Proof on Main: artistry on your plate, on the wall
When it comes to pairing art and upscale dining, there's no place like Proof on Main, located on Main Street in downtown Louisville.
Proof on Main — like the adjacent 21C Museum Hotel — is bursting with contemporary paintings, photographs, sculptures and even video. That's no accident: Both are the brainchild of art collectors Laura Lee Brown and Steve Wilson. You can click here for details and more information on current art exhibitions or past ones at Proof on Main.
Esquire magazine declared Proof on Main one of the best new restaurants of 2006 soon after its opening. The restaurant has also been featured in Bon Appétit, Glamour, Epicurious, Food & Wine, Travel & Leisure and Metropolitan Home magazines, as well as The Wall Street Journal and USA Today.
Chef Michael Paley's dishes show the influence of both Italy and Kentucky Southern-style cooking — usually separately but sometimes in fusion, as in the Rock shrimp risotto with red eye gravy ($18); the chickpea-and-and-country-ham fritter atop a Treviso salad with grain mustard aioli ($9), a dinner appetizer, and the Kentucky bison carpaccio ($13).
Proof on Main's artistry emerges in the Proof Bison Burger, topped with applewood-smoked bacon, Tillamook cheddar from Kenny's Kentucky Cheese and a Jezebel sauce ($14); oven-roasted free-range chicken ($23); the grilled Berkshire pork chop, served with arugula, pickled green beans and Mission figs and a Berkshire bacon vinaigrette ($26). The generous Paley shares many of his recipes — including the piquant Jezebel sauce — here.
Proof also offers "tastings" — samplings of three or four items. (Everyone at the table must participate for anyone to get a sampling.) The lunch tastings average $20, while those at dinner one hovers at $55. Like the rest of the menu, the tastings change.
The breakfast, lunch, dinner and dessert menus change seasonally, so it's worth checking before you go.
You can make reservations online or by calling (502) 217-6300 or (877) 217-6400.
The restaurant area is open Monday through Thursday 7 a.m.–10, again from 11a.m.–2 p.m. and then from 5:30–10 p.m.; Friday 7 a.m.–noon, 11 a.m.–2 p.m. and then from 5:30–11 p.m.; Saturday 7 a.m.–noon and 5:30–11 p.m.; and Sunday 7 a.m.–noon and 5:30–10 p.m. However, for the most part, you can be served food at Proof's well-appointed bar until midnight Sunday through Thursday and until 1 a.m. weekends.
Proof on Main (and the 21C Museum Hotel), with 5,000 square feet of art-bestrewn space and seven meeting rooms, can accommodate meetings, private parties, retreats, receptions or charitable events of up to 450. More information is available online, by calling (502) 217-6312.
- by Ivonne Rovira, Louisville Reporter for HelloMetro
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