The South's plainest miracle: butter, sugar, eggs and a spoon of cornmeal baked to a caramelised custard. Kentucky bakeries riff it into lemon and chocolate, and Lexington buys it by the boxful.
Chess pie travelled into Kentucky with English settlers' custard pies and stuck because it asked nothing of the pantry: butter, sugar, eggs and cornmeal for structure. Nobody agrees on the name, whether from 'chest pie' or 'just pie' said sideways. In Lexington, Missy's Pie Shop, born out of Ramsey's Diner's pie counter in 1989, keeps chess and lemon chess in its rotation of Kentucky pies.
1 editor pick for Chess pie in Lexington, ranked by editorial score. All Lexington signature dishes · Chess pie across every city.