Doner kebab, beer wall & duckpin bowling: New Lexington bar leans into grown-up fun
A new restaurant and bar open in Lexington’s Distillery District is the latest place to offer grown-ups a place to play.
District 7 Social opened Jan. 17 in the Rickhouse building on the Pepper Campus, with the main entrance at the orange doors off the breezeway between the two parking lots.
Co-owned by Rebecca and Eric Burnworth, District 7 is a social hall featuring a self-serve beer wall, full bar that will offer wine and bourbon flights, tons of TVs and lots of group seating.
The name of the bar is a nod to the historic tax district that encompassed Lexington and Bluegrass area distilleries.
Rebecca Burnworth, an architect, redesigned the space that used to be the location of Battle Axes and added warmer lighting, including antler chandeliers, and repurposed wood on the walls.
What kind of games does it have?
For game fun, there are six duckpin bowling lanes you can rent by the half-hour or hour. Duckpin bowling is a variation to bowling but the balls have no holes and the pins are shorter and squatter.
They also have free pingpong in the pingpong lounge, which also can be reserved for larger groups, as well as a golf simulator room that can be expanded for larger parties.
The golf simulator will let you play Pebble Beach and about 200 other golf courses, Burnworth said. The adjacent room can accommodate about 40 and with the 10x20-foot screen is perfect for watching big games, she said.
What’s on the menu?
If you get hungry, they have a menu called German-isch, which features hybrid German dishes including Doner Kebab, a Turkish street food popular in Germany, as well as a Chicken Schnitzel Sandwich that’s marries Kentucky’s traditional fried chicken to a mustard cheese sauce on sourdough bread.
The menu was designed by executive chef Ray Cameron, who has included lots of fusion cuisine such as the Tarte Flambe, a turn on a traditional French/German pizza with crema sauce, bacon, caramelized onions and Gruyere cheese.
The menu is very shareable and includes many vegetarian options.
The Burnworths, who also own The Stave in Versailles, wanted to add to their foothold along the Kentucky Bourbon Trail with a Lexington restaurant.
“My husband and I have been kind of dreaming up a concept for the last year and a half, two years ... we kept wandering into social hall concepts and they were always kind of a hybrid of some games, self-serve beer walls and great food,” she said. “We wanted to bring that back to Lexington in some capacity. And one of the favorite things we saw was duckpin bowling.”
The space is large and will have outdoor covered seating in the breezeway when the weather is warmer, she said. The bar also has large garage doors that will open on nice days, too.
In late spring, Burnworth said, they plan to add another food option: Sweet Iron, a waffle concept that will be open in the mornings and during the day. It will be part of the same space but with its own front door on the mural side of the building. Patrons will be able to order waffles and eat them in the main social hall area, too.
District 7 Social
Where: 1170 Manchester Street, Suite 160
Hours: Tuesday-Sunday, 11 a.m. to 11 p.m. (subject to change)
This story was originally published January 23, 2023 at 7:00 AM.
