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Shaker Village shakes things up, still a lovable getaway

by Robin Garr » Wed Aug 24, 2016 9:27 am

Shaker Village shakes things up, but it’s still a lovable getaway

LEO's Eats with Robin Garr

The Trustees’ Table’s smothered pork loin.
Image

Kentucky’s beautiful Shakertown at Pleasant Hill is one of my favorite places anywhere. Nestled in the shady lanes and meadows of a Mercer County hilltop, this 200-year-old restored Shaker village is both a living museum and a peaceful and serene getaway.

And, completing the lure, it also boasts an excellent dining room, with first-rate upscale bistro fare served by black-clad servers in the elegant beauty of the Shaker Trustees’ House, a redbrick hostelry that dates back to the early 1800s.

Wait! Wait! Did I just say “upscale bistro fare served by black-clad servers”? What happened to Shakertown’s trademark Shaker fare and the servers wearing Shaker attire?

Well, that’s the sad news, or sad at least for those of us who’ve grown up with Shakertown and know it as a living museum showcasing the Shakers, the millennial sect that purportedly believed in hard work, beautifully simple design, and no sex whatsoever. because they believed the end of the world was coming too soon to bother.

Believe me, the beauty and quiet grace of the sturdy old Shaker buildings remains. We spent a relaxing overnighter there recently, and you can surely still feel the shades of the old Shakers wandering around, climbing a creaky staircase or peering into a shadowy barn.

But a few years ago, with the arrival of new management and a subtly different name - from Shakertown to Shaker Village - things began to change.

“Shakertown … is dying,” University of Kentucky Political Science Prof. Ernest J. Yanarella wrote in 2004 in the Terrain.org environmental journal. “A steady drop in attendance, compounded by the sameness and lack of vibrancy of its presentation of the former Shaker community, hints at deeper troubles.”

Faced with declining attendance and revenue, Shakertown was starting to look a little shopworn when Maynard Crossland came on as the non-profit educational corporation’s President and CEO in September 2011. He was charged, according to its 2015 annual report, to come up with a plan to “enliven the guest experience … as a tourism destination for a 21st century audience.”

I’m sure that yanking a 20th century replica of a 19th century millennial sect into the 21st century wasn’t easy to do without breaking anything, and I’ll give them credit for keeping the spirit alive. ...

Read the full review on LouisvilleHotBytes,
http://www.louisvillehotbytes.com/?p=5684

You'll also find this review in LEO Weekly’s Food & Drink section today.
http://www.leoweekly.com/category/food-drink/

The Trustees’ Table
Shaker Village at Pleasant Hill
3501 Lexington Road (Ky. Hwy. 68)
Harrodsburg, Ky.
(800) 734-5611, ext. 360
http://shakervillageky.org/the-trustees-table
https://facebook.com/shakervillageky
Robin Garr’s rating: 83 points

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