Over Labor Day weekend, we went to Lexington, KY to see Tylar and Grant. It was so nice getting to see them both, along with Koda. We went to eat at several unique restaurants, toured the Buffalo Trace Distillery, drove through the rolling hills to see the gorgeous horse farms, and walked around the Distillery District-oh, and go ice cream twice! If you’ve thought about visiting Lexington, I’ll share some of the places we ate and visited below.
Food first! We ate at some really unique local or chain restaurants that we don’t have here, which is always more fun than eating at places we are familiar with. We ate at a home-cooking style restaurant called Ramsey’s. I had the catfish plate, which was really good (and huge). The others had pot roast with 3 veggie sides, an open-faced pot roast sandwich, a burger, and a catfish sandwich.
We also went to a restaurant called Biscuit Belly for brunch. They had all kinds of items that sounded so good, like the brisket biscuit, a fried chicken/biscuit with Nashville hot mayo, and bonuts, which are fried biscuit holes with a bourbon cream cheese frosting. I got a biscuit with brie and granola, honey, and berry sauce drizzled over. I also got a praline coffee. It was so good!
We also ate at a restaurant called DV8, which offers “2nd chance employment” for those who are recovering from drug addiction and often can’t find work easily. It is a great concept, and they have some really unique menu items such as this pimento cheese chicken sandwich. They also make a great grilled cheese with bacon and avocado.
We ate in the Distillery District for the rest of our meals and our 2 visits to the ice cream shop. It is an area of old distilleries that they have repurposed into restaurants, bars, and retail stores. We had pizza and Mexican-both really good-and some outstanding ice cream from Crank and Boom Craft Ice Cream. They had flavors such as ooey gooey cake, blackberry and buttermilk (what I got both visits), bourbon honey, and brown butter pecan, just to name a few. The Distillery District also had some amazing artwork on the buildings, as you can see below.
Jamie wanted to visit a distillery, so we chose Buffalo Trace. We had no idea what to expect, but it turned out to be really cool. We saw some of the process of distilling, the making of the barrels, some of the old buildings and tracks they used to transport the barrels (they reminded me of the mining carts from the old Scooby Doo cartoon), and a beautiful botanical garden. We even participated in a bourbon tasting. It was informative yet painful to swallow.
There are some absolutely beautiful horse farms around Lexington. Their stables are like giant horse mansions, as you can see in the middle picture below. It really is horse country there. We saw so many stables and a race track/stable that made Oaklawn seem tiny. All of this is just a few minutes outside the city.
Lexington really was fun, and we can see why Tylar and Grant are enjoying their time there. We’ve decided to try new restaurants and distilleries each time we visit, and I think we may not run out of options for either anytime soon.