Hillbilly Tea in Louisville:

Our first stop after arriving in Louisville was the the BBC brewpub. We grabbed some dinner and a few pints before heading back to the hotel to unpack. Side note: BBC’s Dark Star Porter had David talking about it for days. We mentioned to our server that we were visiting for the week and where we were thinking about heading next.

Trying to be helpful, he steered us away from the 4th Street live district (from what we gathered, 4th street live is to Louisville as Cadillac Ranch is to Cincinnati) and recommended we visit Hillbilly Tea, among other places.

As he was working in a brewpub, he already had street cred in our book. And if there is one thing that people should do more of on vacation, it’s listen to the locals. We’ve found it’s pretty easy to tell if someone is excited about their city and sharing its best places. And if you take their advice, you might find yourself somewhere that wasn’t in any guidebook.

David and I have met a few visitors to Cincinnati, and we always try to steer them to spots we think they would enjoy. So with that in mind, we took his recommendation to visit.

And we were not disappointed. The atmosphere is a lot like Take the Cake Café, where you order at the counter, then have a seat to wait for your food. A large variety of teas are available, which are served piping hot in a mason jar with a handle.

I chose to go with the pulled pork “pie’ ($6) with a side of pit roasted sweet potatoes ($3). David got the bison liver bites ($5) and the buffalo billy burger ($6)--served on a biscuit.

The pulled pork was tender and delicious, and went surprisingly well with the bun it was served on. Rather than a traditional style bun, the barbecue was accompanied by a choux like pastry. The sweet potatoes were charred and delicious and tasted like they had been made with lots of butter.

Moar butter plz

David liked his bison liver bites, served with house made tartar sauce, though I didn’t try any. His bison burger, which was just the right size after the bison liver bites, was served with crispy sweet potato chips, which we also enjoyed.

I liked Hillbilly tea a lot. If we were locals, I think that we’d hang out there often. And we’d probably start drinking a lot more tea, though apparently Friday and Saturday nights dinner is BYOB!