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4595 Bryan Station Road
Lexington, Kentucky 40516
Open 7 days a week
Mon.-Fri., 7 a.m.-8:30 p.m.
Sat.-Sun., 9 a.m.-8:30 p.m. 
 

  

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Windy Corner Market and Restaurant sits north of Lexington amid some of America’s most legendary horse farms. In her newest venture, chef/owner Ouita Michel aims to create another legend with a restaurant that honors local farmers and great food.

We use Kentucky ingredients in our recipes, we have Kentucky foodstuffs for sale on our shelves.

Windy Corner’s menu features Po-Boy sandwiches on locally made brioche, burgers, salads, seafood, breakfast, bakery goodies, soft-serve ice cream and more. Dinner specials range from meatloaf to steamed lobster, from local pasta to catfish. Wine and beer, including Kentucky-produced favorites, are available.

Windy Corner is fashioned after an old country store. “We knew we wanted a new place that felt as old as the wonderful historic buildings that house Windy Corner’s sister restaurants, Wallace Station Deli and Bakery and Holly Hill Inn in neighboring Woodford County,” Michel said.  

The siding and floors are made from reclaimed wood; there’s beadboard on the walls; the roof is red; lilacs and lavender dot the landscape; and a screened-in porch sits out back.

Our aim for Windy Corner is to provide a market for Kentucky farms. We invite you to join our quest to build our local farming and food communities and economies by eating and buying local foods.

 

Frank Bickel
General manager
 
Frank’s food service career began in 1976 working for his uncle and cousin at the neon-marked house of cheap eats Burger and Shake on New Circle Road.
 
“I was ready to make fries or shakes, but my uncle pointed me to the garbage can. ‘Can’t do anything on the inside unless you can keep the outside clean,’ he said.”
 
In August 1983, the avid sports fan moved to Los Angeles to be near the 1984 Olympic Games and lived with high school and college friends. While there, Frank worked several food-service jobs on the West Coast, including a gig with a cousin’s catering business. Cheers Catering provided food for awards shows and movie premieres such as Black Hawk Down, Snow Dogs and the Country Music Awards.
 
Frank eventually left food service and spent 15 years on the road in the textbook brokering industry.
 
After the loss of his first wife to breast cancer, he returned to Lexington and reconnected with a former girlfriend, Annette Jett, who was a caterer. They married and together operated Annette’s Catering and Annette’s Casual Cafe and Bakery, which has since closed. Frank joined Ouita Michel’s team in 2010 as manager of the newly opened Windy Corner.
 
Customers who want to talk sports should introduce themselves to Frank. Fan of all sports, he particularly favors the NFL, track and field and the University of Kentucky. He’s a horse racing fan and has been to numerous Kentucky Derbys and visited many of the nation’s storied tracks, including Arlington, Santa Anita, Hollywood Park and Saratoga. He’s not just a spectator. “I also like to throw a ball, swim, dive, shoot hoops — I like the play time,” Frank said.
 
Frank and Annette have two children, Gracie, 6, and Charlie, 4. They live in Lexington, where Annette stays home and has adventures with Charlie while Gracie is in kindergarten at Julius Marks Elementary School. Gracie was born with agenesis of the corpus callosum, where the bridge between the two hemispheres of the brain is either missing or incomplete. The lobes therefore cannot communicate with one another. Gracie’s ACC was discovered in utero. Thanks to therapy from Kentucky’s First Steps program, public school and private sources, she is walking and talking and continues to thrive.
 
What sports will Gracie and Charlie play? “Charlie’s only 4 but he has mentioned basketball and golf. Gracie says she wants to run. She’s got a fast walk. She’s got her jumping down pretty good — maybe she’ll be a track girl.”


 

Cameron Roszkowski
Chef 

Georgetown, Ky., native Cameron Roszkowski began working at Windy Corner’s sister restaurant Wallace Station Deli and Bakery as a dishwasher at age 15. He transferred to Holly Hill Inn to work in the kitchen during his senior year as part of co-op program at Scott County High School.

Inspired by Ouita and Chris, Cameron enrolled in the Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, N.Y. As part of his schooling, he worked at Providence restaurant in Los Angeles under Chef Michael Cimarusti, a good friend of Ouita. He earned an associate’s degree and graduated with honors from the CIA in May. At age 20, Cameron was named chef at Windy Corner in October 2010. He aspires to own a Michelin-star restaurant someday.


Becky Shuman
Assistant manager

Becky passed away Aug. 23, 2011, after a months-long battle with cancer. We miss her bright red hair and even brighter smile. Peace.

Becky has known Windy Corner owner Ouita Michel since the early ‘90s, when Ouita opened Emmett’s in Lexington. Twenty years later, after both had invested that many years in the local food industry, they ran into each other when Becky applied for a position at Woodford Reserve Distillery, where Ouita is chef-in-residence. Ouita asked her instead to join Windy Corner’s management team.

Becky, an Elizabethtown native, has been a part of the Lexington restaurant and music scenes since the ’70s. Beginning at Columbia Steak House on Alexandria Drive, she next worked at Stanley Demos’ Coach House and other Lexington places that don’t exist anymore. She joined Cheapside one month after it opened and stayed 13 years as manager. Then to Giuseppe’s, then Tates Creek Spirit Co. as wine buyer and manager, where she stayed almost nine years. In Fall 2009, Whole Foods hired Becky to open its wine shop. After two months of startup to smooth operation, her position was eliminated (they did continue to pay her for six weeks.)

After studying music at the University of Kentucky, Becky joined a punk rock band and toured all over the United States and Canada. She recorded and toured with Plan 9, a nationally known band from Rhode Island. She played with local bands Thrusters and Vale of Tears.

Becky is married to Bill Shuman, who has worked in the liquor industry for almost 40 years and was Becky’s bandmate in Vale of Tears. Becky and Bill, who have been together 31 years, were married in 1998 at a drive-thru ceremony in Las Vegas. They honeymooned for more than two weeks driving through California wine country. They live with their pug, Lapis Lazuli, almost 13, and wonderful memories of their other pug, Tonapah, which they lost Jan. 8 at age 11.