Traveling to the Kentucky Derby? Where to Eat and Drink Now in Louisville

The Beijing roast duck buns at The Joy Luck. (All photos Adam Robb)

Not every chef worth celebrating is a celebrity chef, so each week The Braiser’s bringing you a local guide to the best food and drink around the world, from quail brunch in London to the only fried chicken worth leaving on Colonel Sanders’ Louisville tombstone.

And with the Kentucky Derby fast approaching, there’s no better time to race to a table like odds-on favorite American Pharoah, for Louisville’s best barbecue, slow-cooked by an inglorious Momofuku veteran, the smoothest pimento cheese sandwich you’ll ever find in a bourbon ball factory, and a plywood-fronted dive bar run through more times than the starting gate at Churchill Downs.

Cure your hangover with a sorghum latte at Gralehaus.

But first, breakfast. Fried chicken’s not Louisville’s strong suit like biscuits are, and just next door to the overrated, overcrowded Toast on Market, you’ll find whole bird-sized scratch biscuits caught in the thick of hot chorizo gravy at Harvest (624 East Market Street, 502-384-9090) where every ingredient’s as locally sourced as the in-the-know residents nursing their hangovers at the bar with notoriously smoky Bloody Marys.

Afterward, walk off that extra side of cheese grits across the street at Joe Ley, a two-acre antiques mecca housed in an 1890 schoolhouse, perfect for scouring a mid-century cookie jar worthy of Please & Thank You (800 East Market Street, 502-553-0113), a coffee and vintage vinyl shop infamous for its buttery mouth-melting chocolate chip cookies. In fact, Louisville’s an eclectic bakery paradise, from Ugandan craft shop Kizito Cookies (1398 Bardstown Road, 502-456-2891) which sells family-recipe pumpkin chocolate chip cookies in a mix of traditional African decorative arts, and Blue Dog Bakery & Cafe (2868 Frankfort Avenue, 502-899-9800), which cures and ages its own charcuterie in the basement, and serves up ham-stuffed cheese croissants in its front room bakery, where you can take breakfast in a window seat watching the trains roll by.

The feast at Feast BBQ, a New Albany institution.

Assuming you just rolled into town, there are two hotels worth checking out, and checking in, for the food alone. The 21C Museum Hotel is home to Proof on Main (702 West Market Street, 502.217.6360). After digging into the bacon bison burger, finish Proof’s Bulleit Boulevardier on your feet before it knocks you off them, while wandering the two-story hotel lobby doubling as a contemporary art museum. While last call’s at 2am, you can sip while you sift through the current exhibitions 24/7. If you prefer to feast on some history, check into The Brown Hotel (335 West Broadway, 877-926-7757), birthplace of the Hot Brown, a broiled open-faced turkey and bacon sandwich drowned in Mornay sauce, that, like the spirits rumored to haunt the lobby, may stick with you long after you’re gone. And for a breath of fresh air, there’s the Hilton Garden Inn, (yes, really), home to 8UP (350 West Chestnut Street, 502-631-4180), a newly-opened penthouse bar, lounge, and roof deck that somehow works, serving a menu of under-$10 cocktails crafted with horchata, pomegranate bitters, and bourbon mash syrup, plus plates of spicy fried chicken sandwiches, all of which are wonderful and ridiculous, much like the notion you’re having the best night of your life atop a Hilton Garden Inn.

Fried catfish at All-American whiskey bar Silver Dollar.

Once you’re revived and out of bed, it’s time to decide whether you want to go east or west. East means The Joy Luck (1285 Bardtown Road, 502-238-3070), serving up the city’s best buns, stuffed with a feast of sticky, shredded whole Beijing roast duck doubly-lacquered by a tangy house-made hoison spread, and Taiwanese braised pork belly smothered in pickled mustard greens and roasted peanuts. And again proving Louisville’s a Bloody Mary town, the house version here blends nearly every condiment in the kitchen: Thai chili-macerated vodka, General Tso’s sauce, Chinese mustard, duck sauce, and kimchi. If you like your barbecue with just an air of eastern sensibility, head to Feast (909 East Market Street, 502-749-9900). A New Albany, Indiana institution, chef Ryan Rogers recently brought his brisket, baked beans, and Mornay mac across the Ohio River, after hauling himself west not long after being fired from Momofuku Noodle Bar for attending his graduation from New York’s French Culinary Institute.

Pork belly at Eiderdown, as well known for its vegetarian dishes.

Bridging the gap between barbecue and bourbon heaven is every restaurant critic’s “best kept secret” Silver Dollar (1761 Frankfort Avenue, 502-259-9540), its ambiance drenched in Christmas lights and Americana like the juices from pepper-sauced shredded chicken thighs seeping through their most tender hash browns. And since food-obsessed tourists flock to the place as much as locals, it’s your best chance of befriending a few to show you the haunts old timers and punk rockers prefer you not invade. That includes Nachbar (969 Charles Street, 502-637-4377), a Germantown dive where locals flock for the taps and patio, like they do for the haute vegetarian plates in rotation at the owners’ more civilized Eiderdown (983 Goss Avenue, 502-290-2390), serving up lush, earthy cooking like the Jump Sturdy, a green bean casserole thick with duchess potatoes, roasted baby carrots, and a shallot etouffee.

It's no brighter inside at metal dive Mag Bar.

Least civilized of all is Mag Bar (1398 South 2nd Street, 502-637-9052), where it’s not uncommon for derelicts to bend your ear over deafening live metal while a mouse scurries across your booth to poach the cherry stem from your whiskey sour, which you might miss if you’re caught up watching feats of strength, aka college kids doing pull-ups from the cross-signal box on the corner. A night that low down, can only improve with low country cooking, so get a start on curing that hangover at Hillbilly Tea Shack (960 Baxter Avenue, 502-536-7767), serving foil-wrapped white-hot frogs legs and corn pone takeout til midnight. Only then, with your wits about you, is it time for a box of heavy battered Chicken King (639 East Broadway, 502-589-5464), the most authentically greasy tribute to Colonel Sanders‘ legacy, and about as smart an idea as an illicit picnic around the icon’s marble bust at Cave Hill Cemetery.

Before racing out of town the next day, lay your trip to rest at Gralehaus (1001 Baxter Avenue, 502-454-7075), a beer and breakfast joint that only sounds like a dive until you read the menu of local bee pollen cortados and sorghum lattes, duck gravy biscuits, and country ham and egg crepes folded with red eye gravy.

Melted ham and cheese croissants at Blue Dog Bakery & Cafe.

And if you haven’t had a ball already, make a final detour to Cellar Door Chocolates, where owner Erika Chavez-Graziano not only rolls the smoothest spiked chocolates for most of Kentucky’s best known distilleries, she also plates the creamiest Pimento cheese sandwiches at the factory store’s Jackknife Cafe (1201 Story Avenue, 502-561-2940).

Reservations about the Derby winner is one thing, but reservations for breakfast, lunch, and dinner should be a sure bet.