The plates that define Lexington: what they are, and where to eat the canonical version.
The plates that define Lexington. what they are, where they came from, and where to eat the canonical version.
Central Kentucky's sharp, beer-spiked cheddar spread, served cold with crackers, celery and pickles. Invented near Winchester in the 1930s, it opens meals across Lexington from taverns to steakhouse bread baskets.
Where: Winchell's
Price: $7-12 as a starter
An open-faced turkey sandwich buried in Mornay sauce, broiled until bubbling and crossed with bacon and tomato. Born at Louisville's Brown Hotel, it became lunch-counter canon across Kentucky, Lexington included.
Where: Ramsey's Diner, Columbia Steak House
Price: $12-18
Kentucky's slow-simmered hunter's stew: several meats, a garden of vegetables and a long afternoon in the pot. Racetrack kitchens and church fundraisers keep it alive, and Stella's ladles it year-round in Lexington.
Where: Stella's Kentucky Deli
Price: $6-12 a bowl
Breaded, deep-fried lamb testicles with cream gravy, a stockyard-era delicacy that central Kentucky never gave up. Columbia Steak House has kept them on its Lexington menu since the 1940s.
Where: Columbia Steak House
Price: $10-16
Kentucky's boozy candy: bourbon-soaked sugar and pecan centres dipped in dark chocolate. Invented in Frankfort in the 1930s, they anchor every Lexington holiday tin and candy counter.
Price: $2-4 apiece, $15-30 a box
Bourbon, sugar, mint and a mountain of crushed ice in a frosted cup, Kentucky's ceremonial race-day drink. Lexington pours them all spring, from Keeneland weekends to downtown bourbon bars.
Price: $10-16
Salt-cured Kentucky country ham fried hard and deglazed with black coffee into a sharp, thin gravy. A Bluegrass farm breakfast that Lexington's butchers and biscuit kitchens keep in circulation.
Where: Critchfield Meats Family Market, Crust
Price: $8-15 at breakfast
A souffle-soft cornmeal pudding served by the spoonful, richer than cornbread and older than the Commonwealth. Berea's Boone Tavern made it famous, and Kentucky tables still pass it at holidays.
Price: $4-8 as a side
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.
Where: Missy's Pie Shop
Price: $4-6 a slice, $15-25 whole
Bone-in chicken brined, dredged and fried in a cast-iron skillet, the dish Kentucky exported to the world. Lexington kitchens fold it into everything from bourbon-glazed dinners to hot chicken sandwiches.
Where: Azur Restaurant & Patio, Distilled on Jefferson, The Blue Heron Steakhouse
Price: $14-24
Winchester's gingery citrus soda, bottled since 1926 and still the Bluegrass region's default soft drink. Lexington drinks it cold from the bottle, in cocktails and even in barbecue glazes.
Price: $2-3 a bottle
An amber ale aged for weeks in freshly emptied bourbon barrels, picking up vanilla, oak and warmth. Brewed at Lexington Brewing & Distilling, it is the city's signature glass of beer.
Where: Lexington Brewing & Distilling Co.
Price: $6-9 a pour
Central Kentucky's sharp, beer-spiked cheddar spread, served cold with crackers, celery and pickles. Invented near Winchester in the 1930s, it opens meals across Lexington from taverns to steakhouse bread baskets.
History: Johnnie Allman began serving cousin Joe Allman's beer cheese at his Driftwood Inn on the Kentucky River near Winchester in the late 1930s, a salty, cayenne-hot spread designed to keep customers drinking. Hall's on the River now operates on the Driftwood site, Winchester runs a 13-stop Beer Cheese Trail, and the spread long ago colonised Lexington menus, where it arrives with saltines and celery before dinners and ballgames alike.
Where to try it: Winchell's
Watch out for: Dairy, Gluten
An open-faced turkey sandwich buried in Mornay sauce, broiled until bubbling and crossed with bacon and tomato. Born at Louisville's Brown Hotel, it became lunch-counter canon across Kentucky, Lexington included.
History: Chef Fred K. Schmidt built the first Hot Brown at Louisville's Brown Hotel in 1926 to feed late-night dancers, and the broiled turkey-and-Mornay construction spread across the Commonwealth within a generation. In Lexington it settled into the diner repertoire: Ramsey's serves a benchmark version over toast with cream gravy and bacon, and Columbia Steak House keeps one on its 1948-vintage menu.
Where to try it: Ramsey's Diner, Columbia Steak House
Watch out for: Dairy, Gluten
Kentucky's slow-simmered hunter's stew: several meats, a garden of vegetables and a long afternoon in the pot. Racetrack kitchens and church fundraisers keep it alive, and Stella's ladles it year-round in Lexington.
History: Burgoo grew out of 19th-century Kentucky barbecues and political rallies, where whatever meat the county could muster went into communal kettles that simmered for the better part of a day. The stew became racetrack food along the way and remains a Keeneland tradition. In Lexington, Stella's Kentucky Deli keeps burgoo on the menu year-round, built on beef, chicken and pork from neighbouring farms with a chicken-stock base.
Where to try it: Stella's Kentucky Deli
Breaded, deep-fried lamb testicles with cream gravy, a stockyard-era delicacy that central Kentucky never gave up. Columbia Steak House has kept them on its Lexington menu since the 1940s.
History: Lamb fries came out of Kentucky's stockyard economy, when Lexington's sale barns left offal cheap and plentiful and frugal kitchens breaded and fried what the trade left behind. Columbia Steak House, feeding Lexington since 1948, made them a house signature alongside the Nighthawk Special, and old-line Bluegrass restaurants still serve them thin-sliced, crisp and with cream gravy for dipping.
Where to try it: Columbia Steak House
Watch out for: Gluten, Dairy
Kentucky's boozy candy: bourbon-soaked sugar and pecan centres dipped in dark chocolate. Invented in Frankfort in the 1930s, they anchor every Lexington holiday tin and candy counter.
History: Ruth Hanly Booe of Frankfort's Rebecca Ruth Candy is credited with inventing the bourbon ball in the late 1930s, after a chance remark about pairing her candy with Kentucky whiskey. The combination of bourbon fondant, pecan and dark chocolate became the Commonwealth's definitive confection, boxed for Derby parties, Keeneland meets and Christmas across Lexington and beyond.
Watch out for: Dairy, Nuts
Bourbon, sugar, mint and a mountain of crushed ice in a frosted cup, Kentucky's ceremonial race-day drink. Lexington pours them all spring, from Keeneland weekends to downtown bourbon bars.
History: The julep began as a medicinal early-American whiskey drink and hardened into ritual in Kentucky during the 19th century, silver cups and all. Churchill Downs made it the official drink of the Derby in 1938, and Lexington drinks them every April and October when Keeneland runs. Local bartenders argue endlessly about crushed ice, mint bruising and whether the straw belongs beside the mint or nowhere at all.
Salt-cured Kentucky country ham fried hard and deglazed with black coffee into a sharp, thin gravy. A Bluegrass farm breakfast that Lexington's butchers and biscuit kitchens keep in circulation.
History: Kentucky farm smokehouses cured hams in salt through the winter long before refrigeration, and the fried-slice-plus-coffee-gravy breakfast followed wherever tobacco and horse farms fed their crews at dawn. Central Kentucky remains cure country: Critchfield Meats cuts country ham on Southland Drive, Crust folds it into charcuterie boards, and biscuits-and-ham breakfasts survive on menus across Lexington.
Where to try it: Critchfield Meats Family Market, Crust
A souffle-soft cornmeal pudding served by the spoonful, richer than cornbread and older than the Commonwealth. Berea's Boone Tavern made it famous, and Kentucky tables still pass it at holidays.
History: Spoonbread descends from Native American cornmeal porridges through Virginia and Kentucky plantation kitchens, whipped with eggs and milk until it bakes into a wobbling, souffle-like pudding. Boone Tavern in Berea, founded in 1909, made table-side spoonbread its calling card and the town hosts an annual Spoonbread Festival, while Bluegrass home cooks keep it in the holiday rotation alongside country ham.
Watch out for: Dairy, Eggs
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.
History: 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.
Where to try it: Missy's Pie Shop
Watch out for: Dairy, Eggs, Gluten
Bone-in chicken brined, dredged and fried in a cast-iron skillet, the dish Kentucky exported to the world. Lexington kitchens fold it into everything from bourbon-glazed dinners to hot chicken sandwiches.
History: Kentucky's fried chicken tradition predates the franchise era by a century, built on Sunday-dinner skillets, buttermilk brines and lard. The state's most famous son industrialised it from a Corbin service station in the 1930s, but the dish never left home kitchens. Lexington's current wave runs from Azur's bourbon fried chicken with cream gravy to Distilled on Jefferson's house-brined bird with chow chow and rosemary jus.
Where to try it: Azur Restaurant & Patio, Distilled on Jefferson, The Blue Heron Steakhouse
Watch out for: Gluten
Winchester's gingery citrus soda, bottled since 1926 and still the Bluegrass region's default soft drink. Lexington drinks it cold from the bottle, in cocktails and even in barbecue glazes.
History: G.L. Wainscott began bottling Ale-8-One in Winchester in 1926, naming it through a slogan contest as 'A Late One', and the family-owned company never left Clark County. The ginger-and-citrus soda became central Kentucky's homegrown alternative to the national colas, sold in returnable glass bottles for generations. Around Lexington it turns up as a mixer with bourbon and as the traditional chaser to a beer cheese plate.
An amber ale aged for weeks in freshly emptied bourbon barrels, picking up vanilla, oak and warmth. Brewed at Lexington Brewing & Distilling, it is the city's signature glass of beer.
History: Lexington Brewing & Distilling Co. revived the city's brewing tradition on Cross Street and began ageing its Kentucky Ale in used bourbon barrels, releasing Kentucky Bourbon Barrel Ale as the flagship of the style. The barrel-ageing idea flowed naturally in a city ringed by distilleries with cooperage to spare, and the brewery's tours now walk visitors through both the brewhouse and the neighbouring Town Branch distillery.
Where to try it: Lexington Brewing & Distilling Co.
Watch out for: Gluten
Lexington's signature dishes include Beer cheese, Kentucky Hot Brown, Burgoo, Lamb fries, Bourbon balls. See our signature dishes chapter for where to eat each.