Located in Corbin, Kentucky, Sanders Cafè is the the birthplace of KFC's original recipe. It's among the first round of restaurants to be included in the new Historic Kentucky Dining Guide. Photo furnished
No one travels because they want to experience the same old thing, and that goes for the food as well as the culture and scenery. If fast food and chain restaurants are what you crave, don’t even bother packing a bag. It’s everywhere, all around you, all of the time. But so, also, are some hidden gems.
This is one of the ideas behind the Historic Kentucky Dining Guide, a new initiative from the Kentucky Heritage Council that highlights unique restaurants that have opened in historically significant buildings across the state. The project highlights two things Kentuckians are passionate about: food and history, presenting them in a way that feels less like homework and more like an adventure.
The guide arrives at a moment when travelers are increasingly seeking authentic and unique culinary experiences over familiar chain restaurants. According to Craig Potts, executive director of the Kentucky Heritage Council and Kentucky’s State Historic Preservation Officer, the project hopes to help foster guidance in that quest, both for Kentuckians and visitors to the Commonwealth, with a guide that can be viewed online or downloaded at the Kentucky Tourism website.
“If I go to a new city, I don’t want to eat where I eat in my hometown,” Potts said. “I want to go to a place that has great local food and that’s going to be a unique experience that I’m going to take away a memory from.”
For Potts, the guide isn’t simply about finding a good meal. It’s about helping visitors and locals connect with places that tell Kentucky’s story, which is one a key part of the Kentucky Heritage Council’s mission. picThe organization traces its roots to 1966, when Congress passed the National Historic Preservation Act. Originally founded as the Kentucky Heritage Commission, the agency’s responsibilities range from archaeology and architectural history to administering Kentucky’s portion of the National Register of Historic Places.
Since the 1970s, Prestonsburg's Billy Ray's Restaurant has operated out of the historic Hughes building, completed in 1927 by pharmacist H.E. Hughes. Photo furnished
But preserving history is only part of the challenge. Making people care about it is another.
“We’re always, as an agency, looking for ways to make the work that we do and the places we’re trying to preserve sort of approachable to Kentuckians,” Potts says. “There are really great stories associated with these historic places that sometimes people don’t know about, because that information isn’t made as readily available as we would like.”
The dining guide represents an attempt to bridge that gap.
That idea that history becomes more meaningful when experienced rather than observed runs throughout the Historic Dining Guide project. Potts notes that restaurants engage all of the senses in ways museums and interpretive signs often cannot.
“It’s taste, it’s what you hear, it’s what you smell, it’s what you see,” he says. “And so all those things come together."
Especially, when it comes to craftsmanship that hails from another time, Potts notes.
“The architecture becomes part of the meal. The pressed-tin ceilings, worn floor tiles, grand staircases, exposed brick walls, and century-old storefront windows aren’t simply decorations,” he said. “They’re pieces of living history that remain part of everyday life.”
The flagship restaurant of restaurateur Ouita Michel, Midway's Holly Hill Inn, resides in a home that was built in the 1840s. Photo furnished
Many of the buildings featured in the guide have been adaptively reused. Former homes, retail stores, pharmacies and commercial buildings have all found new life as dining destinations. The result is a dining experience layered with stories from multiple eras.
“When you know what the history of the building is, as you’re sitting there, you can start looking around and that history is going to start to come alive around you,” Potts says.
That appreciation for historic places wasn’t always common.
Both Potts and the guide’s creators point to the decades following World War II as a period when America became obsessed with modernization.
In the 1960s when the National Historic Preservation Act was brought in, Potts admits that the era was defined by a belief that progress meant replacing the old with the new.
“We were really on this trajectory of getting rid of anything that was old,” he said. “If it seemed old, we don’t really need it anymore. Let’s demolish it. Let’s build something new.”
Today, the pendulum has swung in the opposite direction. Historic downtowns have become destinations rather than places to avoid.
The guide’s first edition includes 18 restaurants, with two selected from each of Kentucky’s nine tourism regions. Notable participants include Holly Hill Inn, Kirchoff’s Bakery in Paducah, and the legendary Old Talbott Tavern in Bardstown, which famously claims to still have a bullet hole put there by Jesse James.
Future editions are expected to grow through an open application process, with new selections likely added twice a year.
Ultimately, Potts sees the guide as a way to preserve more than buildings. It’s about preserving experiences.
“We really care about preserving significant historic properties throughout the state, promoting our culinary heritage and helping connect great experiences for travelers and for locals where you can get a great meal and a great story,” he said.
In Kentucky, it turns out history isn’t confined to museums. Sometimes it’s waiting at a corner table, with a glass of wine and a nice dessert.
The Kentucky Historic Dining Guide can be found online at www.kentuckytourism.com/things-to-do/food/kentucky-historic-dining-guide.