PRINCETON, Ky.—“Come on! Let’s go see these hams!” Laurent Geroli whispers to a pair of traveling companions while grinning and nibbling on slices of Col. Bill Newsom’s Aged Kentucky Country Ham.
The executive chef at the Brown Hotel, Geroli isn’t as impatient as he is excited. A week ahead of a Jan. 11 dinner at the hotel’s English Grill restaurant, he and chef de cuisine James Wilfong are in Princeton for a short field trip to see the hams they’ll use for the five-course dinner, a meal that, naturally, will be paired with bourbon drinks.
Pointing to a small grocery cart full of whole hams, he added, “I want to see where they make those things!”
