackish beforehand, but they probably had a good reason. I hope they finish what they started, because this one spot under their logo on the side has been left unpainted for a couple of days now.
Jeffersonville Town Center's first merchant is now open for business. The Beef'O'Brady's restaurant chain opened its doors for the first time last Monday. After years and years of planning, and trying to rent out a completed building, this marks a milestone in the history for the town center. As you can see in the picture, the L&N Federal Credit Union also has their "Coming Soon" sign up, so they are well on their way to being the second tenant in the shopping center.
