Lockbox restaurant at Lexington’s 21c Museum Hotel offers a menu with a Kentucky twist

The contrast between the look of Lockbox, the new restaurant in Lexington’s 21c Museum Hotel, and the taste of Lockbox could not be more different. The decor is spare, elegant and modern.

But the food is almost homey, doesn’t fit in tidy boxes, and has distinctly old-fashioned touches.

The menu designed by chef Jonathan Searle brings the high and the low together, like the art on the restaurant walls.

Take his In Jars, a kind of appetizer designed to be shared. It will feature three jars with a rotation of spreads to put on house-made “saltine” crackers and small buttermilk biscuits, accompanied by pickeled vegetables.

At present, the jars have chicken liver mousse, a smoky pimento cheese and pepper jam over a lemony ricotta, sort of a very fancy version of the pepper jam over cream cheese popular at holiday parties.

Searle said he wanted the dish to suggest a Southern picnic, something that people could gather around and share informally.

“I wanted to have a large element of the menu that was kind of snack based. Not casual but approachable. Really built toward being interactive at the table,” Searle said. “Not just ‘I’m going to order my piece, you’ll order your piece, we’ll eat ours and then move on to the next course.’ I really wanted there to be a significant portion of the menu that was built around sharing and interacting and passing the plates.”

Another of his appetizers, the Kentucky catfish brandade, is served in a tiny cast-iron skillet and given a Kentucky twist. The French dish is traditionally an emulsion of salt cod and olive oil whipped with potatoes, “but we’re baking it with Kentucky catfish instead. … It was a peasant dish, with potatoes used to stretch the cod. We’re using salted catfish instead. … It hits a nice cast iron pan and gets a nice golden crunch on it.”

It’s served with toasted sourdough bread from Lexington’s Sunrise Bakery, a bit of celery salad and a tiny bottle of hot sauce to spice things up.

“The best food came from rustic food, impoverished food, resourcefulness,” Searle said. “Whether that’s French or our Southern heritage. There’s a lot of joy and soul in taking those kinds of dishes back, putting a touch of refinement on them.”

And he has designs on dessert, too.

“The kid in me always comes out at dessert time. That’s an area where I want to have a little sophistication to it, but I really still just like a good buttermilk or chess pie, and great butterscotch pudding, which are both on the menu. Leave it up to me and you’re going to get pie a lot of the time.”

But there are a few dressier touches, like a chocolate torte with toasted meringue and gingersnap ice cream, and an olive oil cake with blood orange curd and pistachio ice cream. And even the butterscotch pudding comes with toffee sorghum crunch, vanilla ice cream and sea salt. The buttermilk pie has roasted pineapple and toasted coconut whip.

“We’ve got the most moist olive oil cake I’ve ever had in my life,” he said. “It melts in your mouth and has this luxurious mouth-feel … it’s really lovely.”

Then and now: Use the slider below to see how the dining room of the restaurant looked in 1940, when it was the lobby of the First National Bank and Trust Co.

KyPhotoArchive.com.

His entrees are a mix of the known, like a hog chop, coupled with the unexpected: it’s topped with a mix of roasted broccoli, pecans and squash mustard that was well received by diners during test meals the week before opening.

And he likes his entrees a little rough around the edges.

“Posh is a word I wouldn’t use for my style of cooking,” Searle said. “It’s very real food. I want you to know it came from a real animal. Our menu’s not large because we pride ourselves on being a from-scratch kitchen,” he said.

Searle is already tinkering with the menu. He’s adding a vegetarian entree — a chickpea panisse, which is a fritter made with chickpea flour, with a little curry powder and chili flake that’s pan roasted and topped with cauliflower and shitake mushrooms and finished with Greek yogurt, pistachio and touch of mint.

He doesn’t know yet what the signature dishes are likely to be.

“My cooking style is so microseasonal based, that the guest will have to tell me,” Searle said.

Searle is working closely with a local organic grower who will produce salad and other greens. Much of his pork and eggs will come from Woodland Farm, also owned by Steve Wilson and Laura Lee Brown, the owners of 21c. Searle is buying other meats from local providers, too. Beef turned out to be one of the toughest to source locally, he said. It’s coming from Black Hawk Farm in Princeton.

So far, the restaurant is only serving dinner and dessert. But once the hotel opens, which will be soon, Lockbox will add breakfast. Eventually, lunch will come, once the staff of 50 is ready.

Searle, who previously worked at Proof, the 21c Museum Hotel’s restaurant in Louisville, has brought the 21c touches to Lexington, like the signature cotton candy at the end of the meal.

One thing he does know: What the cotton candy flavor will be.

“It’s like a berry blue,” he said. “You know we had to go with the blue here. There was no question what color we would go with.”

This story was originally published February 23, 2016 at 12:42 PM with the headline "Lockbox restaurant at Lexington’s 21c Museum Hotel offers a menu with a Kentucky twist."