Review: Maggie's Neighborhood Bar and Grill

(Credit: Joseph Lord)

On more than one occasion, this Bar Hopper has had out-of-town friends compliment Louisville’s drinking and dining scene, specifically, for its diversity. Now, the compliment sometimes has a well-veiled backhandedness, as if a rinky-dinky town like Louisville shouldn’t have lots of types of bars. It’s like Louisville should just be dusty old bars with mechanical bulls and Bud Light. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

Here is the serious critique of the bar scene — it’s beautifully diverse, but only in spots. Downtown has the sexy clubs, Baxter Avenue has the Irish pubs, Germantown has the beer-crazy dives. But Fern Creek, Shively and Jeffersontown are mostly populated by sports bars and neighborhood hangouts. Those happen to be this Bar Hopper’s favorites, mind you, but can’t there be a classy meeting place without the traveling and parking adventures?

Well, yes. The beautiful thing is that there are unknown gems spread about Metro Louisville, and it’s just a matter of finding one. Recently, I found Maggie’s Bar and Grille.

There is no “scene” around Maggie’s. Across the street, a small shop sells playground equipment. You’ll find plenty of churches and auto mechanics, but the closest lively place is a nearby J.Gumbo’s. The restaurant sits in a tiny shopping center off Taylorsville Road. A fine patio sits by the entrance, with well-kept patio tables and a classy gate, I guess to keep out the riffraff or something.

Maggie’s has the appearance and ambiance of a fine bar and restaurant, like something you’d expect to find downtown. It’s almost weird that a fine non-chain joint would be in the suburbs, but it’s also fantastic. The lights above each table have beautiful glass coverings and there’s a fireplace. Each booth has a small TV, ostensibly for viewing sports, but this is certainly no sports bar. It’s a nearby place where wistful city-dwellers stuck in the ’burbs can take a date without feeling uncreative or cheap. The bar is in the middle of the room, a big and attractive piece of woodwork surrounded by cushy stools.

 Maggie’s has a nice selection of beer on tap — Sam Adams, Harp, Guinness, Blue Moon and Kentucky Ale, plus the standard domestics by bottle. A beer will set you back $2.75 for domestics and $3.50 for imports — not cheap by suburb stands — but happy hour runs each weekday from 4 p.m. to 7 p.m. and then from 9 p.m. to close. Each Wednesday, Maggie’s offers half-off on bottles of wine.

The restaurant serves sandwiches, Italian dishes and steaks, ranging from $8 for a honey chicken salad sandwich to $20 for a New York strip. Bar Hoppers will be more interested in the appetizer menu — potato skins, quesadillas and wings, mostly in the $8 or $9 range. Not cheap, perhaps, but it’s real restaurant food instead of a fryer operated by a bartender. The clientel trends older, but the place is not stodgy. It could be that the young crowds are just not expecting a nice non-chain bar and grill outside the Watterson Expressway.

So consider Maggie’s for dates and meeting dive-averse friends — don’t let the Highlands and downtown have all the fun.

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