Windy Corner Market - Lexington, KY
If you haven't noticed by now, we here at Bluegrass Bourbon and Eats are borderline obsessed with Ouita Michel and her empire of restaurants. You can see her influence, as well as at least one of her seven eateries, in every corner of our Central Kentucky community. She goes above and beyond to help people of all walks of life, while also making sure that she serves up the best southern comfort food at all price points. Today we're mixing our love of Ouita with our love of brunch by taking a trip to the outer reaches of Fayette County to Windy Corner Market to taste some of Kentucky's best local cuisine.
The drive out of Lexington towards the city of Paris is a very pretty one - there are myriad horse farms and old farm houses lining Paris Pike as you leave the city and enter small town territory. Once you turn off of Paris Pike and head down Muir Station Road you'll see a small corner store in the middle of the rolling hills of horse country; not only can you buy local food products and trinkets, you can also eat some amazing meals! Here at Windy Corner Market the specialty of the house is the Po Boy sandwich - a hoagie-type roll filled with a variety of seafood featuring shrimp, catfish, or oysters with lettuce, tomato, pickles and special sauce. They also serve salads, burgers, sanwiches, and seafood entrees, as well as an extensive breakfast menu that features all of your southern staples; eggs, sausage, bacon, biscuits and gravy, waffles and of course - breakfast Po Boys! It's long been Ouita's goal to provide a space that is condusive to both customers and farmers alike, and that's definitely the case at Windy Corner Market, as you can purchase anything from local honey and jam to Weisenheimer grits and biscuit mixes. You can even pick up some cookbooks from local chefs so you can recreate some of these great meals at home!
Renee and I met up with our friends Nathan and Joe (who also happens to be Renee's brother) and proceeded to have a look at the menu. Much like reading the Sunday paper, there's a lot to take in - plus the menu actually looks like a newspaper! We all landed on the breakfast side of brunch; Nathan had the sausage and egg platter, Joe had a sausage and egg burrito with a blueberry muffin, Renee had the pancake big breakfast with chocolate chip pancakes and bacon, and I had biscuits and gravy. Since it was prime brunch time we had to wait quite a while for our food but it was well worth it - everything we ate was made from scratch and pretty delicious! You really can't go wrong with a well-made breakfast plate; the meats were perfectly cooked, and I don't know about you all but I can eat all the eggs cooked all the different ways! The muffin was a real hit as well - Joe gulped it down faster than you can say blueberry muffin! None of us ordered one of the famous Po Boy sandwiches, but a fellow brunch patron was kind enough to let us take a photo of her Hangtown fry Po Boy with fried oysters and boy, did it look amazing! It was such a beautiful morning to sit around the table and have a nice brunch wth friends; these are the little things in life like this that Renee and I both cherish quite a bit.
We love to get out and have a good Sunday brunch as often as possible, and being able to frequent a local business makes our meals taste even better! We love that Ouita has made an amazing connection between local farmers and the citizens of Lexington and the surrounding communities by offering up affordable food options that not only taste great, but also helps out other local businesses. To Renee and I, that's what it's all about - communities that go above and beyond to help each other out whenever possible. This is why we spend our free time going around and talking to as many people as we can about the unique bond between business owners and their suppliers - plus trying all of this wonderful local fare doesn't hurt either! It is our sincere hope that you, the audience, see how much we love our state and that maybe a little bit of that pride will rub off on you guys too. Living in Kentucky seems to create a special society of good, down-to-earth people like Ouita Michel who make it their mission to show the rest of the world how awesome it is to live in or visit Kentucky! So get out there and visit Windy Corner Market, Wallace Station, Holly Hill Inn, Honeywood, Midway Bakery, Smithtown Seafood, and Glenn's Creek Café, and show the world how truly awesome local restaurants can be in our Old Kentucky Home!
