Thunder kicks off the Kentucky Derby Festival, but when you have access to some of the best parties, it's best enjoyed from the Indiana side of the river.

It's hard to imagine a place truer to the "neighborhood restaurant" concept than Hammerheads.

Forty- three years ago, GI-turned-GE engineer Winston Shelton designed the machines that continue to fry KFC's chicken. Today, at 90, he's still innovating for the food-service industry.

I traveled to Cuba in 1998 and, at the tables of several families there, tasted food I still savor: pork marinated in fresh orange juice, cumin and garlic; a simple breakfast of crispy Cuban bread and newly laid eggs purloined from hens cooped outside kitchen windows. Those memories made me wonder whether Marcos Lorenzo and Fernando Martinez would succeed when they opened their Cuban restaurant, Havana Rumba, in St. Matthews in 2004.

Norton Commons’ Tea Station Chinese Bistro delivers consistency and much more to the neighborhood’s “New Urbanism” picture.