Fun In Louisville with Chef Bobby Benjamin

Friends Drift Inn Real Life and Chefs

UPDATE 2016: Bobby is now at Butchertown Grocery Louisville

Chef Bobby Benjamin at La Coop: Bistro à Vins Louisville KY

Back in the spring, Rhoda and I made a trip to Louisville to see Chef Anthony Lamas at a Guerilla Cuisine Event held at Matt Jamie’s Bourbon Barrel Foods warehouse. It was a fun night, winding up at Meet Meat with some of the Louisville food crowd.

In the semi-private speakeasy we laughed reveling in some of Kentucky’s finest.

I have a rule about taking photos after covering an assigned event. Chefs need time to relax; so do the Pointy Toed Shoes Sisters. No photos. Around the table I knew almost everyone except the handsome guy with the vegetable tattoos.

“Oh that’s nobody” Chef Lamas said with a wicked smile playing at his lips.

That “nobody” was Bobby Benjamin former executive chef of the Seelbach’s Oakroom and the soon to chief at La Coop: Bistro à Vins.

Nobody? The two chefs played a good joke on me!

Fast forward some six months, and Rhoda and I found ourselves back in the River City sitting down with Chef Bobby Benjamin. He gave a great interview.

The thing is my newspaper editor prefers food stories to include photos of food.

Therein is the rub. The stove hood went down. Bobby was stressed. No stove hood means no cooking. That’s not a good thing on a Friday night in Louisville, and we surely felt Bobby’s pain.

My editor says a loaf of French bread and a sip of bourbon does not a newspaper story make. More photos must be obtained. But in the meantime, here’s a few pictures from the behind the scenes.