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"Food at Lilly's continues to be influenced by our longstanding tradition of buying locally from farmers and producers, rather than pursuing fashionable food trends," says Kathy Cary, chef/owner. Susan Reigler, in her valedictory review during her tenure as restaurant critic for the Louisville Courier-Journal, wrote that "If any American city is fortunate, it will have a signature restaurant, an eatery combining a sense of place with the best local flavors. To be truly outstanding, it will have a worldview, too, drawing on many culinary traditions. For … two decades, our city has been very lucky indeed to have its own such quintessential restaurant. Lilly's could be found nowhere but in Louisville.
"Chef/owner Kathy Cary grew up here," she continued, "and loves Kentucky food. The restaurant is located on the edge of the Cherokee Triangle, one of the city's oldest and prettiest neighborhoods. And Cary uses ingredients such as catfish, country ham, bourbon, seasonal produce and local artisanal cheeses and meats on an ever-changing menu that honors Southern foodways but doesn't hesitate to draw from Continental, Mediterranean and Asian techniques. The resulting flavor notes are nearly always pitch-perfect." Current menus and information are to be found at www.lillyslapeche.com.
In her book Kentucky Bourbon Country, Susan Reigler notes that Kathy Cary "has been invited to cook at New York's James Beard House more than any other Kentucky chef." And as a further honor, she declares that Kathy is "the Alice Waters of Louisville, buying fresh produce directly fom local farmers and putting a very sophisticated spin on traditional dishes."
Kathy also heads a celebrated catering operation, known as La Peche. She is known and admired both regionally and nationally. The Louisville Dining Guide summed up Lilly's as "the most influential and celebrated Louisville restaurant of the past decade," adding that it "continues its eclectic, seasonally changing, local-produce-loving ways." Food Arts Magazine, from the national perspective, has included Kathy as one of "Ten of the Nation's Trendsetter Chefs." Kathy has been honored to be selected as one of the few James Beard Award Nominees in the category of "Best Chef of the Southeast" – annually from 2002 through 2006.
She won rave reviews for her debut at New York's James Beard House (a Carnegie Hall for chefs) in 1993, the first chef from Louisville to be invited by the Beard Foundation. She received further invitations, and was honored to appear at the Beard House four more times – before sell-out crowds in 1994, 1995, 1996, and in 1999. A New York Times writer concluded, after a culinary visit to Louisville, "My eating expedition could actually have begun and ended happily in a sleek restaurant called Lilly's."
Kathy's culinary concerns extend beyond the kitchen walls in numerous ways. 2008 marks the 15th year of a cooking-and-gardening educational program she founded in Louisville: "From Seed To Table," as it is called, benefits at-risk inner city teens at the Cabbage Patch Settlement House, through cooking classes, hands-on gardening experience, and field trips throughout the year. Kathy and her daughter Lilly have also appeared on television's Food Network to promote Citymeals-on-wheels and Share Our Strength. She has served as a board member of Chefs collaborative, an organization of American chefs promoting sustainable agriculture. For the 2000 running of the Kentucky Derby, Martha Stewart invited Kathy to tape two cooking segments with her, on Derby food, for Martha's nationally syndicated television program.
Much of Kathy Cary's inspiration derives from her knowledge and love of her own Kentucky roots, where she learned to love food at an early age in her mother's kitchen. Apprenticed to a cordon Bleu-trained chef in Washington, D.C., she later started a small catering firm there and then became a chef at a stylish Georgetown restaurant. She returned to Kentucky, married songwriter/musician Will Cary, and opened her first La Peche gourmet-to-go shop in 1979. Lilly's opened 21 years ago, with its award-winning interior designed by Will, and a menu that reflects Kathy's French-inspired use of traditional Kentucky ingredients with unexpected, contemporary twists.
Major features in Wine & Spirits, Food & Wine, Southern Living and Bon Appetit, and general coverage in many others have evidenced interest from the national food press in Kathy's cooking. During 1997, in addition to appearing on the Today show and on several Food Network programs including a series of "Ready, Set, Cook! " shows, she was pleased to be chosen as one of Gourmet Magazine's "Great American Chefs," coupled with appearances at the Halcyon Restaurant in New York. In January, 1998, Kathy participated in the "Master Women Chefs Festival" in Mexico city along with Lydia Shire, Jody Adams, Deann Bayless and others, in the first out-of-the-U.S. women chefs' benefit for the James Beard Foundation. In March of 1998, Kathy was the only woman chef honored to take part in the 6th Annual "Salute to Southern Chefs" sponsored by Gourmet Magazine and the Charleston Place hotel in South Carolina. She repeated that distinction annually for the next two years.
The history of Kathy's life in food was commemorated in 1999 in an art quilt designed by Jane Burch Cochran as part of the Smithsonian book and exhibit, "Women of Taste," which paired prominent American women chefs with nationally-known women quilt artists to produce quilts evocative of the chefs' careers. The Country Living writer who once wrote about Kathy's cuisine called it "astonishing," "sophisticated," and "delicious," and added, "when I met Carry I found her to be as fresh and generous as every dish she had created."
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