Roadfood_ Revised Edition - Jane Stern [68]
Jewell’s Open Pit Bar-B-Q
730 US 62E
270–365–5415
Princeton, KY
LD | $
“I watch the food shows on TV when they go all over the place looking for barbecue,” opined pit master Lowell Jewell. “And I’m saying, ‘Why don’t you come to western Kentucky and eat the real thing?’”
Good advice. Following the barbecue trail west of Louisville and south toward the Land Between the Lakes you will find an open-pit culture unlike anywhere else and radically diverse from county to county. Local barbecue preferences vary in large ways and small, from the meat of choice—mutton around Henderson, pork in Crittenden County—to what the wet stuff is called—dip to the north, sauce to the south. Around the Ohio River, if you don’t want any dip at all, you ask for your meat off the pit, meaning sauceless.
Around Princeton in Caldwell County, barbecue has a flavor all its own. At Lowell Jewell’s place, the meat to eat is pork shoulder torn into variegated strips and nuggets, some variations soft as velvet, others threaded with crusty shreds of skin. In this area, you make an important decision that is seldom an issue up in mutton country: hot or mild sauce. Unlike the meats of Henderson, where pork is generally served presauced, here it is bunned or plated, and only then topped with hot or mild sauce.
Princeton-style sauce, at Heaton’s Citgo & BBQ as well as at Jewell’s, is unique—rich and red with a compelling citrus zest. A pile of Jewell’s unbelievably juicy pulled pork gilded with sizzling hot sauce and sided by a circle of earthy griddle-cooked corn bread, followed by the family-recipe French coconut pie, is a taste-buds joy ride. (French coconut pie is a chess pie laced with coconut, and we take the opportunity of this parenthesis to note that Kentucky’s barbecue byways also happen to traverse one of the nation’s premier pie lodes, from Derby pie up in Louisville to lemon icebox pie farther south.)
Jewell’s is a comfy wood-paneled dining room across the road from a huge factory and just down from a Wal-Mart. It has a casual rustic air, its walls decorated with antique farm implements, its tables occupied by regulars who come to chat and chew over barbecue and endless cups of coffee.
Louie’s Restaurant
1000 Pleasant St.
859–987–6116
Paris, KY
BL Mon–Sat, D Weds–Sat | $
Louie’s is a favorite haunt of the horsey set that populates this beautiful section of Kentucky. They include not only the occasional owner or investor but also the hands-on folk of the upper-echelon equine world: grooms, handlers, and stable personnel who tend to some of the most expensive horseflesh on earth at surrounding barns.
The town café is staffed by waitresses who are quick with the coffee refills and the snappy repartee. We love Louie’s fried chicken at lunch, which is served with good southern-style vegetables, and the Kentucky “hot brown” open-face sandwich (turkey, melted cheese, and bacon) is a classic, as are caramel pie and Woodford pudding, the latter a vintage local recipe laced with jam. But our favorite time to claim a seat is breakfast, for a three-egg omelet sided by biscuits and gravy or one of the house-special Big Sire breakfasts, built around a meat of choice—fried country ham or sugar-cured ham, sausage patties, bacon strips, pork tenderloin, or a rib-eye steak, plus, of course, a couple of eggs, hash browns, and toast or biscuits and gravy.
The front wall is adorned with racing silks and the exterior façade bears a swell motto—almost always a sign of an interesting Roadfood restaurant. Louie’s watchwords are “We Treat You The Year .”
Lynn’s Paradise Café
984 Barret Ave.
502–583–3447
Louisville, KY
BLD | $
Lynn’s Paradise Café is about the most whimsical restaurant we know. Décor is wild and kitschy, and the gift shop up front sells a panoply of useful appliances