Only a few feet from the Abraham Lincoln statue on the public square in Hodgenville are two not-to-miss eateries: The Sweet Shoppe and Laha’s Red Castle. About a half-mile down the road is Joel Ray’s Lincoln Jamboree, another restaurant visitors won’t want to overlook.
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There are times when Patrick Durham has flashbacks to some 23 years ago, when his wife, Paula, encouraged him to start making fudge. She had seen her sister doing it and told her husband, “We can do that.”
And did they ever.
Today, The Sweet Shoppe boils up more than 42,000 pounds of fudge a year. Beginning with two kettles in what was a 1940s gas station, they have grown so much that they now have an off-site location to house their eight double-boiler kettles.
“Each kettle makes 36 pounds of fudge,” Patrick said. “And making as many as 30 different flavors, we needed more space. At one time, we were selling at 50 festivals a year but have scaled back to about 12. Working a festival is demanding.”
This is where the Durhams’ son, Forrest, has joined in. At 27, he’s been around The Sweet Shoppe almost from its beginning.
“I was 6 when I started hanging around [the shop],” he said. “I’m pretty much doing most of it, as Dad has stepped back some. Anybody who has ever made fudge knows there’s a bit of an art to it.”
Patrick smiled when he recalled working at a factory in Elizabethtown, when he didn’t see much of his two kids and Paula, and then he found out that old service station—which, in the interim, was a garden center—might become vacant.
“When I got this spot, it gave me the confidence to think we could make it,” Patrick said. “Tourist after tourist drives by here on the way to Lincoln’s birthplace and on the Bourbon Trail.”
Two years after The Sweet Shoppe’s March 2002 opening, ice cream was added to the chalkboard menu. “We added Blue Bell and Velvet and, believe it or not, it now outsells the fudge,” Patrick said.
The Durhams constantly experiment with new flavors. “We take suggestions and try some of them,” Forrest said. “We have a maple bacon [flavor] and use real bacon we actually fry.”
Peanut butter fudge tops The Sweet Shoppe’s bestseller list. Tiger fudge is close behind. It is a vanilla fudge swirled with melted peanut butter and topped with a drizzle of chocolate fudge. The Durhams also make a Kentucky bourbon-flavored fudge.
Just when you thought it couldn’t get any better, they have added dessert pastries, along with cookies, brownies, chess bars and Rice Krispie treats.
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Not far from The Sweet Shoppe is an iconic hamburger joint that has been selling its specialty for 91 years. Most who live in and around Hodgenville don’t remember when there wasn’t a Laha’s Red Castle sitting at the corner of the town square, with employees serving up burgers as fast as they could get them off the grill and onto a bun. That’s because Laha’s (pronounced “Lay-hays”) been at the same location since 1934, when William and Sally Laha started selling hamburgers from a little walk-up downtown. At the time, White Castle was already established, so Red Castle it was.
Today, Ryan Jeffries runs the show. “I’m a fourth generation,” he said. “My mother was a Laha, and I couldn’t wait to be big enough to work here. When I was 10, I was finally tall enough to cook on the grill and smash ’em out.”
That Vulcan grill is the same one that was installed when the present building opened in the 1950s.
The only seating is 10 counter stools, and the four servers, plus Ryan, glide easily out of the way of each other in the 500-square-foot space.
Food service is classic at Laha’s. The burgers and chili dogs are served on wax paper, and drinks are served in cups or bottles of Coke and Ski. Bowls of chili and fries are popular items.
“We serve about 600 burgers a day, plus 75 to 80 chili dogs,” Jeffries said, as he easily manages up to 40 burgers with onions and cheese on the grill. “Our walk-up window and carryout orders make up 75 percent of our business.”
The word is out on Laha’s. No less than Food & Wine magazine honored its specialty as the best burger in Kentucky in 2021.
“We’ve had customers from South Africa and South Korea,” Jeffries said. “And one lady came in from St. Louis. Said she saw something on TV about us and had a dream about our hamburgers, and the next morning told her husband where they were going to each lunch—Laha’s. She said they drove six hours to get here.”
It’s not unusual for customers to be lined up in front of the door before 10 a.m., when the eatery opens.
Tourists come to Hodgenville to visit Lincoln’s birthplace, and quite a few seek a place to eat. Laha’s pops up on an internet search, so the parking spots in the front and rear of the restaurant are occupied primarily by out-of-town cars.
“I’m doing what I always wanted to do,” Jeffries said. “But it’s harder than I thought it would be.”
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Down the road a bit, not far from the Abraham Lincoln Birthplace National Park, is Joel Ray’s Lincoln Jamboree. Even though owner and operator Joel Ray Sprowls died in 2020, the Lincoln Jamboree’s shows and restaurant have stayed the course.
Open since 1954, the Lincoln Jamboree hosts primarily country music acts. The showroom and restaurant recently have been updated. The restaurant serves up country cooking at its finest, including lunch and dinner specials, a Saturday night special and an “old-fashioned Sunday luncheon.”