DISH

What we’re eating now

Legend’s

If you’re looking for tasty wings at a local spot, then look no further than Legend’s. You can’t go wrong with their traditional buffalo wings, but when it comes to variety, they have you covered. With 16 sauces and 4 dry rubs, there’s something for every wing lover. They’ll even let you order all drums, all flats or extracharred!

Pizza and wings go together like peanut butter and jelly, so it’s no surprise that Mellow Mushroom delivers the goods when it comes to delicious buffalo wings. Their double-baked wings are so crisp you’ll swear they’re fried. Choose from hot, mild, BBQ, jerk, sweet Thai chili or naked.

Another pizza joint with more amazing wings. Donato’s may be known for their pepperoni pies, but their buffalo wings are also a customer favorite. Try them traditional sauced or dry rubbed, boneless, or even cauliflower wings!

Mellow Mushroom

Donato’s

BILL’S RESTAURANT

Untraditional Fare in a Storied Setting

Written by MARLYS MASON

Bill’s Restaurant is celebrating its 10th year in business, but chef and owner Bill Hughes said it is not only a celebration of his restaurant, but also the landmark building where the restaurant is housed. Mike Callas built Callas Sweet Shop in 1921, and the 100year celebration of the building makes it even better, according to Hughes.

The exterior of Bill’s Restaurant, located at 420 Frederica Street, is created in Beaux Arts architecture, which helped it be placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1986.

The interior of the building has exposed brick walls that are original, although Hughes said that because of a previous fire, the tintiled ceiling is not original.

Around the shotgun interior are stunning black-and-white original photographs that Hughes has taken of local landmarks, nature and scenery. The three-storybuilding boasts art gallery space on the second floor that also is used to host events. More of Hughes’ photographs line the walls upstairs.

Chef Hughes said that the 56seat restaurant is the right size for the meals he serves and the customers who dine there. With an ever-changing menu, Bill’s offers traditional starts but accents them with global offerings.

Looking back, Hughes said that he was always interested in cooking. Beginning at the age of 6, he said that he figured out that by cooking, he was able to eat what he wanted. And one of his culinary delights was Bananas Foster, a dessert made with bananas, butter, brown sugar, cinnamon and rum— and then ignited.

As the youngest in the family, Hughes said cooking was always part of life—and eating great meals.

“We killed cows and we had a garden,” Hughes said.

After graduating from Centre College with a major in English and Economics, Hughes “immediately” moved to Charleston, South

Carolina to attend culinary school at Johnson & Wales University.

He then co-owned the Primrose House restaurant before returning to Owensboro to be the chef at the now-closed Campbell Club. After nine years as executive chef, Hughes left the culinary world and became a broker for Edward Jones. This decision, he said, was made so he could spend time with his then-two-year-old daughter, Martha Sharp.

But the culinary world lured him back in 2011, and Hughes opened Bill’s Restaurant.

His favorite item to make is seafood stew—any style, including Vietnamese, Chinese, Korean, Indian.

“And our bread...I love our bread,” he said. The restaurant’s specialty—and a customer favorite—is their Vietnamese flash-fried Brussels Sprouts.

The desserts are all scratch made by Hughes and assistant Sherry Garrity, and they often collaborate on the flavors.

“She might make the cakes and then we decide how to fill and ice it,” he said, describing making a traditional Italian cake but then filling it with layers of banana-flavor and icing.

During the forced closing of dining establishments during the pandemic, Hughes used the time to think about opportunities for his restaurant and didn’t reopen until October when there could be a higher capacity.

And during this time, while watching the NBA’s 2020 season that was played in a bubble, Hughes began considering ways to keep his patrons safe that dine there frequently. He is planning to convert the restaurant into a private dining club with membership-only privileges.

“I said we wouldn’t open until Bill’s could be Bill’s again,” Hughes said of the delayed opening.

Menus are posed on the restaurant’s Facebook page and often include featured wines. OL

Photos by

JAMIE ALEXANDER

BILL’S RESTAURANT IS CURRENTLY OPEN FOR DINNER FROM 5 TO 8 OR 9 P.M. TUESDAY THROUGH THURSDAY AND 5 TO 9 OR 10 P.M. FRIDAY AND SATURDAY. RESERVATIONS ARE ACCEPTED AND ENCOURAGED. TO MAKE A RESERVATION, CALL 270-852-8120.

Home SWEET

Home

Written by LORA WIMSATT

It would almost be worth risking a disruption to the space-time continuum to be able to travel back in time just to invest in some prime real estate.

By the end of 2020, local Realtors had assessed the median selling price of a home in the Owensboro region at $168,000.

A glance through a few newspapers from the year 1921 implies that a person could have bought, well, pretty much all of Daviess County for that amount. Or at least a LOT of houses and property.

A six-room house at 14th and St. Ann streets—near the site of the MessengerInquirer—was offered for $4,500. That included a “good garage.”

Another ad promised a seven-room bungalow, furnace heated and neatly arranged on a large lot on Maple Avenue, noted as “the most beautiful avenue in the city,” saying, “You can get it now for $4,750.”

A smaller house was offered for only $1,500. This was a three-room house on Henderson Road, with lights and water, plus a stable, hen house and coal house, all sitting on a double lot.

No address is given for the eight-room house with a concrete porch, lights, water and a large well-built stable, but it was available “for a quick sale” at $4,200. If that were to be advertised today, it would be a quick sale indeed.

A “splendid cottage” near the L&N Depot featured six rooms, a bath, large stable and easy terms. Price: $6,500.

Another ad promised that “$5,000 will buy a good home within four blocks of courthouse.”

Given the prices of downtown property these days, a buyer today wouldn’t even need the house for that sale to be a bargain.

Areas that now are nestled pretty much in the center of town offered a booming real estate market in January 1921. A sixroom house with an acre of ground on Ford Avenue was offered for $3,500; a nine-room, two-story house in the Seven Hills area was advertised for $2,600; and a four-room house with good outbuildings in the Hickman-Ebbert addition was on the market for $1,200.

For those who wanted to escape the hustle-bustle of city life, one could take advantage of the misfortune of an owner in ill health who was being forced to sell 36 acres of good land only 10 miles from the city. The estate featured a good four-room house, a fine barn and stable, plus plenty of good stock water at all times. Not only that, but the land promised to supply “enough fruit for home use.” Terms were $2,000 down and $400 next year and 34 years on the balance.

A little further out in Daviess County, there was a farm in the Moseleyville area advertised for sale. “THIS IS A BIG BARGAIN,” the ad said, in capital letters, and they weren’t kidding, especially by today’s standards. Of the 102 acres for sale, 75 were level and mostly tilled, and the balance “slightly rolling,” and all were promised to be “good, rich, productive land.” There were good improvements and a fine orchard—all to be had for only $160 per acre … on easy terms.

Nevertheless—an article published Sept. 4, 1921, in the Owensboro Messenger announced that the real estate market here was “quiet,” saying, “There is a decided slump in the activity of local real estate market at the present time, realty men say. Plenty of people are found who express

a willingness to buy, but in almost every case they are looking for bargains and labor under the opinion that values are coming down in a few months and in the meantime they are holding off. They are entirely deceived, according to the well informed.”

Boy, that’s for sure.

The article went on to say: “From now on there is going to be only a very slight decrease in the value of Owensboro property. … Only now and then, when a property owner is caught in need of ready cash and must sell, can the bargains which prospective buyers are looking for be found.”

Nobody has a crystal ball to see what real estate prices will do in the future, and for better or for worse, there are no time machines either.

Otherwise, we’d all be going back in time to snap up those real estate bargains of 100 years ago.

So the best we can do now is to make our houses, however humble or grand, into our very own “home sweet home.”

For “home,” after all, is a priceless investment where our precious memories last forever. OL