Sidebar in Louisville summer menu includes floats, burgers and more
In honor of Pride Month, Sidebar at Whiskey Row offers a special Rainbow Float to go along with its well-known burgers. See what else we tired.
- In 2024, Louisville Food Tours kicked off “Pride Plates,” a walking food tour highlighting Kentucky’s LGBTQ+ history.
- The tour features food and drinks, alongside tales from Kentucky’s history.
- Stops include several restaurants and bars along Bardstown Road, including The Eagle, Big Bar, and Bristol Bar & Grill.
Even before this walk around one of Louisville’s most popular streets, you probably know a little about Kentucky’s ties to fried chicken.
Maybe you’re also in the know about some tidbits of Kentucky’s rich queer history, like that lore about Lady Gaga showing up at a drag show in 2011 at a now-closed Louisville bar.
But there’s so much more. That’s what you’ll find after leaving this new food tour fueled by tales of Kentuckians making waves for the LGBTQIA+ community, splashes of Old Fashioneds, and bites of spoonbread.
And that’s just one goal of Louisville Food Tours’ “Pride Plates,” a walking food and queer history tour through the Highlands, known as one of Louisville’s gayborhoods
As what’s most likely the only queer food tour of its kind in the country, “Pride Plates” was born out of Bourbon and Belonging from Queer Kentucky, held for the first time in October 2024.
When the idea of the tour sparked, Richie Goff, director of marketing with Louisville Food Tours, soon went to the University of Louisville Library archives, where the Williams Nichols collection holds droves of items, from posters and buttons to fliers and newspaper articles, collected primarily by Louisville activist David Williams. It’s now regarded as one of the largest LGBTQ+ archives in the country.
“From that, we were basically trying to tell the story of queer joy and the history of gay Kentucky,” Goff told the Courier Journal.
And those archives filled with a few thousands materials proved ripe for the cause. Goff spent months researching and then writing a lengthy, lively script for “Pride Plates,” riddled with references to Oscar Wilde, Henry Faulkner, and other significant characters or moments from Kentucky’s past, such as Louisville being the site of the country’s first lesbian couple ever to sue for marriage equality.
Maybe you’re already thinking, “Who knew?”
Again, there’s more.
The fun, and very real facts presented on the tour trace back to the late 1800s and end with the present day.
“I think there’s this perception that Kentucky isn’t very welcoming or liberal or gay friendly,” Goff, a Louisville native, said. “But, in doing this research, I was really able to see that gay people, trans people, and queer people in Kentucky have always existed.”
And, even though past Courier Journal articles play a role in the tour, it’d be no fun to give the event’s highlights away.
Then, you’d miss the ever-entertaining Hannah Greene, whose bouncy smile gives the informative evening an extra something. Keep in mind they’ve excitedly memorized Goff’s 15-page script and make it sound conversational.
“I have found that this tour is so incredibly joyful,” Greene told the Courier Journal. “It is a three-hour dose of queer joy.”
The tour, typically available for booking Wednesdays-Fridays, has taken off more during its Pride Month debut. It’s one of several options from Louisville Food Tours available year-round.
“Pride Plates” begins at Bristol Bar & Grille, 1321 Bardstown Road, where a small group of a dozen or so guests, often a mix of locals, out-of-towners, friends, and strangers, meet over sips of Manhattans and bites of shrimp and grits and Bristol’s take on the Kentucky Hot Brown.
Those tried and true tastes of Kentucky tradition make way for Greene to talk about other pieces of this state’s history.
During one of the first “Pride Plates,” Greene recalls a world-traveling influencer couple in attendance. The pair’s Internet presence is all about “celebrating queer culture in unexpected places.”
“I think that can be the crux of ‘Pride Plates,’” Greene, who grew up in Louisville and Harlan County, said. “To learn and to find out more history about a place that I’ve had to fall in love with over my entire life, even though I’ve been here my entire life, has been wonderful.”
The group then crosses the street to The Eagle, 1314 Bardstown Road. Around a big table, orders of fried chicken, skillets of spoonbread, and cups of bourbon punch are shared.
That’s followed by a stop at Carmichael’s Bookstore, 1295 Bardstown Road, where Greene remembers seeing rainbow flags displayed in the windows as a young kid.
Now, it remains a “gay haven,” they said.
The progressive meal continues at Ramsi’s Cafe on the World, 1293 Bardstown Road, where the Caramelized Banana Trifle dessert and a round of Old Fashioned cocktails are served.
The tour ends with drinks at Big Bar, 1202 Bardstown Road, and Chill Bar, 1117 Bardstown Road, but not before a short stroll in the Highlands that happens to be Greene’s favorite part of their well-practiced spiel.
They’ve told the story many times by now, but still “could just start crying” thinking about the Louisville area’s first-ever informal Pride events at Otter Creek Park.
Held about 45 minutes outside the city in an effort to stay safe back in the early 1980s, Greene tells tour-goers how roughly 100 attendees sacrificed much to gather over snacks like pimento cheese sandwiches.
You could call those picnics the original version of “Pride Plates.”
Reach food and dining reporter Amanda Hancock at [email protected].
WHAT: The Queer History Food Tour will take participants on a journey through Louisville’s LGBTQ+ past and present, served with a side of fried chicken, spoonbread, and bourbon cocktails, of course. Stroll down Bardstown Road (aka Louisville’s gayborhood) and hear stories of legendary queer figures, from Prohibition-era drag queens, trailblazing poets and activists to a bourbon drinking goat. Enjoy five dishes and five bourbon cocktails. This is a tour that feeds both your stomach and your soul.
WHERE: Meet outside of 1321 Bardstown Road
WHEN: Offered year-round Wednesdays-Fridays, 5-8 p.m.
COST: $159 for non-refundable tickets; $169 for refundable tickets (fully refundable up to 48 hours before tour)
MORE INFORMATION: Arrive 15 minutes before tour begins. louisvillefoodtours.com/queer-history-tour.
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