"It doesn't matter whether Guy Fieri's new Louisville restaurant has good beer because none of us will be going there anyway."

The following first appeared at my Potable Curmudgeon blog on May 10, 2016. As Insider Louisville reminds us, the breathless opening is nigh: "On Saturday, Sept. 10, Louisvillians will find out if Guy Fieri is more than a television personality."

Does anyone have a bucket?

Not if Cordish can help it. 

Otherwise sensible people lost their minds earlier today when celebrity chef Guy Fieri announced the opening of a "Smokehouse" eatery within the friendly, taxpayer-subsidized confines of Louisville's Fourth Street Live.

That he did so during an event entitled Hometown Tourist Attraction Showcase tells us that irony resistance is at an all-time high.

Needless to say, independent eateries and watering holes enjoy no such coddled treatment, and if you look at Fieri's web site, and this list of his brands, you'll see that when it comes to opening new restaurants, he minimizes risk at every opportunity.

GUY FIERI’S AMERICAN KITCHEN + BAR: CANCUN
Cancun International Airport, Mexico

EL BURRO BORRACHO
Harrah's Casino, Laughlin NV

GUY FIERI’S BALTIMORE KITCHEN & BAR
Horseshoe Casino, Baltimore MD

GUY FIERI’S MT POCONO KITCHEN
Mount Airy Casino, Mt. Pocono PA

GUY FIERI’S CHOPHOUSE
Bally's Atlantic City Casino, NJ

GUY FIERI’S VEGAS KITCHEN & BAR
The Linq Hotel and Casino, Las Vegas NV

GUY’S BURGER JOINT
Carnival Cruise Lines and Live Nation venues:
Carnival Breeze
Carnival Conquest
Carnival Freedom
Carnival Glory
Carnival Liberty
Carnival Pride
Carnival Sunshine
Carnival Triumph
Carnival Vista

Sleep Train Amphitheater – Chula Vista, CA
Shoreline Amphitheater – Mountain View, CA
Xfinity Theater – Hartford, CT
Jiffy Lube Live – Bristow, VA
MidFlorida Credit Union Amphitheater – Tampa, FL
Perfect Vodka Amphitheater – West Palm Beach, FL
Hollywood Casino Amphitheater – Tinley Park, IL
Klipsch Music Center, Noblesvile, IN
Hollywood Casino Amphitheater – St. Louis, MO
BB&T Pavillion – Camden, NJ
Nikon at Jones Beach Theatre – Long Island, NY
Blossom Music Center – Cuyahoga Falls, OH
First Niagara Pavilion – Pittsburgh, PA
Gexa Energy Pavilion – Dallas, TX
Veterans United Home Loans Amphitheater – Virginia Beach, VA
White River Amphitheater – Auburn, WA

Can you say CAPTIVE AUDIENCES?

Of course, the Curmudgeon isn't saying any of this makes Fieri a bad businessman. However, in the case of Fourth Street Live, government subsidies to Cordish -- which generally favors chains and routinely dismisses the indie ethos -- always have been disturbing, and in Louisville's case, with an indie food and drink community second to none, watching the soulless local media fawning today over an interloper whose business model is as corporate as fix-is-in ever gets, speaks volumes about integrity ... and its absence.

You'll notice I left one of Fieri's restaurants off the above list.

It's Guy's American Kitchen and Bar in New York City, the only one of his branded establishments not attached to a casino, airport, cruise ship, performance venue or Cordish corporate welfare emporium.

It had a rocky start. Surely you remember the New York Times review of Guy's American Kitchen and Bar in 2012.

As Not Seen on TV: Restaurant Review: Guy’s American Kitchen & Bar in Times Square, by Pete Wells (New York Times)

GUY FIERI, have you eaten at your new restaurant in Times Square? Have you pulled up one of the 500 seats at Guy’s American Kitchen & Bar and ordered a meal? Did you eat the food? Did it live up to your expectations?

Did panic grip your soul as you stared into the whirling hypno wheel of the menu, where adjectives and nouns spin in a crazy vortex? When you saw the burger described as “Guy’s Pat LaFrieda custom blend, all-natural Creekstone Farm Black Angus beef patty, LTOP (lettuce, tomato, onion + pickle), SMC (super-melty-cheese) and a slathering of Donkey Sauce on garlic-buttered brioche,” did your mind touch the void for a minute?

Did you notice that the menu was an unreliable predictor of what actually came to the table? Were the “bourbon butter crunch chips” missing from your Almond Joy cocktail, too? Was your deep-fried “boulder” of ice cream the size of a standard scoop?

What exactly about a small salad with four or five miniature/a> croutons makes Guy’s Famous Big Bite Caesar (a) big (b) famous or (c) Guy’s, in any meaningful sense?

Were you struck by how very far from awesome the Awesome Pretzel Chicken Tenders are?

I'm rolling on the floor laughing out loud. No, I mean literally.

But forget all that. Can we expect to see good beer at Guy Fieri's Cordish Smokehouse in Louisville? Maybe, though probably not.

Here's the list at Fieri's Vegas location.

Not awful, though evincing no intelligent design. When's the last time you saw a restaurant beer list, chain or indie, that looked genuinely thoughtful? They exist, but can be hard to find.

More humorously, Fieri's much maligned NYC tourist route location promises "an extensive draft beer program featuring signature beers craft brewed for Fieri right in New York City."

Nice, except it would appear this novel twist owes to the fact that Heartland Brewery's CEO is a partner in the Times Square venture, and that's odd, because Heartland Brewery isn't mentioned anywhere on the drinks page.

Embarrassment?

Did A-B InBev tithe more?

"Guy's Beer" NYC selections include Independence Pale Ale, Golden State Lager, Red, White & Blonde, Morgan’s Red Ale and Oatmeal Stout. Also available on the "extensive" tap list: A lone seasonal beer, Angry Orchard Cider and Coors Light.

But don't forget the bottle list: Budweiser, Bud Light, Miller High Life, Pabst Blue Ribbon, Rolling Rock, Good Grain Gluten-Free (Heartland) and Beck’s Non Alcoholic.

Extensive? You be the judge.

Yes, you bet your ass I'm being derisive. Bring on the tour buses. Guy's bringing corporate fluff straight to River City -- and never forget that Cordish is billing Greg Fischer for the privilege.

Mayor will run for state office.

Mayor Abramson, that is:

Done Deal — Abramson Joins Beshear (The 'Ville Voice blog).

For once, the rumors are true. Sunday night Jerry Abramson and Steve Beshear announced they’ll be running for Governor and Lt. Gov. in 2011, and that Jerry won’t be seeking an additional term in 2011.

Down with Cordish chain welfare - up with locally owned business!

As a prelude to the following, know that I heartily dislike the Cordish corporate-only vibe.

A decade or more ago, when I first visited Baltimore, the Cordish strategy seemed like something positive. Give them huge sums of cash, and they ensure tenants for ready-made entertainment districts.

Trouble is, the tenants are cookie-cutter chains, and there's nothing unique or local about any of it.

At some point I realized that locally owned businesses could achieve precisely the same desired end if they were awarded a like sum of money, with none of the money flowing through a pipeline to corporate headquarters elsewhere. Given the conceptual sterility of the typical Cordish project (Fourth Street Live springs to mind in this context), keeping the money local makes sense from aesthetic as well as fiscal rationales.

Thus, I'm delighted to read Rick at The 'Ville Voice blog tear into Mayor Jer with respect to Cordish's latest outrage. And congrats to the C-J for sticking to the story.

Jerry Needs to Get Away

... But the bigger blow came Saturday, when the C-J led with news that Cordish has kind of told city officials that, well, no, they’re not going to explain what they did with all that taxpayer money they took to re-design a bowling alley on Fourth Street.

Pressured by the newspaper to explain how it spent the extra $950,000 that Abramson championed giving them to remodel the failed Lucky Strike, Cordish said it had given all the detail it was required to do, and then the Mayor said the explanation was good enough for him.

Now we can confirm what we’ve known all along. Cordish might have, maybe, possibly, spent half that money on remodeling the space, but most of it went in the Cordish profit center. They sure aren’t producing any drywall receipts, and no one’s willing to admit what the facility paid to get Paris Hilton to show up for a few minutes Derby Eve.

Everyone’s outraged, and Abramson’s growing list of detractors has a bunch of new ammunition. The Mayor’s race is looking a lot more do-able for potential candidates like Jim King, David Tandy and Greg Fischer. And there’s bound to be a Republican out there ready to step up.

Abramson has promised a decision on his future soon. But right now he’s just hit one in the lake and is scrambling to make par.

Additional Reading: C.D. Kaplan recounts some of the Mayor’s history of love for Cordish. And Eric Crawford explains why Cordish’s track record in places like St. Louis spells more trouble for us.

Louisville opts for more of the same ol' Cordish chain-think.

You work hard for years to cultivate a unique local presence as a bar, restaurant, entertainment venue and retail establishment, then watch as your elected officials reward your efforts by handing millions of dollars to an outside developer to install cookie-cutter chains and corporate lookalikes at the very center of your city.

Or, as the Cordish Company describes it, Center City, coming soon to downtown Louisville, whose metro council belatedly approved the project last week.

As noted among Monday morning's table setters at The 'Ville Voice blog, the Courier-Journal's editorial board, no doubt looking foward to multinational advertising dollars from the likes of Fourth Street Live's current occupants, is bought and paid. Velocity's gonna love it.

Least Surprising Editorial: The C-J Editorial Board really likes the Cordish Center City project, and is handing out free criticism to Republicans for opposing it. The copy reads like it was lifted from a Jerry Abramson speech.

[editorial link at C-J]

The 'Ville Voice also provides this helpful link to video describing the viewpoint of truly local business people.

At WHAS-TV:

The debate went on for months, but now the Cordish Company, the company that built Fourth Street Live, has the green light to start developing the area known as the water company block. That fact has local business owners like Nancy Shepherd, owner of Cafe Metro, concerned.

For the flip side, consider this comment from the discussion board at Robin Garr's Louisville Restaurants Forum:

I think there is a painful reality to deal with here: locally operated and owned small business can't rehabilitate an entire area of downtown, including making Louisville Gardens an up-to-date location, pushing a large tenant into the Starks Building, etc. While I'd prefer that locally owned business take on larger and more important downtown projects, the capital required to do a major task can be huge, and a company like Cordish has the ability to bite off big chunks of downtown development. There are very few companies that do what Cordish does, and we are fortunate to have them as partners in this venture. It doesn't mean that I won't prefer - and frequent - locally owned business, but we also have to be realistic about how, as a community, we can get capital invested into our downtown.

Me? I hate chains. My Philly beer writing buddy Lew Bryson says it best here: Death to Chain Restaurants, and he quotes Arnold Toynbee, to boot:

Civilizations in decline are consistently characterized by a tendency towards standardization and uniformity.