story by Donna Hecker & photography by Talitha Schroeder

Two halves of a culinary whole coexist on a spare street corner in Louisville’s Butchertown. Blocks away from the bustling tourism center populated by bourbon-themed bars and restaurants is a nondescript building with big things going on inside.

The part you can see from the street is luxe – burnished leather chairs at sleek wood tables, emerald velvet bar stools facing a marble-tiled backsplash, elegant bronze pendants – an intimate jewel box of a dining room.

But the real center of attention is the triple-door glass cabinet every diner passes by on the way to their table. Filled with whole ribeyes and porterhouses slowly aging over blocks of Himalayan pink salt, it’s a real-life window into curing, the process by which meats are preserved and enhanced by the application of salt and time.

Behind that glass treasure cabinet, and down a short hall, is another room, sterile and private and dedicated to pork. Where Kentucky-raised hogs are transformed into hams, and coppa, and chorizo, and a delicacy called culatello, similar to prosciutto but rarer and more prized. This is the home of Alvio’s Cuban Meats, and curing starts here, too.

Alvio’s and its sophisticated sibling, Cured Restaurant and Salumeria, are owned by Alvio and Elaisy Lapinet. Together the businesses anchor the ground floor of 637 E. Main – and Alvio and Elaisy’s dreams for themselves and their two young children, Liam and Charlotte.

Alvio began curing and selling hams as a teenager in his Cuban hometown. Elaisy (Ela), who happened to be from the same town, had moved to Louisville with her mother at the age of seven. Eventually they met through mutual friends on Ela’s visits back home but didn’t really connect until Alvio came to the U.S. in 2015.

With smiles and gentle gibes and teasing contradictions, they shared a love story shaped by texts and missed signals and a Facebook friendship that eventually became one in real life.

Alvio – She visited friends in Cuba in 2014 and we met; it’s a small town. And after I came to the U.S., we became Facebook friends. She texted me sometimes. Elaisy breaks in – I would be like, hey, I'm gonna be in Miami but he didn't catch on. Alvio – I was being dense.

But by March 2019, they were a couple. And on March 16, 2020, when Covid officially came to Kentucky, Alvio lost his job as a restaurant manager. Their wedding, planned for the first of April, had to be indefinitely postponed. And Ela found out she was pregnant with Liam.

Ela, who was able to work from home in her job as a data analyst, encouraged Alvio to start making hams again in their basement. For Alvio, who’d left a meat business behind in Cuba, it was like starting over again someplace else with new ingredients. I was a little scared, you know, but the products were good.

So they navigated Covid, and a postponed wedding, and Liam’s arrival; and with encouragement from friends, folks at the Kentucky Department of Agriculture, and others, Alvio honed his skill at curing hams while Ela worked on a business plan.

In December 2022, after an initial funding setback and the challenge of finding an appropriately zoned site, they signed a lease and started the months-long process of building out the two businesses.

Cured Restaurant and Salumeria opened on October 11, 2023. The following July, Alvio’s Cuban Meats received USDA approval to sell ready-to-eat meat products wholesale; Alvio’s Vicky deli hams, smoked pork ribs and other meats can now be found in over a dozen Louisville groceries. Alvio’s Old World style, age-cured meats like coppa and culatello, which require lots of time and space, are produced in limited quantities for the restaurant side only.

It’s taken a while but Ela and Alvio are proud of the progress they’ve made and the challenges they overcame along the way. When they first became a couple, she asked if he wanted help going to college.

And I say no, help me open my meat plant, my own meat company. And she said yes.

I wish I would’ve told him to go to school. Ela teased. We are happy but it’s been really hard.

Alvio holds up his hands, clasped tightly together. We are good….we have a good connection.

And so do their conjoined businesses. The meat side has finally joined the restaurant side in providing a steady revenue stream and Alvio and Ela are ready to explore new horizons.

Our goal in the next six months is to grow our wholesale business, and in the next one to two years to establish a larger processing facility where we can continue to grow wholesale as well as our retail.

We want to be able to teach people and speak to the product, so people can hear our story – that this is a Kentucky Proud product that we process ourselves.

Alvio and Ela are pursuing their American dream, serving up the flavors of home to their fellow Cuban-Kentuckians, perfecting Old World charcuterie for their restaurant patrons, and growing two children and two businesses all at the same time.

And making us all Kentucky proud.

Cured with Love

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