andrewsuthers
Lexington, KY - The Behr family has extended its footprint on the Lexington food and beverage landscape.
Tom Behr, the family patriarch, has purchased the building at 307 West Short St. and will open Village Idiot this spring. The new business will be similar to the family’s existing properties — Pazzo’s Pizza Pub on Limestone and The Beer Trappe on Euclid Avenue — in that it will offer a wide variety of beer with an “everyman” vibe. The most obvious difference will be a name that might raise some eyebrows.
“My dad and I just kind of tossed it around for a while,” said Brian Behr, Tom’s son, who will manage Village Idiot. “We thought it had a good connotation, meaning a lovable partier. Not the town drunk, but someone you see out a lot.”
Village Idiot’s location is the former home of Metropol, which closed in December after a decade of operation. Tom Behr acquired the 189-year-old building and a renovation process began in January to create a sister property to the family’s other ventures.
Touch-ups have been done throughout the property, and various types of technological upgrades have been installed. A bar was installed on the second floor along with a couch to give it a “lounge feel,” with dining rooms on either side. One of the private dining rooms will be able to seat up to 24 patrons. Work on the ground floor included refurbishing the bar. The former top of the bar was refitted into a mahogany table that has been placed in the main dining area and can seat 12.
Village Idiot will be like Pazzo’s and The Beer Trappe in that it will serve a multitude of different beers. Pazzo’s, which is near the University of Kentucky campus, serves pizza along with more than 40 types of beer. The elder Behr’s other son, Brett Behr, operates The Beer Trappe in Chevy Chase, which offers more than 400 types of beer. Village Idiot will split the difference, with 20 varieties of beer on tap and upwards of 80 bottled beers available.
What will separate it from its sister properties will be its menu. Village Idiot will feature a “gastro pub” menu that executive chef Andrew Suthers described as being high quality but at affordable pricing. Suthers said the menu will vary depending upon the season, with ingredients being locally sourced and “everything being made in-house from the ground up,” including even grinding its own sausages.
“The food is what will set us apart here,” said Brian Behr. “Obviously Pazzo’s and The Beer Trappe have great beer reputations, and we definitely want to continue that here. Hopefully we’ll have a lot of the same customers, but the food will be a step above. At Pazzo’s, you can get a quick slice or a pie, but here you’ll be able to get a lot more of what you want. This place will just be a step above.
“We’re going to take the idea of what people expect of bar food and stand it on its head,” Brian Behr said. “But we still want to be the kind of place you can go for any occasion, and that’s really what a pub’s all about.”
Suthers will be the driving force behind what’s on the menu. An employee at Pazzo’s more than a decade ago, he later attended culinary school. He eventually relocated to Minneapolis, Minn., to pursue his cooking career further. He was there for 11 years before Tom Behrs contacted him about Village Idiot.
“He said he loved what I’ve been doing and wanted me to help with this project,” Suthers said. “Tom really built the craft beer scene in Lexington. The opportunity to pair food with that — I jumped all over it.”