Events

Big Jones Plans Kentucky Tavern Winter’s Evening Jan. 25

Come sit a spell with Mr. Fehribach.
Come sit a spell with Mr. Fehribach. Photo: Sky Full of Bacon

Hey, here’s a great idea for a restaurant— what if you took a particular time period and place, and created your interpretation of the food and drink they served then? Okay, it might be impractical to do such a thing for, say, three months straight, but you could certainly do it for one night— and that’s what Big Jones will be doing Wednesday, January 25th when they stage a dinner based on dining in Kentucky Bourbon country, circa 1840. We love that Paul Fehribach’s Southern restaurant is getting more and more into historical American dining and recipes— we think it’s one of the missing pieces to the modern locavore movement, understanding what you would be eating if you lived here and the giant agribusiness complex didn’t exist to distort the food market. (But Kentucky isn’t here, you say. No, but it does border Illinois and was much more of a trading partner in the era of river traffic than it is now. That’s part of what’s cool about this, too, reconnecting old connections that influenced what we ate.)

Anyway, Fehribach calls it “an early-19th century feast much like you could have enjoyed in the finer taverns of the day,” including plenty of bourbon from makers such as Booker’s, Basil Hayden, and Knob Creek. Although he can’t serve as much wild game as they would have then, when he says menus would have included “such delicacies as bear, possum, deer, and squirrel,” he does conjure up a feast which has a definite look of old time America (see the menu and get other details here). It’s $48 per person, including tax and gratuity… and we’re pretty sure you don’t have to be on your computer at just the right time to click for tickets, either.

Big Jones Plans Kentucky Tavern Winter’s Evening Jan. 25