Brooking’s chili, Rupp’s favorite, was so good people still crave it. Try the recipe.
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Cooking with the past
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Lexington misses its lost restaurants.
Last week we launched our “Cooking with the Past” recipe series with DeSha’s cornbread and honey butter.
And lots of you wanted even more local recipes, so we listened and went digging.
Some of the recipes we found come from the Lexington Herald-Leader archive files, others from veteran recipe collectors. If you have a favorite you want us to try to find, email me at jpatton1@herald-leader.com.
And yes, it is OK to ask a local dining spot if they will tell you how they make that dish you love! The worst they can do is say no, right?
That has always been the philosophy of Lexington cookbook author Barbara Harper Bach, who shared with us a popular recipe based on one of the town’s most famous dishes: Brooking’s Restaurant chili.
What made Brooking’s chili so special?
Brooking’s Restaurant was a tiny soda fountain, with just 24 seats when it opened in 1938 on Euclid Avenue near the University of Kentucky campus. Founder George Ed Brooking added chili to the menu after World War II; his son, Harold, was credited with developing the recipe for this mild chili. But it apparently was adapted over the years.
It was a big hit but what really made it special was that UK men’s basketball coach Adolph Rupp loved it. According to legend, Rupp ate there before games for luck. UK players also stopped in after they shot hoops on the courts at nearby Woodland Park, or so the stories go.
Rupp always sat in the third booth on the left, with his own special bowl. Almost every subsequent UK coach ate there as well. Well into the 1980s the restaurant sold 250 gallons of the famous chili a week, much of it to UK students, past and present.
In 1982 John Y. Brown Sr. proposed franchising the restaurant but that never got off the ground.
In 1985, when the NCAA Final Four was in Lexington, millions of Americans saw Brooking’s when sports commentator Al McGuire did his network TV show from the restaurant.
Brooking’s Restaurant closed
The restaurant closed June 1, 1991, after 53 years. On the last day, hundreds of people turned out to get one last bowl. Cook Sonny Perry limited takeout orders to four bowls but still ran out of food and had to close at 6 p.m., four hours early.
Adolph “Herky” Rupp Jr., son of the UK basketball coach, stopped by for his last Brooking’s meal. “It’s a big part of my father’s life, this is their last day and I wanted to be part of it,” Rupp told Herald-Leader reporter Kevin Osbourn. “My father brought me here sometimes when I was quite young.”
The building became a series of bars, then there was an arson fire in September 2020 that damaged it heavily. In October 2021, the still-damaged building was demolished and another chapter in Lexington dining history closed.
But a lot of people never forgot.
Much of the memorabilia from Brooking’s went to the UK Library Special Collection. But not, apparently, the chili recipe. A version of the seasoning can be purchased online at brookingschili.com.
Barbara Harper Bach said that she got this recipe from a friend of a friend, who told her that several different recipes were used at the restaurant over the years. But this version, with the unusual addition of orange-flavored Triple Sec liqueur, was the most popular, she said.
This story was originally published March 31, 2022 at 6:00 AM.
