Lexington racing ahead with eye on the past
No doubt you’ve heard of a little horse race called the Kentucky Derby, held in early May at Churchill Downs in Louisville, Ky. But Lexington, 75 miles east of Louisville, is just as “racy” as her more famous sibling, and this Southern soul sister loves to party year round.
In Lexington, a passion for ponies seeps in as quickly as the whiskey that flows like water along the Kentucky Bourbon Trail. The trail features 10 bourbon distilleries, including Town Branch, right in the heart of Lexington, and Woodford Reserve — maker of the official bourbon of the Kentucky Derby — half an hour’s drive west. If that whets your appetite for more, consider the Kentucky Bourbon Trail Craft Tour, encompassing 13 more distilleries.
For a taste of the racing world, the Horse Country program offers tours of Kentucky farms and other equine attractions, during which you might meet pedigreed thoroughbreds, such as Triple Crown winner American Pharaoh, on their home turf. Lexington’s Keeneland racing oval also hosts tours. So little has changed at Keeneland since it was founded in the ’30s that the track was chosen as one of the key filming locations for “Seabiscuit,” the movie about a remarkable racehorse who made his name in the ’30s and ’40s.
Striking the right balance between past and present can be tricky, but Lexington manages to maintain an air of nostalgic charm without stagnating like a museum relic preserved in aspic. Spend a few days wandering its streets, and you’ll discover a city that’s as hip as it is historical.
Throughout its pedestrianfriendly heart, beautifully preserved 19th-century brick shopfronts mingle with a collection of stately antebellum homes, including that of Mary Todd, who later married Abraham Lincoln. But you also can admire your reflection in a handful of gleaming, mirrored high-rises that spike the skyline, get your Unicorn Frappuccino fix at Starbucks or snag that Death Star Waffle Maker you’ve been salivating over at Urban Outfitters on the square.
PRHBTN, which hosts an annual festival celebrating “marginalized” art forms, has helped to transform Lexington into a mecca for graffiti artists as well. Buildings double as largerthan-life canvases, adorned with everything from a towering Lincoln bathed in a rainbow halo to race horses (of course).
Two universities, including the University of Kentucky, lend a lively vibe, particularly along South Limestone Street, where dozens of bars and multicultural restaurants attract a spirited college crowd. For a more eclectic all-ages scene, check out Jefferson Street, which has undergone a major revitalization since 2006, when restaurants began opening in quaint clapboard houses lining the avenue.
At the Grey Goose, furnished with repurposed horse stalls, chow down on fried chicken salad and bourbon ale battered cod. Nearby, amid rustic exposed brick and wood beams, Blue Heron Steakhouse specializes in — you guessed it — steak. For casual cooking, belly up to pulled pork and house-smoked brisket smoked and rubbed with a Western Kentucky dry spice blend at Wagon Bones Grill, or pull up a stool at Stella’s Kentucky Deli, which serves soups, salads and sandwiches to both bearded hepcats and elegant ladies who lunch. Fancy Southern dishes with a twist? Order a plate of oysters in cheese grits at Nick Ryan’s and wash it down with a Four Roses Manhattan spiked with Kentucky-made Four Roses small-batch bourbon.
At the northeastern end of Jefferson Street, the former Rainbo Bread factory is now a mixed-use facility housing West Sixth Brewing and tap room, Bluegrass Distillers and an aquaponics farm. West Sixth, which kicked off the factory’s redevelopment in 2012, is one of 11 breweries along the Brewgrass Trail, promoting a burgeoning local craft-beer industry that also has brought new life to the former James E. Pepper Distillery campus on Lexington’s Manchester Street.
Ethereal Brewing, which opened on the Pepper campus in November 2014, anchors this collection of old brick bourbon warehouses emblazoned with graffiti murals. In addition to Ethereal, which focuses on Belgian and American craft beer, the complex includes the tiny, neon-lit Break Room bar, Barrel House Distillery, an ice-cream shop, a pizzeria and Middle Fork Kitchen Bar restaurant.
“There was a history of craft here, and I love the idea of building on the shoulders of what’s come before,” Middle Fork chef-owner Mark Jensen says. “Lexington has been a wonderful place for a lot of years, but I feel like lately it’s really turned the corner.”
Horses, bourbon harken to My Old Kentucky Home, but graffiti art, food, beer give city a fresh vibe