Jefferson Street Soiree returns with food, music, Keeneland Sale Ale

Mark your calendars: The third annual Jefferson Street Soiree will be 6 to 10 p.m. Sept. 14, in celebration of Keeneland’s September Yearling Sale. The event will stretch from Short Street to Maryland and feature food and drinks for sale from Stella’s, Nick Ryan’s, Blue Stallion Brewing, Green Lantern, Chase Tap Room, Wagon Bones, Smithtown Seafood, West Sixth Brewing, Blue Heron Steakhouse, Enoteca, Grey Goose, and Wine + Market. Keeneland and Country Boy’s Fall Sale Ale will be available at The Blue Heron beer garden.

The event is cash only. It’s presented by VisitLEX’s Beyond Grits, and new copies of the annual local dining guide will be available at the VisitLEX tent. There also will be live music by The Wooks and Tee Dee Young; a Keeneland Pop-up Shop for Keeneland and VisitLEX gear and Soiree t-shirts; and there will be a Lexington Bourbon Society scavenger hunt.

▪  The Berea Farmers Market will host a Celebrate the Harvest community dinner 5 to 8 p.m. Sept. 10, featuring local produce and meats at Russell Acton Folk Center, 212 West Jefferson Street. Menu will include gourmet barbecue featuring local, pasture-raised pork, chicken, and beef prepared by chef Rick Thomas or a vegetarian entree of farm-fresh grilled vegetables prepared by Katie Startzman, to be served on Clementine’s Bakeshop buns, complemented by an abundance of traditional seasonal sides and sauces. Tickets are $15 per adult, $7.50 for kids 8 to 12. Kids 8 and younger are free. Tickets are available at the market from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. Saturday or online at Eventbrite.com. The meal will be followed by an old-fashioned barn dance at 7 p.m.

▪  Guy Fieri’s Smokehouse, 434 South Fourth Street at Fourth Street Live! in downtown Louisville, will open at 9 p.m. Saturday. The smokehouse will be a flagship location of a new concept for the restaurateur with 6,700 square feet of dining space, including 117 interior seats and 79 outdoor patio seats. The outdoor patio, totaling over 2,200 square feet, will feature a large meat smoker custom made by Ole Hickory and an indoor/outdoor bar.

▪  Lexington Sister Cities’ 14th annual Half-Way to St. Patrick’s Day fundraiser is 5:30 to 8 p.m. Sept. 14 at O’Neill’s Irish Pub, 2051 Richmond Road. Traditional Irish stew and Irish breads by chef Mary Parlanti will be available, along with a silent auction, entertainment by the McTeggart Irish Dancers and Liam’s Fancy Irish music. It’s $10 at the door; advance tickets also available. Contact Sarah Martin at smartin@lexingtonky.gov, or call 859-258-3137. Proceeds benefit the Sister Cities student scholarship fund.

▪  Critchfield Meats, 2220 Nicholasville Road, is offering a Kentucky Proud Tailgate Bundle for the University of Kentucky football games. For $69.95 you get five Critchfield brats, five jumbo beef hotdogs, five Critchfield burgers, five boneless skinless chicken breasts, two pounds of cole slaw, two pounds of potato salad, one pound of Critchfield beer cheese and two dozen country ham and rolls — enough to feed more than 10 people. Order at least two days in advance; call 859-276-4965. Also, customers can enter into a drawing for two tickets to the UK-Georgia football game on Nov. 5.

▪  Alfalfa, 141 East Main Street, will feature Peruvian cuisine for International Night on Wednesday. From 5:30 to 9 p.m. you can get corvina taku taku (seared corvina with a black bean rice cake, fried platains, yellow chili sauce and salaa criolla), aji de gallina (chicken simmered in a rich sauce with amarillo peppers, onions, walnuts, parmesan and cream served with boiled mixed potatoes, hardboiled egg and black olives), stuffed chilies, empanadas, and locro (butternut squash, mixed blue and red potatoes, corn, peas and onion simmered with garlic, chilies and spicies served over lima bean quinoa salad with yellow chili sauce and salsa criolla.) Next Wednesday: Portuguese night.

▪  Lexington cookbook author Barbara Harper Bach will teach a Biscuit Clinic from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Sept. 10 at Wild Thyme Cooking School, 1060 Chinoe Road. Class is $45, and you will taste and make big cowboy biscuits, old fashioned buttermilk biscuits, cream cheese tea biscuits, steam risen biscuits and shortcake biscuit. Participants will receive the baking cookbook, The Pat A Cake Clinic, Biscuits, Breads and Cakes in a Pan. Call 859-523-2665 to sign up.

▪  Brasabana, 841 Lane Allen Road, will offer tapas from 6 to 9 p.m. Sept. 10 in honor of Latin Heritage Month. For $25 per person, you can sample seared guajillo salmon with queso fresco croqutte and strawberry and ginger leche de tigre; albondigas de cordero cabrales (red pepper ceviche, huitlacoche mashed potatoes and creamy chimichurri), lamb meatballs in a red pepper salsa with black corn mashed potatoes and a creamy herb salsa, sangria-braised short ribs with grana padono corn arepas, black pepper-rococo escabeche (cheese corn cakes and black pepper vinegar sauce), and samba chicken dry-charcoal rubbed with agave glaze and malanga croquettes. Reservations recommended; call 859-303-5573.

▪  Bluegrass Catering, 903 Manchester Street behind The Barrel House, is now offering Middle Eastern, Indian and South Asian cuisine for catering carryout. Menu includes vegetable biryani, tandoori chicken, chicken tikkhan masala, chicken shawarma, beef shish kabob, lamb kabsa, and more. Orders need to be placed at least 48 hours in advance: 859-231-7676 or BluegrassCater@aol.com.

▪  Tickets are available for the next evening Culinary Tour at Elmwood Stock Farm, 3520 Paris Pike in Georgetown, 6 to 8 p.m. Sept. 20. Chef Ranada West-Riley, owner of Lexington Diner and Creative Table Kitchen and Catering, will be preparing an organic, farm-grown meal and talking with guests about cooking with autumn’s bounty. The Fall Flavors in the Bluegrass event will start with a walking tour of the vegetable-production fields, greenhouse and high tunnels before dinner at the picnic tables. Tickets are $30-$50, and preregistration is required: fallflavorsinthebluegrass.eventbrite.com.

▪  On Sept. 21, the Chew Dinner Series continues with at The Livery, 238 East Main Street. Chef John Foster of The Sage Rabbit will prepare a three-course meal, with cuisine focused on London and London, Ky. Doors open at 6 p.m. for cocktail hour, with hors d’oeuvres. Tickets are $50 per person, available online at chewdinnerseries.com/tickets.

▪  Lockbox in 21c Museum Hotel, 167 West Main Street, will welcome 1792 and Buffalo Trace for a series of special dinners in honor of National Bourbon Heritage Month. On Sept. 15, Barton 1792 visitor center manager Josh Hollifield will join executive chef Jonathan Searle to host a three-course dinner featuring pairings by Barton 1792 Distillery. On Sept. 29 at 6:30 p.m., Lockbox will welcome Buffalo Trace senior distillery supervisor Josh Wheatley. Both events begin at 6:30 p.m. with a welcome reception complete with a featured cocktail and passed appetizer and three-course prix fixe dinner. Tickets for the bourbon dinners are $79 per person. Seating is limited; for reservations call 859-899-6860.

Throughout the month of September, Lockbox will feature the special Clearance, Clarence cocktail with milk-clarified Old Forester 86, lemon juice and vanilla syrup for $10 — Lockbox’s unique take on the whiskey sour with a creamy texture and bright flavor. The hotel will offer complimentary bourbon tastings in the galleries for hotel guests each Friday from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. all month.

▪  The 25th annual Kentucky Bourbon Festival in Bardstown starts Sept. 14. A new Urban Bourbon Trail Passport is also available at the Louisville Visitors Center, now with 36 stops at Louisville bourbon bars and restaurants, several of which have specials in September in honor of National Bourbon Heritage Month.

▪  Brands don’t turn 150 every day, or even once in many cases. To celebrate the brand’s 150th anniversary, Jack Daniel’s Tennessee Whiskey has released a special limited edition whiskey priced about $100 for a one-liter bottle. Barreled and bottled at 100 proof, the 150th anniversary edition offers complex tasting notes of butterscotch and toffee upon first taste followed by a full, smooth and lingering finish with warm flavors of toasted oak.

▪  Copper & Kings brandy distillery, 1121 East Washington Street in Louisville, will launch 3 Marlenas tequila barrel-aged apple brandy Sept. 9. From 7 p.m. to midnight, the distillery will host a courtyard fiesta, which includes a mini tour of the distillery and two tastings for $10 per person. Label artist Damon Thompson will be on hand to sign bottles of 3 Marlenas while salsa band Milenio entertains the crowd. Latin-inspired brandy cocktails and empanadas and elotes from Butchertown Pie Co. will also be available.

Only 1,000 bottles of 3 Marlenas were produced and will be on sale for the first time at this event, priced at $40 for a 375 ml bottle. The artisanal apple brandy was matured two years in tequila barrels making an unusual and adventurous spirit with the nuance, character and personality of tequila.

This story was originally published September 6, 2016 at 12:08 PM with the headline "Jefferson Street Soiree returns with food, music, Keeneland Sale Ale."