We didn't have a ton of options in this area, but we could have done worse than 145 Roadhouse. My…read moretop-tier chum who literally went to the school of hospitality and I stopped by here for dinner last Wednesday on a pretty muggy, rainy evening on our way from the SE Appalachia section of KY to Irvine, KY. It was conveniently located right off 15, and despite the meh weather, the place was easy to spot largely because there were a lot of cars in the parking lot - a compliment to the restaurant and its food, or the only game in town? Based on our experience, probably a little bit of both.
Definitely does have the roadhouse vibes; it's very spacious and kind of dark in there, with a bar to the right of the entrance and the vast majority of the acreage dedicated to a large dining area on the left. We were seated immediately and after the meal took advantage of the cool map situation by the bathrooms where, if you requested a pushpin from one of the employees, you placed it on the map to show where you came from. Already oodles of NJ representatives on there, which is unsurprising. The random North Dakota pushpin was a bit of a shock, but I guess they travel too.
The menu was pretty large but I was immediately drawn to the Fried Catfish w/ Hush Puppies entree, along with the tater skins app, which our waitress went out of her way to compliment. The Catfish was decent; as you can see from the accompanying picture, it was a huge portion and I took a sizeable chunk of it to go (where I think I eventually threw it out because it's not really road trip friendly). Coincidentally (or not, given where we were in the country) I'd had some hush puppies the night before at a hotel in Blacksburg, VA, and these were better. Those others were over-fried but also had mac and cheese stuffed in them, so these basically had better texture but not as much flavor.
The mac and cheese was a real low point, unfortunately. Not dissimilar to the hush puppies, they were super tasteless and a bit watery. They had a bit of breading/crumb topping, but it really didn't do anything to improve the situation - definitely something for them to work on. The taters were just okay; usually the issue with them is that they're in the deep fryer for too long (which is not an issue for a lot of people, I suspect), but these I thought actually weren't cooked enough. The interiors were a little tough so the potatoes could have used a little more time in the oven or fryer.
Service was solid. Our waitress was very nice and happily contributed her thoughts/opinions on different items of the menu, which my chum loves to seek out when we're in a new, unfamiliar place. I was starting to get a little tired by this point in the day so it was nice to have efficient, quick turnaround times for everything. The prices were decent as well, which probably isn't too surprising given that we were still pretty far away from Lexington and other, more populated areas.
This was fine for what it is, and my preference is always to go local when you're traveling through small town USA in lieu of the chains. This wasn't incredible, but we enjoyed our time here and left a literal physical reminder of our time here with the aforementioned pushpin.
