Louisville HotBytes.com in The Voice-TribuneAnybody want a little mutton? I can hear you going "Eeuuww!" all the way from here.
Once beloved by our English and Australian cousins, who had a lot of sheep around, mutton has all but died out in modern times. You'll rarely if ever see it in the grocery store or on a restaurant menu. In an age of mild beef, chicken and pork, "the other white meat," mutton has a bad reputation as strong, greasy and gamey meat.
But you'll find an enduring exception in Western Kentucky, around Owensboro and Paducah, where sheep are farmed and mutton lives on as a popular meat choice for barbecue.
Owensboro's Moonlite Bar-B-Q Inn may be the iconic home of Western Kentucky barbecue, if only because of its wide advertising and sumptuous all-you-can-eat buffet. But dozens of other local favorites lure the hungry traveler. In Louisville, barring the annual Barbecue Pitt fund-raiser in May, mutton barbecue may be found at only two places I know of: Bootleg Bar-B-Q in Fern Creek, and Ole Hickory Pit on Shepherdsville Road near General Electric's Appliance Park, whose diminishing corps of workers is still plenty to fill up this popular place at lunch time.
It's hard to miss Ole Hickory Pit. Just look out for the giant pink pig statue on the roof. Carrying on the tradition that his father, Murvin Ramage, began in 1941 at Plantation Bar-b-que in Paducah, proprietor Ken Ramage and his wife, Sharon, smoke meats the old-fashioned way.
We stopped in for a visit and found that there's been some redecorating done. The toys that used to dangle from the ceiling are gone, and the concrete-block walls have been painted tasteful gloss-enamel pale beige over dark brown, with a few framed old photos of Louisville scenes around. It looks a bit more upscale, like a cross between a barbecue pit and a bistro, but the fare is all barbecue.
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Ole Hickory Pit
6106 Shepherdsville Road
968-0585