17 minute read
Level up at Tilty Bob’s, Nic & Norman’s new spot and more restaurant news
QuickBites
Level up at Tilty Bob’s, Nic & Norman’s new spot and more restaurant news
BY SHANNON CLINTON
CONTRIBUTING WRITER
Attention pinball wizards and gaming gurus — Tilty Bob’s is planning a March opening at 319 Cedar St. in Lexington.
“Tilty Bob’s is going to be an arcade bar and restaurant that features around 30 classic arcade games and 30 or so pinball machines,” co-owner Corey Sims said. “We will o er three floors of entertainment. The first floor features a large bar and our dining room with a few games. The second floor features another full bar and games. The third floor will be a smaller bar and more games.”
Sims said the name is a play on a component of the pinball machine known as a “tilt bob” or a “plumb bob,” the mechanism that causes a player to tilt and lose the ball if the game’s cabinet is excessively jarred. He added that though it’ll have more of a pub vibe, Tilty Bob’s is similar to another of his arcade bars, Recbar, which has locations in Louisville and New Albany.
The food menu will have “fun, unique pub grub,” Sims said, with appetizers featuring unique spins on classic apps, including loaded tater tot dishes known as Tilty Tots. Mains include burgers, toasted subs and loaded mac and cheese.
As for drinks, “the bar will focus on craft beer and, of course, good ol’ bourbon,” Sims said. “The first and second floor will feature 16 taps, and we will have a selection of local and regional craft beer in bottles and cans.”
Games include pinball machines from di erent eras like Addams Family, Godzilla, Led Zeppelin, South Park, Spider-Man, Terminator 2, Taxi and Theatre of Magic, along with classic arcade games such as Ms. Pac-Man, Galaga, Donkey Kong and Frogger.
International Flipper Pinball Association leagues and tournaments will be held onsite, with world rankings and di erent prizes at stake for competitors.
In other food and beverage news:
Nic & Norman’s is opening a Lexington location, Kentucky’s first. The restaurant is a collaboration between “The Walking Dead”director and special makeup e ects artist Greg Nicotero and actor Norman Reedus. The first location opened a few years ago in Senoia, Georgia, where much of the series has been filmed. Its creators opened a second location in Chattanooga and now, in downtown Lexington.
“When the opportunity came to open a restaurant in Senoia, we knew it was a natural extension of our passion,” the restaurant’s website said. “We hope you capture a few of those special moments here.”
The Senoia location is filled with photographs taken by Reedus, and its menu includes hints of what Lexington’s location may o er.
The menu includes a variety of soups and salads, starters like crab cakes and brisket nachos, gourmet burgers, sides and entrees including BBQ cedar plank salmon and gourmet chicken pot pie. It has a signature cocktail list along with wine, beer, spirits and non-alcoholic beverages.
Fuku began delivery in Lexington via digital restaurant growth network Franklin Station in late January. The restaurant started with a menu item from the original Momofuku noodle bar in New York City — a chicken sandwich — and became a stand-alone venture with a menu including chicken sandos, chicken fingers and wa e fries, among other fried-chicken o erings and sides.
“We couldn’t be more excited to introduce Fuku to Lexington and to join its vibrant culinary scene,” Fuku CEO Alex Munoz-Suarez said in a statement.
A new Jimmy John’s is opening in the second quarter of 2022 at 3636 Boston Road, according to its leasing company’s Instagram post.
At press time, construction of a new Andy’s Frozen Custard was underway on South Broadway.
Biscuit Belly has opened its first Lexington location at 652 E. Main St. The menu features biscuit sandwiches, several versions of biscuits and gravy, breakfast items, and a variety of cocktails and nonalcoholic drinks.
Drake’s marketing director Leela Atchison says of the restaurant’s forthcoming Leestown Road location: “It will be new construction. As far as the location, we love bringing our brands to great sites and believe this will be another great area for BHG to continue to grow in the Lexington area and beyond.”
In doughnut news, a Best Donut location is set to open in Versailles on North Main Street, and Parlor Doughnut opened in early February at 630 Euclid Ave.
Gibson’s Midway is open at 131 E. Main St., Midway. Its menu includes appetizers like shrimp cocktail and crab cakes, salads, sides, desserts, sandwiches including a steakhouse burger and roasted red pepper aioli chicken sandwich, and a variety of chicken, steaks, chops and seafood entrees.
Omakase Sushi & Sake Bar’s new website is up, and it was listed in February as coming soon to 848 E. High St., in the former Tomo location. Its menu features a variety of sushi rolls and combos, salads, a la carte options including bluefin tuna, eel, Scottish or New Zealand king salmon, among others. Mochi ice cream and crepes round out the dessert menu.
Honeysuckle Dining & Bourbon
House has opened in the former Churchill Weavers loom house at 100 Churchill St., Berea. Along with salads and a variety of small plates — including frog legs — the restaurant has main plates including trout, “mozz chicken,” a co ee-crusted Berkshire pork chop and filet.
Bayleaf Diaspora Kitchen announced its closure, as chef/owner Etel Wagner has taken another opportunity cooking in a private kitchen. Still, she hints that she may one day o er a subscription service for fans of her food.
“It has been lots of fun creating new menu items weekly, and I really appreciated all your wonderful feedback and support,” she said on the restaurant’s Facebook page. BL
Have a food- or beverage-related update to share with readers? Please email info@smileypete.com.
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Gun Interactive brings fright to game night
Video game company is known for creating playable versions of popular horror-film franchises
BY MATT WICKSTROM
CONTRIBUTING WRITER
Founded in 2011, Lexington-based Gun Interactive has quickly grown to be the most prominent video game developer in Kentucky — and one of the most recognizable indie studios anywhere — thanks to its spooktacular games.
Known for nightmarish horror titles like “Layers of Fear 2” and “Friday the 13th: The Game,” Gun is set to supply even more scares on its next video-game project, which is modeled after the iconic 1974 movie “The Texas Chain Saw Massacre.”
A longtime video game and horror film aficionado, Gun Interactive CEO Wes Keltner says he was just going through the motions as a sociology major at the University of Kentucky in the early 2000s when he visited one of his professor’s o ces to discuss a class project. While there he noticed a pile of video games on the table and learned that his professor ran a website that reviewed them. After writing for the site for a short time, he was assigned to cover the Electronic Entertainment Expo, better known as E3, in Los Angeles. Being on the conference floor captivated Keltner, who likened the experience to being a kid in a candy store.
However, Keltner quickly realized he liked playing games far more than writing about them, eventually leading him to found Gun Interactive a few years later.
Keltner launched his first entrepreneurial venture during his time at UK, when he worked with American Apparel to open a virtual store in the online world of the game “Second Life.” Players could purchase clothes for their in-game avatar, as well as make purchases in real life. It was one of the first brands to appear in “Second Life,” and the idea took o .
“Before I knew it, I was consulting with Ford Motor Company, Samsung, Procter & Gamble, Unilever, Intel and several other big companies,” Keltner said. “For Ford, we partnered with Apple to release a photo-editing app on the iPhone, which was brand new at the time, to showcase Ford’s newly launched Ford Flex.”
A partnership with Clear Channel to bring interactive video games to their video boards in New York City’s Times Square followed, along with working with companies like Ubisoft, Electronic Arts, Microsoft and Sony.
As Keltner’s confidence and professional network grew, so did his ambitions. He secured about $900,000 in angel investor funds from the Bluegrass Angel Fund and launched Gun Interactive with a fourperson team. The company’s first game, “Breach & Clear,” debuted on PC and Apple devices in 2014.
It was “Friday the 13th: The Game,” launched in 2017, that gained the indie studio notoriety — and some unforeseen backlash.
The game received rave reviews and accumulated 14 million players. Soon after, however, the studio was forced by a court order to cease the creation of any new content for the game as a lawsuit played out between Victor Miller, the movie’s original screenwriter, and Sean Cunningham, producer of several films in the series.
The sudden stop in post-release development angered many of the game’s fans, some of whom began harassing Keltner and other studio employees online and even sent death threats. Keltner remains assured that the IP issues that plagued “Friday the 13th,” albeit out of Gun’s control, won’t come up again with its current project.
“The problem with ‘Friday the 13th’ was that [Miller] filed to regain his copyright, setting o the whole legal battle between the two parties,” Keltner said. “In the case of ‘The Texas Chain Saw Massacre,’ it’s just [Legendary Entertainment] who’s the rights holder. It’s his team who came to us about making the game, so I’m not concerned about a similar scenario playing out.”
Legal hurdles aside, what’s set apart Gun’s video game horror from other developers has undoubtedly been Keltner and his team’s — now a dozen strong — attention to detail when replicating the IPs they’re teaming up with.
“We studied all the ‘Friday the 13th’ films inside and out so that the floors, the curtains, the rugs, the sofas — every single thing you see in the game you can go find it in the movie,” Keltner said. “We also have a cool virtual cabin in the game where you can walk around, look at and hold a bunch of di erent props from the movies, and even have Jason [the film’s antagonist] chase after you. The fans really appreciate that attention to detail and authenticity. We’re doing the same with ‘The Texas Chain Saw Massacre,’ which we plan to share bits of in the coming month as we continue working through early development.”
Much like “Friday the 13th: The Game,” “The Texas Chain Saw Massacre” is expected to allow players to play as multiple di erent characters, along with single and multiplayer game modes.
According to Keltner, crafting scary scenarios and environments in multiplayer games is a unique challenge, as music and other cues don’t prove quite as e ective as single-player games.
“In multiplayer, it doesn’t work like that because everyone in the space is a human,” Keltner said. “So, to create those moments, you instead have to give the player all the tools in the sandbox, and they create their own moments. Sometimes you may play a match where you don’t ever get that moment, but then it’ll be constant tension in the next one.
“That’s what gets people hooked. We’re all used to talking with our friends about what we would have done if we were in ‘Friday the 13th’ or another horror movie. In our games. You get to put your money where your mouth is and try it.” BL
PHOTO FURNISHED Gun Interactive CEO Wes Keltner records ambient sounds for a project. Attention to detail and realistically rendered environments help distinguish the game developer’s titles from the competition.
A zombie-fied illustration of Wes Keltner, founder of video game developer Gun Interactive
IMAGE FURNISHED
Kentucky Agriculture Commissioner Ryan Quarles addresses the attendees of the 2021 CSG National Conference in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Quarles spoke as part of a panel in the session “What the Next Farm Bill Could Mean for States.”
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Informing the Lawmakers
The Council of State Governments promotes a reasoned approach to policymaking
BY LIZ CAREY
CONTRIBUTING WRITER
For more than 50 years, a Lexingtonbased organization has been quietly working to strengthen the bonds between American states. Since the Great Depression, The Council of State Governments (CSG) has worked to “create more harmony between states,” said David Adkins, executive director and CEO of the nonprofi t. The goal of CSG, he said, is to foster cooperation and education between states while providing states with the information their elected o cials need to make more informed policy decisions. “How do we, in a non-partisan environment, bring state o cials together to learn from each other and how can we provide those state o cials in all three branches of government with actionable data?” Adkins asked. “We see ourselves as a research-driven, consensus-based forum in which state o cials are convened to learn more about public policy.” How the organization landed in Lexington is another story. CSG started in 1925 as the American Legislator’s Association (ALA). The brainchild of Henry Wolcott Toll, a Colorado state senator, the ALA provided legislators with information and the opportunity to connect with their cohorts in other states. Toll believed that interstate cooperation was fundamental for states to maintain control over state issues. In 1933, the ALA created the Council of State Governments as a national organization that would serve all three branches of state government. Within fi ve years, it had moved into its new home in Chicago. “CSG took from its early origins this idea that states working together actually could accomplish a great deal that did not require a federal government to intervene,” Adkins said. “In 1933, a long-distance phone call would have been very expensive. There weren’t interstate highways. There wasn’t much of a chance for state o cials to have an opportunity to meet. And so, here came this idea for inter-governmental and state cooperation that we could be better and do better as a nation by having stronger states that learned from each other.” In 1967, however, the leadership of CSG decided it was time for a move. “The leadership of CSG said, ‘Let’s see if somebody else wants to host the headquarters and a number of states submitted proposals,” Adkins said. “Kentucky’s was accepted. It agreed to build a building that was opened in 1969, which is still the headquarters that we occupy today. That’s how we came to Kentucky. It’s the fi rst question I always get from people. ‘Why is The Council of State Governments headquartered in Lexington, Kentucky?’ Basically, because Kentucky was kind enough to build us a building.”
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From its headquarters o Iron Works Pike and across from the Kentucky Horse Park Campground, the organization’s more than 50 employees work to provide elected o cials with leadership training, provide data and information on policy issues facing states, and work with states on topics ranging from justice and incarceration to innovation to implementation and investment of COVID-19 pandemic relief funds. CSG has four regional o ces located throughout the country, as well as a Justice Center in New York City. The Justice Center brings together state o cials from all three branches of government to drive the conversation about criminal justice based on objective research. “Mass incarceration is a huge problem for states — as a result of three-strikes-and-you’reout laws; as a result of criminalization of substance abuse disorders; as a result of the ways in which behaviors that are symptoms of mental illness have placed people in correctional facilities,” said Adkins, who is also a former Kansas state senator. “We are able to go into a state and evaluate their state-specifi c data … and give their policymakers options based on the data as to how they may restructure their sentencing laws to both protect public safety and reduce costs of building more prisons.”
The biggest issue facing states right now, Adkins said, is what to do with funding from legislation like the American Rescue Plan and the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, now sometimes referred to as the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law. The states have had an unprecedented infusion of resources from the federal government,” Adkins said. “Many of those resources will be one-time dollars and some states are very reticent to create programs that will require them, at some point, to step in and sustain those programs, but they also see that there is tremendous need.” And, as a historic amount of funding for infrastructure comes to states, the question arises of balancing the needs and allocating resources and creating revenue streams that will support that infrastructure. “We hope to bring people together to discuss things like, for example, the complexity facing states that generally fund infrastructure with gas taxes,” he said. “In a world in which we’re quickly moving to electric vehicles, … those taxation systems, which essentially are paid for when you buy a gallon of gas, are going to become obsolete. So we help states understand what the options are for replacing those revenues.” For Lexington, being home to CSG means having a nationally signifi cant policy institute located in the city and a partner that shows o the city to the rest of the country. “We’re sort of a hidden jewel in that, we’re very externally focused, but we have a commitment to be good corporate citizens,” Adkins said. “Every year, we have 48 state offi cials from around the nation come together for an intense leadership boot camp here in Lexington … so we expose people from all over the country to Lexington, Kentucky, and that helps, I think, create ambassadors of these folks who have been here and who come here for meetings.” BL
DAVID ADKINS, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR AND CEO, COUNCIL OF STATE GOVERNMENTS Several recipients of the CSG’s annual 20 Under 40 Leadership Award celebrate on stage at the 2021 CSG National Conference in Santa Fe. From left to right: Arkansas state Rep. Jamie Scott, Maryland state Sen. Cory McCray, Oklahoma state Rep. Ajay Pittman, Alabama state Rep. Jeremy Gray, and Tennessee state Rep. London Lamar.
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