Bear & the Butcher - Lexington, KY

There are so many reasons why we love to profile restaurants in Lexington: first of all, we work and live here (I do anyways - Renee lives in Richmond) so it’s a convenient starting point. But the bigger reason is that there is so much variety here when it comes to dining out. Whether you identify as a vegan, a full-on carnivore, or somewhere in between, there’s something for every diet (and every budget)! If you’re familiar with the campus of the University of Kentucky then you’ll probably know about Pazzo’s Pizza Pub; but what you may not know is that the family who owns Pazzo’s also own a couple of other restaurants in town - Village Idiot and Bear & the Butcher. We recently got to sit down and get to know the owner of Bear & the Butcher, Brian Behr, and he was kind enough to give us the low-down on the Behr family’s newest restaurant venture.
 

Opened in August 2017, Bear & the Butcher is located on Euclid Avenue in the old Art Bar nightclub across the street from Charlie Brown’s. Brian and his brother, Brett, knocked down the old nightclub and rebuilt the restaurant from the ground up. The building now has a rustic-yet-stylish decor that was inspired by a recent trip to England, including a large bear’s head overlooking the second-floor dining area. The two-story establishment has a bar on both floors, including an outdoor patio that is open during the summer and overlooks the Chevy Chase area. There is also a ton of natural lighting that pours in through the large windows featured on both levels; we visited the Bear & the Butcher on a cold and dreary day back in March and you wouldn’t even notice the weather based on the amount of light shining inside! The name of the restaurant comes from a play on words; Bear is a variation of the spelling of Brian’s last name (Behr), while butcher refers to the menu, which includes a wide array of freshly butchered meats. Brian also owns the Village Idiot on Short Street, and although they kind of book-end downtown Lexington, there is enough distance between the two restaurants to allow each place to have its own personality.
 

Brian wanted to have a restaurant that focused on two of his favorite things - sausage and beer. The concept for the restaurant is pretty cool; the menu centers around a variety of meat, all of which is actually butchered in-house. While the specialty of Bear & the Butcher is definitely the sausages, they offer a wide array of menu items - even a few vegan options! All of their food is made from scratch, and if they can’t make it themselves then they enlist the help of some local vendors who can (for example, they get all of their pasta from Lexington Pasta). Jason Ritchey, the former chef at Jonathan’s, now runs the kitchen here, including all of the butcherings. He even brought over most of his staff from Jonathan’s to work at Bear & the Butcher too, which is pretty awesome if I do say so myself! Since the Beer Trappe next door is also owned by the Behr family (Brian’s brother Brett owns it), they have set things up so that you can have food from Bear & the Butcher delivered to the Beer Trappe while you’re enjoying a couple of craft brews! Speaking of beers, the Bear & the Butcher have a small selection of beers on tap, as to not compete with their craft beer bar next door; they have 8 taps total, most of which offer local brews, as well as a couple of German beers and Bud Light for the casual drinker. They also offer a full bar for mixed drinks, plus on weekends they have both a Bloody Mary and Mimosa bar!
 

We didn’t get to actually try out the menu while we were talking with Brian, since we met with him on a late Tuesday morning and they don't open until 4PM during the week, but we have since gone back to try out my favorite meal of the day - brunch! We got to come right in and have a seat in a huge booth by the bar, which was awesome because we were sitting directly across from my personal heaven; the Mimosa bar! I made a bee-line towards the bar as soon as possible to start off my meal (Renee had one too, but she wasn’t nearly as excited as I was since she doesn't drink that much!), and there were many different options to choose from. They offered four different juices: orange lavender, blackberry peppercorn, red ruby, and pineapple passion, and they had different fruits to drop in as well, including blueberries, pineapple chunks, and strawberries. They also served the Bloody Mary bar, but I don’t like to drink those so I steered clear (I know I’m in the minority here, but tomato juice and vodka just don’t sound good to me, ya know?). But never fear - we’ve included a picture here of the large spread of accouterments for those pesky Bloody Marys! There were so many good-looking items on the brunch menu that we had to order an appetizer to hold us over for a few minutes while we decided on breakfast; it was a house-made toaster pastry filled with apples, and it was soooooo good! The pastry was freshly baked and super warm, and the apples were baked to perfection! It was like having the best pop-tart ever, but extremely fresh and not overly sugary like the ones you would buy at the grocery store. We finally decided on our meals; I ordered the country breakfast, while Renee ordered the deep fried French toast. I’ll tell you right now, I’ve never seen a plate that was filled with as much food as the one I got that day at brunch! My country breakfast plate came with two eggs (scrambled, of course), two pieces each of the house-made sausage and bacon, and what I conservatively guessed to be two pounds of breakfast potatoes, and I loved every single bite! The sausage was the best part; you can tell these are hand-made sausage patties because of their shape, and they had so much flavor (kind of spicy, but not too hot). I ate so much food that I spent the rest of the day in a food coma that I didn’t come out of until the next morning! Renee also had a huge plate of food; her deep-fried French toast was different than any kind of French toast we had seen before. Instead of being dipped in a batter, the French toast was coated with panko crumbs and then deep-fried, giving it a crunchier texture. It also came drizzled with a sweet glaze rather than your usual maple syrup and had a variety of toppings to go along with it. Plus the bread slices were huge, giving you some bang for your buck in my opinion. It definitely isn’t your mom’s French toast, but it’s still very tasty! We both tried it and thought it was pretty awesome. I think it’s safe to say that we’re definitely coming back to try dinner in the near future; after seeing the brunch plates, I can only imagine how much food comes with the dinner plates! You can stop by and try out their brunch on Saturdays and Sundays starting at 10AM!
 

There is so much to offer from the nice people over at Bear & the Butcher; not only do they serve great food, but they also host all kinds of events throughout the week. They offer Tuesday night trivia, as well as live music on Friday and Saturday nights. Brian hopes to have late-night food and drink specials once summer comes around, and I can’t wait to get up on that second-floor patio and enjoy a nice evening of eating and drinking! He’s also working on getting some wine specials going soon for the vino crowd, so be on the lookout for that in the near future. The Chevy Chase area isn’t well-known for its parking arrangement for most of the restaurants, but I wouldn’t say it’s impossible to find a spot, especially in the evenings and on weekends when street parking is free. There are so many things we still want to try when we come back; the fried chicken sandwich, the Cubans sandwich (which is Brian’s favorite dish), and of course the chocolate-covered bacon for dessert! We hope you enjoy hanging out here at Bear & the Butcher as much as we do, and we can’t wait to get back over and check them out this summer! Until then, happy eating!