Hopcat offers food, fun and faith in the environment
By Patrick McDowell
With the fall semester winding down, students need a place to escape the daily stresses and due dates of papers and exams. For Bellarmine University students, the vibrant restaurants and bars of Bardstown Road can be just the escape they are looking for, with one stand-out location in particular, HopCat.
From the outside, the massive two-story complex seems like the kind of place that bohemians and hippies may frequent, with band flyers and stickers posted on every window. However, I assure you, this is the kind of place that has something for everybody.
HopCat does an excellent job of keeping everyone entertained with activities from basketball hoops to video games and cornhole.
It’s not all fun and games, though. There is one aspect that HopCat focuses on above all else: beer. Its website says, “At HopCat Louisville we’re creating Kentucky’s largest hub for craft beer with 132 craft taps. We’ll even be brewing some beers in house in a small-batch brewery downstairs.”
There are certainly plenty of choices at HopCat if you are just stopping by for a drink, but you would be missing out if you didn’t take the time to have a bite to eat. As a restaurant employee and avid chef in training, I found the food to be the best aspect, although the Rhinegeist Cheetah was delicious.
I was greeted with a complimentary order of cosmik fries with queso dip, something that scored HopCat brownie points immediately. As one of the world’s biggest fans of french fries, I can be hard to impress when it comes to the spuds. I will be the first to say these are some of the best french fries I have eaten.
When I go to a new place, a practice I have is ordering something that everyone makes, such as chicken wings, and then ordering something I can’t get anywhere else.
The appetizer I chose was the spinach, stout and artichoke dip. This is one of my favorite appetizers, and HopCat put a personal twist on it that made it a step above the rest. With the simple addition of hot sauce, HopCat kicked a common appetizer into uncommon territory.
Jessica Day, my girlfriend and fellow college student, ate alongside me. “The spinach dip is one of the best I have ever had,” Day said. “I got the chicken tacos for my entrée, and I ate until I couldn’t get down another bite.”
For my own meal, I had the Madtown grilled cheese sandwich. At first glance, this may seem like an item I could get at many different locations, though HopCat’s blend of cheeses and choice of sourdough bread isn’t the only thing that makes this sandwich different.
The inclusion of apple slices on the sandwich was something I was hesitant about, but I grew to love it after the first bite. In addition to the sandwich, I got a side of the tomato bisque, which made the meal all the more cozy on the cold afternoon of my visit.
Though this restaurant impressed me in every aspect, there was one thing that stood out above all else. The restaurant has taken a stance against single-use plastics and has devoted itself to using biodegradable to-go materials, an option I know is not always the easiest or cheapest.
I enjoyed my trip to HopCat, and I know you will, too. HopCat is located at 1064 Bardstown Road. The restaurants hours are 11 a.m. to midnight most days and Fridays and Saturdays from 11 a.m. to 2 a.m. last call.
Visit HopCat on the at https://hopcat.com, on their Facebook page, or on Twitter @HopCat.