The Food You Should Actually Eat in Kentucky

The food you should actually eat in Kentucky is a Hot Brown in Louisville, mutton barbecue in Owensboro, beer cheese near Winchester, country ham at breakfast, and burgoo wherever someone has a pot going. Fried chicken counts too, but the state's real eating happens in dishes most visitors have never heard of.

Kentucky is longer than people think. Driving from the Mississippi River to the Virginia line, the food changes about as much as the terrain does. Western Kentucky eats like the river South. The Bluegrass eats like old money. Eastern Kentucky eats like the mountains. Here is what to order and roughly where.

Start with the Hot Brown

The Hot Brown was invented at the Brown Hotel in Louisville, and the hotel still serves it. It is an open-faced turkey sandwich buried under Mornay sauce, run under a broiler until it bubbles, then topped with bacon and tomato. It arrives in a hot dish and it is not a light lunch. It is barely a lunch at all. It is more of a commitment.

You can get one at plenty of places around Louisville, and half the diners in the state have a version on the menu. The hotel original is worth doing once, the way you'd see the original of anything. After that, find a neighborhood spot on Bardstown Road or Frankfort Avenue and see how they do it. The Mornay is the whole game. Watery sauce, ruined sandwich.

Owensboro barbecue means mutton

Most of America argues about pork versus brisket. Owensboro, on the Ohio River in western Kentucky, quietly went a third direction: mutton. Older sheep, smoked low and slow over hickory, usually served chopped or sliced with a thin, vinegary black dip that cuts through the richness.

Moonlite Bar-B-Q Inn is the famous name, and the buffet there is a rite of passage. But mutton barbecue in that part of the state is bigger than one restaurant. Church picnics in Daviess County and the surrounding area have cooked it for generations, and if you ever get invited to one, cancel whatever else you had planned.

Mutton is a strong flavor and some people flinch at the idea. Order it anyway. Get the dip on the side if you're nervous. Then get a second plate, because you weren't nervous for long.

Beer cheese belongs to Winchester

Beer cheese is a sharp, spreadable cheddar mixture with beer and a real kick of cayenne and garlic, served cold with crackers or celery. Central Kentucky claims it, and Winchester in Clark County claims it hardest — the town holds a beer cheese festival and takes the subject seriously.

Things to know before you order it:

• It should have heat. Bland beer cheese is a failure of nerve.
• It comes as an appetizer almost everywhere in the Bluegrass, often before you've asked.
• Grocery store coolers in central Kentucky carry local brands, and taking a tub home is a legitimate souvenir.
• The correct drink alongside it, if you're in Winchester, is an Ale-8-One — the gingery soft drink bottled right there in town. Kentuckians call it Ale-8 and drink it cold out of the glass bottle.

Beer cheese, crackers, and an Ale-8 on a porch in July is about as central-Kentucky as it gets. The kind of scene the Kentucky Icons Tee is quietly gesturing at.

Country ham, and the biscuit question

Kentucky country ham is salt-cured and aged, and it is not the pink deli ham of the rest of the country. It is intense, chewy, and salty enough to make you reach for your water. That is the point. A thin slice on a biscuit is one of the state's great breakfasts, and small-town cafés from Cadiz to Lebanon still do it right.

The pairing to hunt down is country ham with red-eye gravy — a thin gravy made from the ham drippings and black coffee. It sounds like a dare. It works. Add eggs, grits if the kitchen leans southern, and you have a breakfast that will carry you through a whole day of driving the Bourbon Trail around Bardstown.

Spoonbread deserves a mention here too. It is somewhere between cornbread and a soufflé, eaten with a spoon, and Berea celebrates it with a festival. If you see it on a menu, order it. You mostly won't see it anywhere else in the country.

Burgoo, the stew with no fixed recipe

Burgoo is a thick, slow-cooked stew of several meats and whatever vegetables the cook believes in. Every version is different and every cook thinks theirs is correct. In western Kentucky it often includes mutton, which ties it back to the Owensboro barbecue tradition. Around Lexington you'll find it at Keeneland during the race meets, eaten from a cup while you lose small amounts of money on horses.

The rules of burgoo, such as they exist:

• It should be thick enough that the spoon hesitates.
• Asking exactly what's in it is considered slightly rude.
• It is best in cold weather, from a big pot, outdoors.
• Barbecue joints in the western part of the state usually have it as a side. Get it as a side.

The sweet stuff: bourbon balls and a pie we can't name

Kentucky desserts lean on two ingredients: bourbon and pecans or walnuts. Bourbon balls — chocolate-dipped candies with a bourbon-cream center and a pecan on top — show up at every Kentucky Christmas, wedding, and Derby party. Ruth Hunt Candies and Rebecca Ruth are names people trust, but plenty of grandmothers refuse to concede.

Then there is the famous chocolate-walnut pie associated with Derby season. The best-known name for it is trademarked, so restaurants sell it under careful aliases — pegasus pie, race day pie, thoroughbred pie. Whatever the menu calls it, it's a gooey chocolate and nut pie, usually with bourbon in it, and it's excellent slightly warm.

Two more for the list: Louisville's Modjeska, a caramel-wrapped marshmallow candy, and transparent pie, a simple sugar-butter-egg pie from the Maysville area in northeastern Kentucky that locals will drive real distances for.

How to eat your way across the state

If you're routing a trip around food, it goes something like this. Start in Louisville with a Hot Brown and a Modjeska. Drive east to Winchester for beer cheese and an Ale-8. Hit a Keeneland meet in Lexington for burgoo if the season lines up. Swing south through Bardstown for bourbon and a country ham biscuit. Then commit to the long drive west to Owensboro for mutton, because it is the one thing on this list you genuinely cannot get anywhere else.

And yes, fried chicken. Harland Sanders got his start cooking for travelers in Corbin, in the southeastern part of the state, and the town leans into the history. But Kentuckians will tell you the best fried chicken is at a church picnic or somebody's mother's house, and they're right.

If any of this sounds like home, the Kentucky collection was made with you in mind — the Script Kentucky Tee for the understated, the Welcome to Kentucky Tee for people who like to make the point on arrival.

Common questions

What food is Kentucky most famous for?

Fried chicken, thanks to Colonel Sanders' Corbin origins, and bourbon. But the dishes Kentuckians actually claim are the Hot Brown, burgoo, beer cheese, country ham, and Owensboro's mutton barbecue.

What is a Kentucky Hot Brown?

An open-faced turkey sandwich covered in Mornay sauce, broiled until browned, and topped with bacon and tomato. It was created at the Brown Hotel in Louisville, which still serves the original.

Why does Owensboro barbecue use mutton?

Western Kentucky had a strong sheep-raising tradition, and church picnics in the area smoked mutton over hickory for generations. The style stuck, and Owensboro is now one of the only places in America where mutton is the default barbecue meat.