The Best Places in Phoenix Hill & Butchertown

1. USA Today Restaurants of the Year
2. Eater The 18 Best Louisville Restaurants

Edward Lee's modern Korean steakhouse in Butchertown gives you a choice: sit at a regular table and work through kimbap, bibimbap, and Korean barbecue, or claim a grill table and cook your own meat while the kitchen handles the rest. Weekend brunch adds a dim-sum-style option to the mix. The taiyaki, fish-shaped and filled with chocolate pecan pie and yuja cream, lands somewhere between Seoul and the South, which is more or less Lee's whole thesis.

1. USA Today Restaurants of the Year
2. Eater The 18 Best Louisville Restaurants

The hummus comes with schug, herb tehina, and enough conviction to make every other hummus in town feel like it needs to apologize. This is a casual Eastern Mediterranean restaurant drawing from Palestine, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, and Israel, with a menu that roams widely and settles nowhere predictable. The chef behind it earned a James Beard nomination for Best Chef Southeast. Come hungry enough for babka.

1. James Beard Awards 2025 · Nominee · Best Chef: Southeast · Noam Bilitzer
2. Eater The 18 Best Louisville Restaurants
3. James Beard Awards 2026 · Semifinalist · Best Chef: Southeast · Noam Bilitzer

1. AAA Approved
2. Eater The 18 Best Louisville Restaurants

1. AAA Three Diamonds

1. AAA Approved

1. Eater The 18 Best Louisville Restaurants

The name undersells it: Butchertown Grocery Bakery is a breakfast and lunch spot where the pastry case gets equal billing with the sandwich menu. The wagyu pastrami sandwich with hot mustard and a runny egg has the kind of following that fills tables before noon. Weekend mornings bring out the rolled croissants in rotating flavors, the kind of thing people plan their Saturdays around without quite admitting it.

1. Eater The 18 Best Louisville Restaurants

1. Esquire The Best New Restaurants in America