Louisville Magazine

OCT 2013

Louisville Magazine is Louisville's city magazine, covering Louisville people, lifestyles, politics, sports, restaurants, entertainment and homes. Includes a monthly calendar of events.

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THE SPREAD This may conjure memories of Miley Cyrus or the dentist's offce, but MilkWood's cocktail menu art educates. Each drink carries a primary taste: sweet, sour, salty, bitter. Except for two that hit . . . umami. A ffth taste, a sixth sense, or something in between, I heard these umami explanations at the restaurant: earthy, toothsome, "a weird quality." The mouth graphic was all Lee's idea. He thought it would set a playful, relaxed mood. "Even though this is a cocktail menu, we're all about your mouth here," he says. "We want to please your mouth." A lot of guests ask server Betsy Albert about this plate wall. "We call it the great wall of china," she says with a laugh. A blend of Asian and rustic American, the plates were culled from local antique malls. The wall's backstory? More resourceful than romantic. When building the restaurant, the giant space needed something. Neither an aquarium nor giant television seemed the right ft. Hence, a delicate touch to enhance that comfortable, Southern feel. Ed Lee's hot sauce doesn't The MilkWood is the restaurant's signature cocktail — sip slowly and experience that weird umami quality I mentioned. When Stacie Stewart, MilkWood's front-of-the-house manager, went hunting for an umami cocktail, she kept winding up at Bloody Mary recipes. "We wanted something viscous," she says. The concoction starts with nigori unfltered sake. Green chartreuse adds an herbal bite. Yuzu (a Japanese citrus fruit) extract brightens the favor. Simple syrup sweetens. Sprinkle with fecks of black lava salt from Hawaii and . . . umami. burn, but it can put blush in your bite. It includes traditional hotsauce ingredients: vinegar, chiles, cayenne. But Lee also incorporates fsh sauce and soy sauce, two backbones of Asian cooking. Servers offer the sauce to every table. "We serve a lot of Southern dishes, and Southern people use a lot of hot sauce," says front-of-the-house manager Stewart. If you're a fan, you can take this sauce to go. A bottle costs $6. 10.13 LOUISVILLE MAGAZINE 69

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