Wallace Station Then and Now
Chris and Ouita Michel opened Wallace Station on Old Frankfort Pike in the summer of 2003. Referred to on maps as US Hwy. 1681 and by oldtimers as Shady Lane, Old Frankfort Pike is a national scenic byway. It’s a beautiful drive any time of the year but especially in the spring and summer as ancient trees embrace in the center of the roadway to cast a canopy of shade.
Chef Ouita says they envisioned a place of respite, “where the food still comes from the garden and is made by loving hands, where you can talk and eat and laugh with one another, in a spot where folks have done that for generations.”
Some four or five generations past, Wallace Station and Midway were connected by train tracks. Midway was Kentucky’s first railroad town, founded in 1838 and so named for its location “midway” between Lexington and Frankfort. The emerging railroad system was a crucial link in transporting Woodford County’s abundant agricultural goods to markets in Louisville and Cincinnati.
Wallace Station began life as a train depot on a north/south route, offloading distillery supplies and onloading phosphate from an adjacent mine. The present structure was built at the turn of the 20th century and through the years has housed a general store, gas station, and post office. According to the late Kentucky historian Dr. Thomas D. Clark, Dora Brock, the child bride and ex-wife of emancipator Cassius Clay, was laid out in the store upon her death in 1914.
The place name was derived from a large estate in the vicinity, once the property of Judge Caleb Wallace, a fierce advocate for religious freedom and public education. Following the precedent they set at Holly Hill Inn, Chris and Ouita wanted to preserve the history and tradition of Wallace Station by naming their new restaurant Wallace Station Bakery and Deli. They even left the general store’s original counter in place.
Nowadays, bikers and cyclists and tourists and locals all line up at the front door to place an order for one of Wallace Station’s legendary sandwiches. So it’s hard to believe that those sandwiches, while not exactly an afterthought, were originally conceived to complement Wallace Station’s role in baking bread and other goods for service at Holly Hill Inn.
What Chef Ouita thought was going to be a bakery that served sandwiches quickly morphed into a bustling sandwich shop that served sweets, and the rest, as they say, is history. The “bakery” part of Wallace Station’s name is now long moot and today all that good bread and other treats are baked at our Midway Bakery.
Every great Wallace Station sandwich begins life on bread made with flour from nearby Weisenberger Mill. One of Chef Ouita’s prized possessions is an original 1920s Weisenberger Mill flour sack, given to her by Phil Weisenberger, the late father of current owner Mac Weisenberger. The flour sack is framed and hanging on the wall; look for it on your next visit and marvel at the through line it draws from 1865 to the present.
Given its location in the middle of the Bluegrass, Wallace Station remains popular with local horsemen and -women and horse farm visitors, and its collection of Thoroughbred racing memorabilia continues to grow. And you never know when you’ll get lucky! Chef Ouita’s sister Paige Walker won the 2006 Kentucky Derby Trifecta, betting on horses owned by customers who’d dropped by in the days before.
Wallace Station and the Midway Bakery combined forces in the fall of 2021 under the direction of manager Sandy Allison as long-needed renovations were made. Some of those updates are more obvious than others, especially the expanded deck and picnic seating out back where you’ll find friends and families enjoying the sunshine and one another. And the 4-H goats frolicking next door.
Updates and all, Wallace Station stands today much as it has for the last 100 years. Proudly at the intersection of past and present; and people, places and ingredients. Don’t let your spring blend into summer, or your summer slide into fall, without taking your own day’s outing along Shady Lane. And no matter how you get there, take a while to breathe in the country air, savor an overstuffed sandwich, share a laugh and a story, and enjoy a respite from the everyday.
“We take this narrow old road very slowly so we can drink in the beauty of the rolling land and farm pastures where the Thoroughbred horses romp. I never intend to let a spring blend into summer without a day’s outing to drive along Shady Lane. from “The Heritage of Southern Cooking” by Camille Glenn.
© 2022, Holly Hill Inn/Ilex Summit, LLC and its affiliates, All Rights Reserved
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Chef Ouita Michel dreamed of a restaurant. Inspired by culinary icons like Julia Child and Madeleine Kamman, and the intersection of Old World traditions and Southern cuisine, she aimed to open a slow and one-of-a-kind place in a world of fast and casual eating. A restaurant that would celebrate history, agriculture, family, poetry and art and be an expression of Kentucky.
