Hooves and Bricks
This adventure takes us to Churchill Downs in Louisville, KY to watch the thoroughbred equines run and then on to Indianapolis to watch the 500 mile car race. I start the adventure by departing Grand Rapids on the Pere Marquette and transfer to the Illini #393 at Chicago Union Station bound for DuQuoin, IL. JoeG hops on the Illini #392 at DuQuoin, goes to Centralia, spends a couple of hours bending a taco at Tequilla's Cafe, then boards the #393 as it comes thru Centralia and we both arrive back at his car in DuQuoin. We complete our trip to Louisville by car since there is no Amtrak service available.
In Louisville, we check into the historic Brown Hotel and scout out the restaurant and night scene on the popular 4th Street. This hotel was built and owned by James Graham Brown. He wanted to compete with the Seelbach Hotel (still operating as a Hilton property) which we walked to just a short distance down 4th Street. During it's heyday, the ballroom of the hotel was packed every night with folks enjoying dancing and listening to big band music (people did some really odd things before TV!!). The revelers were always hungry after a night of dancing. One night in 1926 the chef, Fred Schmidt, introduced an open faced turkey sandwich with bacon and a delicate Mornay sauce. The concoction became an instant hit and is now the most well known sandwich in Kentucky the "Hot Brown". Without a doubt, we had to try this sandwich and what better place to have it prepared than at J. Graham's Restaurant in the Brown Hotel. It is definitely worth ordering. The sandwich remained popular despite the history of the hotel.
The downtown Louisville area began to decline and was hastened along by the huge Ohio River flood of 1937 when the entire first floor of the hotel was underwater. Although there was no electricity, the hotel remained open and many of the flood victims stayed in the hotel until the water receded. There are reports of employees catching big old river catfish in the lobby!! Then J Graham Brown died in 1969 and the hotel closed in 1971. It was bought by the local school system. In 1983 downtown began a resurgence and the hotel was returned to its former glory and even better...the dividing wall between every other room was removed making the old 600 rooms into 293 very roomy, comfortable guest rooms. The hotel is currently operated by the Historic Hotels of America and is worth a visit if you are in Louisville. If you do not stay here, at least stroll thru the lobby and other public areas...a beautiful insight to a bygone era.
Now on to our main purpose for visiting Louisville: Churchill Downs. This facility was built in 1875, held the first Kentucky Derby that same year, and has been host to the richest racing event in the country ever since. The place is huge, seating 50,000 people and holding 150,000 on some Derby days. We got great box seats on the finish line (obviously it wasn't Derby Day!!) and enjoyed a great card of racing. Of course our other purpose for being here was to check out the corned beef sandwich. A vendor inside the grandstand called Smashers fit the bill. We got interested in the races and almost waited too late to order. When I walked up to the counter, the lady had already put all of the meat away but I told her about our adventure and she was happy to oblige. Southern hospitality is alive and well!!
The next morning we are driving a couple of hours north to Indianapolis but first we made a great breakfast find on Foursquare only a few blocks from the hotel...Wild Eggs. This is now our absolute favorite breakfast joint. I hope they go nation wide someday. JoeG ordered the Kalamity Katies- green chili cheddar corn cakes topped with chorizo, two poached eggs and queso fondito, pico de gallo, sour cream, green onions, and avocado; served with skillet potatoes and an “everything” muffin. I tried the Mexico City Maria's Chilaquiles- a Mexican style breakfast casserole with corn tortillas, refried beans, salsa verde, queso blanco and a sunny side up egg. Served with skillet potatoes and a shot of jugo de limon y chile...I have no idea what was in that shot glass but it was awfully good on the casserole.
The drive to Indianapolis was uneventful even though traffic was very heavy.. I guess we weren't the only people going to the 500!?!? We met up with JoeG's brother and grabbed a quick lunch at Wolfies Grill. The pitchers of beer were $12 but they made it tolerable by giving us a complimentary order of hot wings. These wings were not sauced, just dry rub and excellent. JoeG isn't a big yard bird fan, so he also got some fiery cheese sticks. We let him “enjoy” those by himself! Then we made a quick trip to the track for souvenirs and to get a picture of the “yard of bricks”. Back when this track opened it was an all brick 2 1/2 mile oval. It has since been paved with the exception of a one yard strip of bricks that is the current finish line.
Our next stop was downtown at the Weber Grill. We each went for a different style burger and all were delicious.
If you are in a city that has a Weber Grill, it is an excellent lunch or dinner joint. They have a menu of great burgers, steaks, and salads. It was time to call it an early night because race day starts very early and has the potential to be a very long day. In this case, the weather cooperated and there wasn't even a yellow flag until over 160 laps into the race...a very fun day. We were on the road back to Illinois by 4pm and looking forward to some steel wheels.
On Monday we did a points run from DuQuoin to Carbondale and back with some Mexican lunch at Tres Hombres during the layover. That evening we stopped by the 17th Street BBQ for what was, arguably, the best smoked, BBQ pork steak I”ve ever tasted!!
The next day we planned to repeat the points run but we had an interruption. The southbound train from Chicago was almost to Champaign when the conductor was told to hold the train for a gas leak in downtown Champaign. It appeared the problem would take a while so we continued on to St Louis by car with the hopes of a Wednesday ride on the Missouri River Runner. It was the right move...the train was 4 hours late into Carbondale. By that time we were checked into a hotel and enjoying a pizza at Giannino's.
Wednesday was national hamburger day and our inspiration was a notice from the Hermann Wurst House that they would be serving a smoked ground pork burger. We boarded the MRR at Kirkwood to Hermann. We hop off of the train anticipating the smoked pork burger but when we ordered the sandwich at the Wurst House they didn't know what we were talking about. Even when we showed them their own advertisement on the iPad they were at a loss. Apparently Amtrak is not the only organization that has a bit of a communication problem between management and the working troops!! We recovered with a smoked brisket sandwich and a special bratwurst on a bun.
Our return to Kirkwood was an on time event and the trip to southern Illinois was a leisurely backroads look at small towns, corn fields and shut down coal mines. We finished the day with dinner at the SAO Asian Bistro. I had a wonderful Hunan beef dish and JoeG ordered shrimp in black bean hot sauce. We left the restaurant full and satisfied...of course, we were hungry again a 1/2 hour later (hopefully, everyone recognizes that as an old Chinese food joke!?)
The next morning I board the Saluki #390 bound for Chicago with a transfer to the Pere Marquette to get me back to Grand Rapids. JoeG tags along as far as Mattoon, supposedly to have breakfast at the Downtown Diner, but I'm thinking his ulterior motive is to keep pace with the points. On this run Chris Davy an old friend and former LSA from the Pere Marquette was working the Café car so we stayed there for the entire trip catching up and swapping lies! We each grabbed 1000 TQP's on this outing, stayed in a historic hotel with a sandwich tantamount to it's name, visited one of the great thoroughbred racetracks in America and had a great time at the Indy 500. So much for Memorial Day weekend.
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