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Constraint’s not an operative word at wildly creative Rye on East Market Street.

The octopus I may never see again, but I’m definitely going back to Rye. What will I eat? No idea — and chef Tyler Morris doesn’t know, either. Morris, a veteran chef of Midtown Manhattan kitchens such as Craft and the Breslin, has come to town with native Michael Trager-Kusman, grandson of the late Bernard Trager of Republic Bank. Trager-Kusman, who calls himself Rye’s “proprietor,” returns to Louisville after his passion for food took him from a job with the U.S. Department of the Treasury to a line-cook position in New York.

“Michael came to me (at the Breslin) looking for some experience, saying he was so into food he would work for free,” Morris says. Realizing that Trager-Kusman was “competent enough,” then seeing him “excel” at the Michelin-starred restaurant, Morris started paying Trager-Kusman, then befriended him. Six months later, Morris says, “he finally told me his plan was to learn everything he could to open a restaurant as fast as possible.” This is Trager-Kusman’s goal for Rye: “Cook and serve the best thing every day.” That means giving Morris the freedom to change the menu whenever he wants. “It’s a ‘what we want to do, when we want to do it’ kind of menu,” Morris says. “After service, after clean-up, we sit around and read cookbooks, have kind of like a jazz session. We look in the fridge to see what’s there, or sometimes we just pick an ingredient and go with it.”

Your chance of finding something like the eatery’s coarsely named “F**k Calamari” ($12) depends on the quality of the baby octopus at Rye’s seafood suppliers, plus whether or not somebody feels like making it again. If the cephalopods and the fates align, you might find the crazy salad of potatoes, onions, frisée and sautéed octopus on your plate, with a taste that’s fresh and robust. “Tat’s Michael,” Morris says. “He felt very passionate about that one…and he likes to have fun.”

Not that everything at Rye involves cursing. Service is genial to a fault, one waiter even graciously acknowledging my dining partner’s superiority in identifying Eek-A-Mouse as the reggae artist on Rye’s soundtrack on a recent visit. Later, as Jay-Z pounded us with “Empire State of Mind,” my friend forgot about coolness to get at the last bit of house-made liverwurst on our meat plate (three for $12). I’d already demolished several slices of fat-flecked saucisson sec (a dry sausage) and gob-bled most of a lard-capped crock of creamy and silky rabbit rillettes, so I couldn’t really complain. Plus, it stopped his ranting about Rastafarianism.

Like many of today’s restaurants, Rye respects whatever dining experience you’re after, be it small plates, fine dining or just drinks and bar snacks. Bittners has redesigned the old Hausman Jeep administrative building on Market Street into an inviting, cosmopolitan restaurant with two sections: one dominated by a heavy wood bar under large framed pictures along an exposed brick wall; the other a more traditional dining room with banquettes, tables and a great view of the open kitchen. There’s an extensive cocktail menu, which general manager Erin MacDonald describes as “an extension of our kitchen.” Says Morris: “There is a conscious decision to have the bar and kitchen complement each another and work with our seasonal menu.” A “Rock ‘N Rye” (Bulleit Rye whiskey, rock-candy syrup, orange, lime and blood-orange bitters, $9) certainly was sweet enough for dessert. My “Kentucky Breakfast” (a $9 drink with bacon-infused bourbon) could have used a bit more bacon flavor. Rye’s sea urchin chowder ($15) was a chunky and creamy delight rocking with bacon as a backbeat to its funky tang of fatty urchin, with crisp and salty sea beans adding tart, sassy percussion. I would gladly have it on every visit, but of course on a subsequent trip it was nowhere to be found. Whether a victim of quality control or just Morris’ vicissitude, my new, non-Rasta companion and I found an admirable substitute in a plate of Texas shrimp ($10), spicy with romesco and a cumin marinade. Then a magnificent Milanese pork chop ($18) superseded the sea urchin in my quickly developing pantheon of Rye favorites. Pounded for tenderness instead of circumference (are you listening, Hoosiers?), the panko-crisp pork chop arrived wonderfully sauced with lemon and capers.

On each visit, I have discovered so much to like about Rye’s food: A soft-poached egg with ricotta and broccoli rabe ($10), delicately combining bitter and unctuous, crisp and cream. The brown skin on a tender, spicy and smoky half chicken ($18) crackled with each bite. A not-for-the-faint-of-heart head cheese terrine ($6) offered gelatin-laden goodness for spreading on Blue Dog bread. I wince at the irony, then, of my disappointment with the rye bread on the smoked pastrami sandwich ($11). The hand-sliced, house-cured beef was delicious — smoky, fatty and just a bit hand-carved chewy — but the bread was dry and tasteless, too fragile for the hearty meat and spicy mustard. Trager-Kusman tells me the bread comes from Katz’s, the famed New York deli, but I’d take more of the vinegary and salty homemade pickles over the thin, tough, flown-from-New York slices any day. But, really, why worry? Both the pastrami and the bad bread were gone, man — just gone. Rye’s desserts, like everything, seem to reflect the chefs’ improvisational whims. A sticky toffee sweet-potato spoon bread ($9) was a darkly torched, nut-studded mound on one visit, a delicate pudding decorated with sliced toffee candy on the next.

Whatever — f**k predictability. Just go to Rye and see what’s cooking.

Restaurant dining is generally a private experience that happens to take place in public. Even at fast-food restaurants we queue up with strangers but rarely make eye contact or exchange words.

Traditionally, in the elite reaches of the restaurant world, we dine in a bubble, at judiciously spaced tables, and escape into the night suitably impressed by the well-oiled, uneventful predictability of the event.

That kind of meal has its pleasures. But a new generation of Louisville restaurateurs seems to delight in a new model, coupling excellent chef-driven cuisine with a rambunctiously social environment. A notable example is RYE, newly opened on the East Market Street corridor.

Service standards are quite high — and exceptionally well-informed, given that the menu is constantly changing. And every day seems to bring new and exciting selections. If today’s carbonara or gnocchi disappears, to be replaced by Arctic char with wilted kale ($23) or fettuccine with fennel sausage and arugula pesto ($19), it seems petty to complain.

Besides, that arugula pesto adds a fascinating edge to the creamy white beans that share a plate with the best roasted chicken in the city: a generous portion of juicy, spice-rubbed chicken that’s cooked sous vide to create sublimely tender meat, then finished in a cast-iron skillet — which creates a gorgeous, golden, faintly crusty surface ($18).

A house-smoked pastrami sandwich ($11) didn’t quite work for me: The meat was finely flavored and stacked high, but sliced too thickly to be eaten by hand. But the burger ($11) was like edible art, with every element, from the melted cheddar to the house-made bun, in service to the whole.

The entrees are formidable — and shareable — but you could make a fabulous communal meal from the small plates and sides.

Toasted flatbread is smeared with a faint hint of ricotta, then covered with a moist layer of finely chopped, gently spiced broccoli rabe, and crowned with a soft egg that, when pierced, sauces the combination with gorgeous golden yolk ($10).

The fritto misto is a mix of fresh and pickled vegetables (including crinkly, crunchy nests of kale), all delicately fried in tempura batter ($8), and served with a zingy aioli.

Some sort of croquette seems always available (lamb and wild rice, $11; walleye and wild rice, $11).

And the vegetables and salads ought to make RYE a mandatory visit for anyone interested in plant-based dining.

Fans of bright green Romaine look glorious when touched with buttermilk dressing ($10). The kitchen mixes roasted Brussels sprouts and bright red baby beets with pickled mustard seeds ($7), dishes up carved spears of pan-roasted salsify and seasons it with thyme and lemon ($7), and does miraculous things with bright orange chunks of winter squash, roasting it, sprinkling it with a faintly bitter blue cheese, and giving it a fascinating finish with a hazelnut vinaigrette ($8).

And although pairing pear granita with creamy panna cotta struck as a discordant experiment, both elements were quite fine in their own right.

By STAFF / DECEMBER 22, 2011

Sources are telling Insider Louisville that Rye’s official opening is scheduled for January 4 after a December 29 VIP party. Rye is yet another ambitious NuLu restaurant, and construction has been going full-tilt for the last two months.

The two-story building on the corner of East Market and Campbell streets once housed the Hausman Jeep Eagle dealership, so this is a major re-purposing.

(Be sure to check out the videos, which give you an understanding of the foodie ethos behind the restaurant, as well as an overview of what it’s taken to pull this together.)

The investors told Insider Louisville’s Steve Kaufman back in July that they planned to be open by November. So, this may be the NuLu project to come closest to schedule after long delays for Taco Punk and DECCA.

Our sources say it may turn out to be the most ambitious project yet on a pretty impressive new restaurant/retail corridor. And we hear everyone from neighboring business owners to Louisville Convention and Visitors Bureau officials are waiting to see the results.

So it was with interest that we noted our sources started getting invites last week to the VIP party.

We couldn’t reach Rye’s investors for comment.

We did reach insiders who confirmed the dates and submitted some video from Kertis Creative.

Michael Trager-Kusman, grandson of Bernard Trager, chairman of Republic Bancorp, and Aaron Yarmuth, son of Congressman John Yarmuth, are among the investors. Trager-Kusman has brought in general manager Erin McDonald from Chicago and Chef Tyler Morris from The Breslin in New York.

More as we know more.