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own organic, sustainable, free-range con-
victions. She has even got her own organic
garden now, where she can pick herbs and
salad vegetables every morning in season.
Because Cary's recipes are based on
local products—catfish, trout, country
ham, sweet corn, wild greens, bourbon—
she had to invent her own style of loca-
vore cooking as she went along; the West
Coast playbook just didn't apply. Her clas-
sical culinary training shows up in dishes
like a garlic and leek soup with spinach
flan, smoked trout, and white truffle oil;
California bass and sautéed shrimp with
saffron leek gnocchi; or seared duck breast
and duck confit cabbage roulade in a port
wine sauce. But she is just as likely to tuck
local lake catfish into an Asian spring roll,
mix spicy sautéed calamari with a local
sausage-maker's chorizo, top corn cakes
with barbecue pulled pork, or grill a pork
chop with sweet potato hash, Brussels
sprouts, a touch of ham, and red-eye
gravy. And while all her desserts are
uncommonly good (why is it that caterers
always excel at desserts?), it's hard to pass
up her homemade ice cream flavored with
Woodford bourbon, served with choco-
late shortbread.
The cheery, pleasant atmosphere of
her storefront restaurant, in the mellow
Cherokee Triangle residential neighbor-
hood, accounts for a lot of Lilly's staying
power too. Deep purples, reds, and yel-
lows lend a sort of bohemian funkiness to
the eclectic decor, accented by scattered
oil paintings, gypsylike curtains, and a few
Southern touches like ceiling fans and slat-
ted blinds.
As the Midwest's dining scene has
grown more sophisticated in the past few
years, Cary is still ahead of the pack—one
day schmoozing on TV with Martha Stew-
art or Rachael Ray, the next invited as a
guest cook to the prestigious James Beard
House in New York City. But Cary takes her
local celebrity in stride, and on her menu
she always gives credit where credit is
due: “God Bless Our Local Farmers.”
1147 Bardstown Rd. (
&
502/451-
0447;
www.lillyslapeche.com).
(
Louisville (7 miles/11km).
L
$$
21c Museum Hotel,
700 W.
Main St. (
&
877/217-6400
or 502/217-
6300; www.21cmuseumhotel.com). $$
Camberley Brown,
4th St. and West
Broadway, Louisville (
&
502/583-1234;
www.thebrownhotel.com).
American Regional Stars
156
T'Afia
Pope's Blessing
Houston, Texas
Being a locavore chef in Houston doesn't
have to mean cranking out Tex-Mex tacos
or chicken-fried steak. Just ask Monica
Pope, one of the founders of the Saturday
morning Midtown Farmer's Market and
the chef-owner of T'afia (named after a
Creole drinking toast, meaning “to your
health!”). Winner of all sorts of national
chef honors, Pope is keenly attuned to the
central paradox of Texas cuisine—with its
regional culinary tradition that grew from
the hardships of cowboy life on the range,
