Rye

Rye Restaurant Review:

The 19th-century brick building in NuLu looks historic from the outside, but the interior is elegantly updated and hip. Enter through the long bar lined with bottles not only of Kentucky bourbon, but a fine selection of Rye’s eponymous whiskey, too. (Try it in an Old Fashioned.) Tables in the subtlety lit dining room are European close, so don’t count on your conversation being private. But then, you’ll be concentrating on such dishes as bacon and blackberry salad, smoked salmon toast with avocado, broccoli-pesto tagliatelle and the bone-in rib-eye for two served with addictive triple-cooked fries. The international wine list is shorter than the whiskey list but well-matched to the menu. Servers relish describing the virtues of each dish, and if you can’t decide, try a selection of charcuterie, all made in-house. For dessert, lemon semifreddo is light and not-too-sweet.