No matter the reason visitors come to central Kentucky, for business meetings or vacations, people have to eat. Restaurants and businesses may come and go, but the food and beverage industry itself will always exist.
“The words ‘culinary’ and ‘tourism’ are forever linked,” said David H. Dodd, executive director of the National Center for Hospitality Studies (NCHS) at Sullivan University.
In May, the Kentucky Cabinet of Tourism, Arts and Heritage announced a $13.7 billion economic impact from tourism in 2015. The report showed Fayette County generating $2 billion of that money from travel spending. The Kentucky Department of Travel and Tourism has pegged six pillars of tourism to market for visitors: in addition to bourbon and horses, culinary arts are on the list, along with arts, music and outdoors.
Education is a component of tourism, as evidenced by Sullivan’s NCHS program that began in 1986 to offer diplomas and degrees in different aspects of the hospitality industry, including culinary arts. NCHS has graduated 728 students from the Lexington campus in the past five years. Chef Dodd oversees food and beverage operations at Sullivan’s campuses in Lexington and Louisville.
According to Dodd, the hospitality industry ranks in the top three major employers in 35 of the 50 states, thanks to tourism.
“The 35 states are either geographically unusual, naturally beautiful or bountiful or, like Kentucky, have natural beauty combined with other stuff ,” he said. “Over the past 30 years our graduates have become the mainstay employees in almost every restaurant in the two cities [Lexington and Louisville], many of whom own or run those restaurant operations with individual talents and creativity based on a sound culinary education.”
Sullivan has ranked in recent lists of top U.S. culinary schools.
Chef John Martin studied at the country’s oldest, the Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, New York. In August 2000 he and co-owner Gay Reading opened the Greentree Tearoom in downtown Lexington. Serving a prix fixe lunch Wednesday through Saturday, the tearoom is a show-off spot for residents to take out-of-town guests and to celebrate special occasions throughout the year. While Martin cooks and runs the back of the house, Reading handles front-of-the-house duties.
“I think people look for something that refl ects the traditions and heritage of an area when they’re traveling,” Reading said. The tearoom is within walking distance of the downtown hotels; about a third of the restaurant’s luncheon guests are from out of town at any given time.
Each month there is a new menu. “What we serve here reflects a lot of things that would have been served here in generations past,” Reading said. “It’s sort of a modern twist with attention to modern dietary concerns; we’re aware of that.”
Another culinary destination is The Glitz at Irish Acres in Nonesuch, Kentucky. In 1986 the Hannigan family opened an antiques gallery in an old elementary schoolhouse in Woodford County and turned the basement into a restaurant in August 1988. Today Irish Acres is owned and operated by sisters Emilie Hannigan McCauley and Jane Hannigan DeLauter.
In the beginning, the Hannigans knew that when visitors would browse through 50 rooms of antique furniture, jewelry and other collections, they would get hungry. Food was “an added bonus” 30 years ago. More recently, tourism has caused The Glitz to become a destination side trip in and of itself, based on the menu and the location.
McCauley says at least 85 percent of customers come from out of state.
“We always have people from Ohio, Tennessee and surrounding states,” she said.
On Oaks Day in early May, between strolling through the parking lot to look at license plates and talking with people in the gallery, she tracked 26 states and six countries.
A prix fixe lunch is served Wednesday through Saturday, April through December. McCauley changes the menu every three weeks based on seasonal bounty. Local produce comes from within three miles of the Irish Acres property.
“I’ve got a tomato man; I’ve got a silver queen corn man, also my cucumber man,” she said. “I’ve got an asparagus girl, a blackberry man and I have a fellow that does all of our butternut squash. I have a girl that grows Mars grapes for our fall cobbler.”
McCauley also gets fruit from Boyd Orchards and grows her own organic lettuces and edible flowers. Country ham, sausage and eggs are also local.
“I have people growing specific things for us, in large quantities,” McCauley said.
She then develops recipes around these local ingredients.
“I accidentally developed our summer garden chowder,” she said, due to an abundance of summer vegetables. The seven-veggie and herb hot summer soup has become one of the restaurant’s most popular items.
The taste of tourism goes hand-in-hand with the sight of it.
“So many of our tourists and out-of-state people come in glowing about the drive,” McCauley said, “the spectacular drive through the countryside. People are not quite prepared for that. It’s so lush, so green, with the stone fences and the colts frolicking in the field. They gush.”