“I’ve been thinking about the portabella reuben for over a week,” my husband informed me. That kicked off a magical dinner at HopCat, the Bardstown brewery that boasts pretty much every beer on the planet. Turns out they have an array of vegetarian food as well.
We ended up splitting the reuben and french fries. I have to say the reuben is absolutely delicious. It’s got the traditional cheese and sauerkraut along with spinach, cole slaw and a portabella mushroom subbing for the corned beef. Vegetarian cuisine at its finest.
I made my sandwich just a little more decadent with the help of “fire” and “lava,” the two homemade hot sauces served at HopCat.
The french fries were delicious. As any vegetarian knows, the quality of french fries is critical to the success of any restaurant.
We noticed that they have a veggie burger and what appears to be a vegan pizza, so we will be back to report on those items at some point in the future.
We each got an order of soup. Mine was the tomato, apple soup, served hot with blue cheese crumbles. Delicious and unexpected, the apples give the soup some texture that you wouldn’t get from straight up tomato soup. I’m pretty sure if you asked them to leave off the blue cheese, this would be vegan. Having said that, if you’re not a purist, the blue cheese really pulls the whole thing together. My crime partner got the vegetarian chili which was also delicious.
My husband is a conscientious buy-local guy, so he ordered beer off the local beer section, conveniently set off from the rest of the two page beer menu. I couldn’t find the mead I loved last time I was at HopCat, so I settled for the nitro raspberry ale which turned out to be fantastic, not as sugary as it sounds, but not quite a beer either, thank goodness. (I somehow never acquired the taste for hops.)
The atmosphere at HopCat is unapologetically hipster. That’s not a bad thing, in my opinion. I’ll take hipster over the smell of stale cigarettes and poor lighting any day. The chandeliers made of bourbon bottles are stunning.
All this hedonism left us, well, pleasantly filled, but not stuffed. So we split a piece of the peanut butter ice cream cake. The ingredients list, alone, will start your mouth watering, so I’m just going to quote the menu here:
“Our house-made frozen peanut butter pie is made with locally brewed porter ale reduction, vanilla bean ice cream, and crushed peanut butter cups in a chocolate graham cracker crust and garnished with stout fudge sauce.”
Okay, not really something you should get if you’re counting calories. But just about as fabulous as it sounds.
LouisvilleVegetarian.com 
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