Late-night food and top-notch drinks: Here's how the Highlands Bar and Grill is standing out

David Theilen and Cort Muller met nearly five years ago at Diamond Station, a neighborhood bar on Bardstown Road. In November, Diamond Station closed its doors for good, but Theilen and Muller took over the lease of the space, deciding to try their hand at owning and operating a restaurant and bar.

The duo renamed the bar Highlands Bar and Grill and officially opened on Feb. 23. Prior to being co-owners of a bar, both had spent considerable time serving and managing at other bars in the area. Theilen spent time at Ruth's Chris Steak House, the Outlook Inn and O'Shea's Irish Pub, among others. Muller has been a bartender at the now Highlands Bar and Grill location since 2017, working five days a week, 10 to 12 hours a day.

"Between Dave and I, there are around 30 years of bar industry experience," Muller told the Courier Journal. "The things we have learned in those years will help us to provide a safe, fun and clean place for the local Louisville community."

One of their first tasks as bar owners was to rehab the bar and restaurant, located at 2280 Bardstown Road. Theilen who owns Theilen Construction, was able to get his crew of five out to the property with ease.

"A lot of things needed to be updated and replaced and brought to our standards," Theilen said. "So, it took a few months to get it together."

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They redid the bathrooms and the back bar and bar top, reworked all the beer lines to keep the tap chilled, painted the interior, completed some rewiring and added new lighting, restructured the kitchen and added a service window, and did some exterior work on the siding and gutters.

"Nothing is ever as it seems ... turnkey bar is what we thought when we signed the lease, and it wasn't by any means," Theilen said.

The bar will offer traditional bar food and appetizers, but Theilen said the freshness and quality of food will set them apart from other local joints.

"Something that we do a little differently is we hand cut all of our chicken, we hand bread everything, and all of our sauces are made in-house by me and one other guy. All of our dressings are handmade from family recipes like my mom and my grandma," Theilen said.

On top of making many dishes fresh in-house daily, the bar will open at 3 p.m. and serve food until midnight on weeknights and until 2 a.m. on weekends.

"The good thing is we have late-night food," Theilen said.

The bar will serve a variety of drinks, from chocolate beers and sour beers to fruity cocktails and bourbon.

"We just have a wide selection of everything. I'm not going to call us a beer bar, or a bourbon bar or anything like that. We're a neighborhood bar," Theilen said.

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The two are embodying the "neighborhood bar" vibe by providing the community with a gathering place. During the recent storms that caused mass power outages across the city, Theilen and Muller opened the bar up to people in need of hot food and a place to charge electronic devices.

"We want to have a lot of friends in the neighborhood, a place for everybody to kind of congregate ... we just want to help out the community as much as possible," Theilen said.

As the partners look to the future, they are excited to have made the leap from customers and employees to bar owners.

"The best part about being a bar in the highlands is that we have a lot of great examples of how to be a neighborhood bar and sustain the business," Muller said. "We find it a privilege to join this group of businesses and we hope to continue to learn from them and help support one another by bringing more people to this great neighborhood."

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Contact reporter Olivia Evans at oevans@courier-journal.com or on Twitter at @oliviamevans_

This article originally appeared on Louisville Courier Journal: Highlands Bar and Grill replaces former Diamond Station in Louisville