This article originally appeared in the December 2015 issue of Louisville Magazine. To subscribe to Louisville Magazine, please click here.
Photos by Chris Witzke
Like Louisville, Fontleroy’s (2011 Grinstead Drive, #104) is debatably Southern. Take the collard greens, for example. Chef/owner Allan Rosenberg makes them with kimchi and coconut milk. Italian mascarpone and Fontina cheeses melt into the grits. “You’ll see a little bit of Asian and Latin flare in my cooking — pickled chiles, pickled red onions. French and Italian influences, too. Mediterranean — grilled carrots, octopus with smoked paprika and pimento aïoli, Spanish chorizo, sundried olives…” — it’s hard to stop the 38-year-old from talking about food.
When I meet Rosenberg on a Tuesday afternoon in October, he’s peeling McIntosh, Gala and Granny Smith apples for an Italian chutney called mostarda that will flavor a pork chop. “In my opinion, Southern cooking is America’s cuisine,” Rosenberg says. Fontleroy’s is his take. Since opening in August, he has already changed the menu three times. “We have some staples that we have to keep now,” he says. “Lamb ribs, cornbread, fried green tomatoes, the catfish — we sell a shit-ton of catfish. The short rib is a big one. The collard greens are huge.” As Rosenberg is telling me this, a guy walks by with a steaming cylindrical vat of macaroni and cheese, made with cheddar and goat cheeses. “I wanted to change our mac and cheese and make it with blue cheese, but I was advised not to by my staff and wife,” he says. Rosenberg dips a pinky in, tastes it and nods an approval.
Macaroni and cheese ($9)
The menu refreshingly veers from Southern staples, too. The clams and smoked pork belly wade in a sweet and spicy pork jus that buttery croutons absorb. Sweet-and-sour agrodolce sauce glazes the halibut. The roasted carrots and beets are for sharing and come on a wooden plank with goat cheese and Marcona almonds.
On the corner of Bardstown Road and Grinstead Drive, Fontleroy’s is appropriately named after James Fontleroy Grinstead, who was mayor in the early 1900s. The space formerly housed an Uncle Maddio’s fast-casual pizza franchise and, before that, was home to John Riley Auto Service, which had been on the block for 44 years. As an homage to the garage, the napkins are shop rags and the servers wear blue short-sleeve shop shirts with their names embroidered on the chest. Retro metal cafe chairs and white subway tiles amplify the chatter at the 12 or so tables.
While growing up, Rosenberg says, his mom was the “microwave queen” and that, when KFC used to deliver, it was either fried chicken or pizza for dinner. “For me it was the opposite of most people — a home-cooked meal was a special occasion,” he says. His first job was flipping burgers at Hardee’s. After his first full-service restaurant gig, as a busboy at the Japanese steakhouse Shogun, Rosenberg went chasing his fashion-design dream in New York. “It seems a little bit more glamorous than it actually is — kind of like cooking,” he says. “I like the artistic aspects of both — thinking of new things and planning out what I’m going to do, as well as the construction element, the craft and technical part.”
The fashion world was tough to break into, he says, but he landed apprenticeships in some upscale-casual New York restaurants to make ends meet. “I slowly drifted away from fashion and found a home in restaurants. When you’re with people for 14 hours a day, they become like a family to you,” he says. He returned to Louisville in the early 2000s and worked in some of the city’s best kitchens, including Seviche. In 2010 he opened the Highlands late-night pizza joint Papalinos — his nickname for his mom that’s also tattooed on his arm. (Though he still consults with the Papalinos owners, a couple years ago Rosenberg sold his share of the company, which now has one location, in Springhurst.) In the basement of the original Mussel and Burger Bar in Jeffersontown, he opened the Place Downstairs (later called Cena, now closed).
Fontleroy's chef/owner Allan Rosenberg sauces a dish
Continuing his self-made culinary education, Rosenberg rents a storage unit for what he says is his $25,000 cookbook collection, which he organizes somewhat like a bookstore — general cooking, Italian, Mexican and so on. “Right now I’m really into African influences in food,” he says. For $100 he recently bought The NoMad Cookbook, written by the chefs at a New York restaurant where Rosenberg’s best friend is the pastry chef.
“I’ll work here (at Fontleroy’s) for 17 or 18 hours,” he says, “and I’ll go home and lie in bed and read cookbooks. I don’t get enough cooking in my life.”
Photos by Chris Witzke
This article originally appeared in the December 2015 issue of Louisville Magazine.
To subscribe to Louisville Magazine, please click here.
