Lexington KY Find

Barrel House Distilling Co.
1200 Manchester St.
Lexington, KY





I am a self-admitted bourbon snob.  The most American Spirit has a great history and it just tastes great.  So when I go to Kentucky I enjoy visiting different distilleries.

Thanks to the rediscovery of bourbon by America (see:  http://fortune.com/2014/02/06/the-billion-dollar-bourbon-boom/) new craft distilleries are popping up.

Unlike beer, it takes years for their product to get to market.  I decided to visit a couple before my flight Sunday.

The first was the Barrel House Distilling Co.  (http://barrelhousedistillery.com/)

This is a four person operation.  They make a very good corn based vodka, but I was disappointed that they were out of bourbon for two weeks.

It was an interesting tour and any one who is interested in home distilling can learn a great deal visiting there.

But what makes the trip worthwhile are the two craft breweries that are at the same site, and the restaurant The Middle Fork Kitchen.

It was Sunday, which means Bloody Mary time.  They make their's with green tomatoes, Hatch Chilies, and other peppers, spicy, but very good...


 The bar is outstanding.

 But their food is truly great.  Priced well too.  I like quirky and unique dishes and this place has some great variations of traditional meals.

I was there during brunch time, this is pork on top of cheese grits with a poached egg.  Damn good.  If I didn't need to run off for my tour, I would have bought the t-shirt.







Alltech Lexington Brewing and Distilling
401 Cross St.
Lexington, KY


Right down the street is the Lexington Brewing and Distilling company.  http://www.kentuckyale.com/

Alltech owns it, so unlike the four person craft distillery, this place is state of the art.  Note if you served in the military, you get to tour for free.  They give you five tokens, and you can use them to try their beers or spirits.

Their best beers are finished in old bourbon barrels.  It bumps the alcohol content from 5% to 8%, but it also enhances the flavors.

I only burned one token on the beer side of the tour, but it was worth it.  If you see this in the store grab it.


The only bad part of visiting Kentucky is the fact I always have to check luggage on the way home because there are just too many good bottles to try and TSA won't allow them in your carry on.

Helpful hint, get some bubble wrap at Walgreen's to protect your stuff from the violent baggage handlers...see:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mU6F12S6q48

Rating:  Seriously Thought About Buying Shirt

Picking Fist Fights in the Bluegrass State

Hall’s on the River
1225 Athens Boonesboro Rd.
Boonesborough, KY




I plead guilty.

I’ll be the first to admit it. I bear an anti-Kentucky prejudice.

Call me a bluegrass bigot.

The quickest way to pick a fist fight in these parts is to tell a Kentuckian that his state isn’t part of the South.

I understand the sensitivity. Who wouldn’t want to be a southerner?

We have nicer weather, tastier food, better music and hotter chicks.

Oh, and we don’t care how many or what types of guns you own. In fact, the more you have, the safer we feel.

So I get it.

But here’s the problem.

Kentucky is NOT a southern state.

Kentucky didn’t secede.

Or sure Kentuckians will whine that their politicians in Frankfort were forced to remain in the union at the point of federal firearms, but still…

…the fact remains, Kentucky never officially joined the Confederacy.

Therefore, Kentucky is NOT a southern state.
That and the fact that unlike every southern state, Kentucky still forces its workers to pay union dues as a condition of employment.

So I don’t care if the Wildcats play football in the SEC. Kentucky isn’t a southern state.

Case closed.

However, as you drive up and down the rolling hills of western Clark county, past the ancient stone walls and picket fences, through horse and cattle farms and by the old leaning red barns that dot the bluegrass fields south of Lexington, even an anti-Kentucky bigot like me has to admit, this sure FEELS like the South.

Tucked down in the bottom of a hollow at the bend of the Kentucky River, you’ll find Hall’s on the River, a quintessential Kentucky culinary landmark that has been serving up the best uniquely Kentucky dishes for decades.

Down here in this part of the Commonwealth, the Southern accents are thicker, the pickup trucks are muddier and the camo trucker caps are worn more sincerely than in vast swaths of Georgia, Alabama or Tennessee.

In fact, as I pulled into Hall’s parking lot I thought for sure I could hear Kentucky kickass-country-rocker Chris Knight singing “River Road” over the ripple of the water flowing by the pilings:

So drive til you can’t drive no more
Til the road runs out and the green water rolls
Think you’ve gone as far as you can go
Well the party’s just getting started on River Road

As if to testify to Kentucky’s southern authenticity, Hall’s menu is stocked with southern fried delicacies.

Frog legs. Catfish. Chicken fried steak. Fried green tomatoes. Sweet tea.

Hall’s is a taste of Old Kentucky.

My waiter said that in the summertime, the catfish on your plate sometimes comes straight out of the river flowing under the floorboards below the restaurant.

No meal at Hall’s can begin without a sample of the restaurant’s world famous beer cheese, a uniquely Kentucky concoction of sharp cheddar cheese, beer, garlic and cayenne pepper.

Spread on Saltine crackers, Hall’s beer cheese is a cheesy, flavorful condiment with a slight kick of spice, perfect to wash down with…

…what else?

Beer.

Somewhat surprising for a rural southern-style joint straight out of a Chris Knight song, Hall’s has a pretty decent beer selection.

Of course you are not allowed to step foot in the Bluegrass State without sampling Kentucky’s famous Bourbon Barrel Ale.

Aged for months in real Kentucky bourbon barrels at a distillery in Lexington, the predominant flavors are oak and vanilla while the malt and hops fade into the background.

Bourbon Barrel Ale packs a hefty punch -- both to your blood stream and your wallet.

Usually served in a ten ounce snifter for close to ten bucks, this is sippin’ beer. But at over 8% alcohol, at least you get some bang for your ten bucks.

I don’t think this is the kind of beer Chris Knight was singing about though.

Well there’s a cinder block juke joint down by the riverside
It’s where I carry my cash from the working week
They got a waitress that will turn your head
Bring you catfish and cornbread
Beer bustin outa the keg like it’s springin a leak

No. But it could very well have been Falls City bustin out of those kegs, an old school Kentucky brew that went extinct for decades and is now making a comeback thanks to some enterprising entrepreneurs in Louisville.

This cloudy pale ale has a nice mildly hoppy flavor as I sipped it admiring the view of the river below.

Also on draft, was Old Man Winter, from one of my favorite breweries in America, Southern Tier.

This microbrewery from Lakewood, New York (Yankees are good at a few things) makes some of the most delicious stouts and hoppy ales that have ever graced my liver.

Both hoppy and malty at the same time, Southern Tier’s Old Man Winter is perhaps the single greatest reason to endure the dark days of winter.

Just to prove to my loyal readers that it is possible for Suit757 to eat fruits and vegetables (as long as they are fried), I ordered a combo of fried green tomatoes and fried banana peppers for an appetizer.

The tomatoes were firm and crisp with just a thin coat of batter and topped with honey mustard and everyone’s favorite condiment -- bacon bits.

Fried banana peppers are another one of those uniquely Kentucky novelties.

These peppers were huge!

Butterflied, battered and fried, they had nice peppery flavor without the sting from the seeds.

Somewhat inexplicably, the dipping sauce provided was a standard issue cocktail sauce. Yuck.

I managed to save room for my entrée, a southern fried combo of catfish and frog legs.

Yes, frog legs.

Meaty, juicy and tender, these appendages came from some mighty large amphibians. Kinda like really tender chicken wings.

Only more rednecky.

Cool.

 

The catfish was pretty bland and dried out, but livened up a bit with a few splashes of Frank’s hot sauce.

On the side came a “tangy slaw” -- a vinegar-based cole slaw that yielded more sweet than tang.

The green beans were prepared just the way I like my vegetables -- spiked with bacon.

The southern-rooted cuisine was matched by the ambiance.

Perched high on stilts way above the Kentucky River, Hall’s has survived numerous floods, fires and other disasters through the generations. A high water mark just below the roof line -- and at least 40 feet above the current river level -- decorates the waiting area.

A cozy fireplace and friendly staff add to the southern hospitality.

So, yeah, I have to admit, Hall’s on the River in central Kentucky has its stilts firmly planted in the South.

Too bad you have to go to that damn Yankee Bluegrass State to get there.

Rating: Seriously Thought About Buying Shirt

Where Pigs Fly

WhaBah! Steakhouse Saloon
2361 Russellville Rd.
Bowling Green, KY

Beer selection: Absolutely nothing out of the ordinary.

Food: Cow and pig grilled over open flame.

Live music, cheap beer and massive quantities of grilled meat.

Heaven?

Not quite. But WhaBah! Steakhouse Saloon just might be the closest thing to it in Bowling Green, Kentucky.

Named after the sound of a motorcycle, WhaBah is a glorified biker bar that happens to serve great steaks.

The bikers tend to keep to themselves out on the open-air back patio. Inside, locals in jeans and farmers caps tap their toes to the guy with the guitar cranking out decent cover versions of popular country songs.

Not bad for a Bowling Green Wednesday night.

Cheap American beer is served by the glass, pitcher and bucket, depending on your preference and number of drinking partners.

When drinking alone, I prefer my beer by the bucket. You get the buy-in-bulk value without your beer getting warm. (Plus it’s just cool to sit there next to a big bucket of long-necks on ice.)

When you are in group, as I was on a recent night with some fellow suits, pitchers are the way to go.

And our waitress did a good job keeping them coming.

WhaBah’s claim to fame around these parts is their giant indoor grill that seems to take up a quarter acre in the middle of the dining hall.

If you’re a meat-obsessed control freak, you can season and grill your own steaks.

Suit757? I’ll just sit right here and drink my beer and let the professionals handle it.

Now, I like steak as much as the next red-blooded heterosexual American male, but what really gets me excited is dead pig.

WhaBah serves up the pig in a variety of ways. It was a real dilemma. A grilled pork shoulder sandwich for $8 or an order of “pork wings” for $16?

Pork wings? Yeah, I couldn’t resist that.

Well, I’m pretty sure these pigs don’t fly. Then again buffalo don’t take flight either. Come to think of it, most of the chicken we eat have never even seen the light of day.

So what’s all this talk about wings?

It turns out, pork wings are hand-held shanks of tender bone-in pork you pick up and eat like Buffalo wings.

These were delicious, grilled over open fire, juicy, tooth-tender and glazed in a lip-smacking BBQ sauce, all layered over a bed of tortilla chips.

My entre also came with an all-you-can-eat salad and baked potato bar, which I skipped because I didn’t want to waste precious stomach space on non-meat filler.

That, and the fact that salad sucks.

The included salad and potato feeding trough might have explained why my pork wings cost twice as much as the Jurassic-sized pork shoulder sandwich, which my fellow suit ordered.

I fought off a serious bout of meat envy.

This thing is a sandwich only in the sense that the two foot long slabs of grilled pork were accompanied by two slices of bread.

That’s like saying my Fruit of the Looms automatically qualify me as an underwear model.

Somehow it just doesn’t quite capture the entire picture.

Just for the entertainment of the rest of us, my fellow suit briefly attempted to pick up his “sandwich” like God intended. Once we all stopped laughing at the absurdity of it all, with meat and drippings flopping everywhere, he put it back on his plate and broke out the knife and fork.

Green with meat envy.

Mental note: next time get the sandwich!

Heaven may not end up resembling Bowling Green, Kentucky, but my guess is there’s going to be grilled meat, beer and good tunes up there somewhere.

In the meantime, a good time biker bar like WhaBah will do just fine.

Rating: Bought the Shirt!

Judy’s Castle Fit For A King

Judy’s Castle
1302 U.S. 32W Bypass
Bowling Green, KY

Beer selection: None.

Food: Good southern cooking.

Kentucky has always suffered a major identity crisis.

Are Kentuckians Yankees? Southerners? Mid-Westerners?

The answer is yes.

A state that shares a border with both Tennessee and Illinois just can’t seem to make up its mind.

During the War Between the States, both the Union and the Confederacy claimed Kentucky. In fact, the central star in the rebel battle flag represented the Confederate Government of Kentucky, while the politicians in the state capital refused to secede.

Was Kentucky a Yankee state? Or a Confederate state? The answer is yes.

Is Kentucky the only Northern state with a Southern accent? Or is Kentucky the only Southern state that lacks a Right to Work law? Again, the answer is yes.

But no one seems to suffer such schizophrenia down here in Bowling Green, the former hub of Kentucky’s Confederate Government. A stone’s throw from the Tennessee line and just an hour drive from the meat-and-three capital of America, Nashville, Bowling Green’s roots are firmly planted in Southern soil.

If you doubt me, just carry your growling stomach to Judy’s Castle, a 43-year-old pre-interstate institution of good old Southern cooking that dates to a time when U.S. 32 Bypass was the only way to get from Alabama to Indiana.

A classic Nashville-style meat-and-three with the added luxury of a barbeque pit next door, Judy’s Castle is the place to go in Bowling Green for Southern-style breakfast or country-cooked lunch.

“No hassle at the castle” is the motto.

My “meat and three” were the pork chop with black eyed peas, sweet potatoes and baked beans.

My lunch came with a pair of the most perfect freshly baked biscuits you’ll ever find. Crunchy on the outside. Soft, warm and buttery inside.

Pork chops can be tricky. I’ve had way too many that were over-cooked, tough, dry, tasteless, or all of the above.

I’m happy to report, Judy’s Castle does pork chops right. Well seasoned and juicy, the meat in my meat-and-three was pork perfection.

The vegetables were excellent also, especially the well seasoned black eyed peas and the sweet, onion and pepper studded baked beans.

But, you know what I’ve found over these years of traveling Southern back-roads? No matter how good the meat and slow-cooked vegetables, the highlight of any meat-and-three is…

…Pie!

My friendly waitress told me her favorite is the peanut butter/chocolate pie. She even offered to heat it up a bit for me.

I’m glad I took her advice.

A half inch layer of creamy peanut butter under another half inch of warm chocolate under a three inch mound of delicate meringue conspired to create one of my top ten desserts of all time.

The rest of the Commonwealth of Kentucky might be on medication for schizophrenia, but one thing can be stated with certainty here in Bowling Green: Judy’s Castle is the king of Kentucky Southern cooking.

Rating: Bought the Shirt!

Too Much of a Good Thing

Molly Malone’s Irish Pub
933 Baxter Ave.
Louisville, KY
Visited October 27, 2010

Beer selection: Decent variety of local and imported beers.

Food: Traditional pub grub.


Sausage and Irish Pubs. There are few other words in the English language that bring such a quick smile to my face.

I eat sausage for breakfast, lunch, dinner and dessert.

My Suit757 philosophy is too much of a good thing is never enough.

But, you know what? I may have met my match when I ordered Molly Malone’s Scotch Eggs.

Scotch Eggs in general are somewhat of an acquired taste. Typically, they consist of a hard boiled egg, covered in a thin layer of sausage and breadcrumbs and deep fried. At most English and Irish Pubs, they are served sliced up with a dipping sauce.

Molly Malone’s version?

Two gigantic Tyrannosaurus Rex egg-sized balls of sausage drizzled with a tasty tomato aioli.

Each “egg” was really just a soft-ball-sized mound of seasoned fried sausage with a hard-boiled egg core.

It was delicious, but, dare I say…a bit much?

I had to consume a half a pound of sausage before I could even mine down into the egg. Mouthful after mouthful of pure unadulterated fried sausage.

Half of one dinosaur egg into my lunch and this protein junky was on the verge of over-dosing.

My arteries my never recover.

Clearly, this dish is not meant to be a lunch entre. It should be ordered as an appetizer for a table of eight. Each egg quartered – which would consist of a two-inch thick crust of pure sausage and a quarter of an egg -- would satiate just about any protein-starved football team.

But two pounds of sausage for one Suit’s lunch? Even Suit757 can’t pull that one off.

That’s the trouble with “too much of a good thing is never enough”. Because every once in a long while, too much is…well…too much.

Rating: Would Wear Shirt If It Were Free.

Election Day BBQ in the Land of “The Free”

Smokey Pig Bar-B-Q
2520 Louisville Rd.
Bowling Green, KY
Visited November 2, 2010

Beer selection: Bud Light, Miller Lite, etc., etc. (except on Election Day).

Food: Genuine Kentucky Barbeque.



Barbeque is one of the greatest things in life.

Right up there with hot summer days at the beach, cold beer and six foot blondes. Oh, and elections where entire waves of Socialist, nanny-state, gun-grabbing baby killers go down to defeat.

Makes life worth living.

Part of the joy of barbeque is the wide range of regional variations on this ancient smoky pursuit.

Beef in the west. Pork in the east. Ribs in between. Vinegar in North Carolina. Mustard in South Carolina. Tomato everywhere else.

But that’s just the beginning.

If you dig a little deeper into “BBQ Nation”, get off the main highway and really study it, you find all sorts of different local specialties as they relate to smoked meat.

Like here in south-central Kentucky, where you can get your barbeque “dipped” in hot sauce. All along the middle part of the Kentucky/Tennessee state line, you’ll find BBQ joints serving “dipped” BBQ.

The Smokey Pig here in Bowling Green, perched precariously on a cliff over the Green River, is a perfect example.

Usually, the barbequed meat that is being dipped in these parts is sliced pork or a pork chop.

But since the true test of a newfound barbeque joint is just a simple shredded pork sandwich, that’s what I ordered – with a side of Smokey Pig’s famous hot dipping sauce.

It was a good choice too – one of the best BBQ sandwiches I’ve had. Honestly, it didn’t even need any sauce, already moist and well saturated in a tomato-based concoction. But being Suit757, I couldn’t resist.

The little Styrofoam container of orange hot sauce contained an eye-popping mixture of cayenne and black pepper. One dip of the meat in that stuff and my whole head was tingling.

The hot sauce really reminded me of the delicious hot sauces used on fried chicken at places like Price’s in Nashville or Keaton’s in North Carolina. The idea of applying it to pork is a mind-blowingly good idea.

I also had to try a bit of the dark sweet sauce already on the table. And you know what? That was a pretty good combination. The sweet and the hot sauces really counter-balanced each other and complimented the smoky flavors of the pork.

As hot as that sauce was, I could really use a beer, I thought.

But if the barbeque hadn’t already blown my mind, what came out of the friendly young guy’s mouth at the counter definitely would have.

“I can’t sell you a Miller Lite until the polls close in an hour,” he said.

Huh?

“It’s Election Day,” he helpfully reminded me.

Uh, yeah. I’m well aware of that.

What the HELL does that have to do with me downing a Miller Lite with my barbeque sandwich???

“Oh, I guess it’s because they don’t want some guy to say ‘Vote for my guy if I buy you a beer,’” he explained.

Instantly recognizing the ridiculousness of what just came out of his mouth, he quickly added, “Like they can’t do the same thing with a pack of cigarettes.”

“Don’t give them any ideas,” I immediately replied.

Wow. Let’s think about this for a minute.

Kentucky politicians are so corrupt they have to stop themselves from buying votes by banning the sale of alcohol on Election Day to all law-abiding citizens.

As my fellow soul-mate in sarcasm, Suit69, likes to say, “Clearly, the terrorists hate us because we are free.”

Rating: Bought the Shirt!