A 1980s offshoot of Casa Grisanti serving "new American cuisine," the building with a dramatic center atrium is now the site of the Louisville Bar Association. Longtime Louisville Magazine editor Jack Welch wrote: "Sixth Avenue was known for its fantastic and varied seafood dishes. Then something happened internally and it swung toward a Southwest-influenced menu. ... And then, in the midst of a widening upscale restaurant boom, it was gone."

In 1974, 21-year-old Kathy Cary, fresh from Cordon Bleu cooking classes in Washington, D.C., headed up the kitchen of this trendy restaurant in the Weissinger-Gaulbert Building, receiving great accolades. Changing the lunch and dinner menu every two weeks, Cary, who lived in an apartment upstairs, said in an interview with StyleBlueprint: "After a year I couldn't take it anymore. I had no life." Cary, who went on to become a godmother to Louisville's local and farm-to-table scene, added that she "made a decision right then that if I ever owned a restaurant I would never manage it as poorly as the owners of The Fig Tree did."

Open Fall 2005 to Fall 2008, this restaurant concept from Bim Deitrich and Allen Button offered great Italian wines and excellent service—unfortunately a bit before the East Market scene really took off. [Photo: Louisville.com]

In the "greed is good" atmosphere of Reagan's 1980s, one could feel good about oneself by eating at a progressive church, knowing that whatever profits resulted from your meal would fund a Montessori school. Proudly named after the ethnic history of the neighborhood, the Afro-German Tearoom served an eclectic menu including crab cakes, pimento cheese sandwiches and apple crisp in the rectory of St. Martin of Tours Catholic Church.

This early NuLu place opened in 2009 with great fanfare, and shared locavore food sources and long lines on E. Market Street with Bruce Ucan's Mayan Cafe. Social at first, the restaurant came to an unsocial end in 2011, when landlord Gill Holland and co-owners Steven and Michael Ton locked horns with chef/co-owner Jason Lewellyn. The building is now home to La Coop: Bistro a Vins. [Photo: Examiner]

What was probably Louisville's first gastropub opened in March 2010 in Butchertown, and was written up by the New York Times a few months later. The restaurant came to a tumultuous end, with chef/owner Joseph Frase's issues covered extensively by Eater. [Photo: bourbonblog.com]

Lynn Winter still tells people her eclectic restaurant isn't closed, but merely awaiting a buyer who can resuscitate her "brand" of a hipsterized Cracker Barrel offering a "world of swirl" (souvenirs) with dolled-up diner food.

Anthony Lamas and partner Jun Eugenio opened Jicama Grill in 2000 to great acclaim. The partnership came to an end in a public feud in 2005, with Lamas opening Seviche at the same spot a few months later. [Photo: Chef Magazine]

Allo offered some of Louisville's first pizzas cooked in a wood oven. It also boastsd a beautiful outdoor dining area encircled by wisteria and a nice selection of Italian wines. Now it's Vint, where you can get espresso. [Photo: Active Diner]

Anoosh Shariat took over what began as an Indian restaurant and ran it eponymously from 1993 to 2003. The menu still exists online and still looks fairly modern, with vegetarian options long before they were anything but an afterthought at most other fine dining restaurants.

From 1998 to 2003, Louisville restaurant legend Bim Deitrich held court at his eponymous restaurant in the old Crescent Theater in St. Matthews. The bar was the place to see and be seen. And the restaurant, which looked down on an open kitchen where the screen had once been, turned out reliably interesting food such as a Bibb salad with blue cheese and spicy candied nuts. [Photo: Cinema Treasures]