Looking To The Lighthouse

Looking To The Lighthouse

Destination restaurant warms a small Kentucky town

BY JEN CALHOUN

Decades ago, people came from all around to the tiny town of Sulphur Well to drink the waters that were thought to be curative. Now, they arrive for an entirely different reason — to eat at The Lighthouse, a locally owned and operated country-cooking restaurant.

Known best for their country ham, catfish and fried chicken served family style, The Lighthouse proprietors Tammy and Rodney Deckard welcome regulars from across the region and the state every Thursday through Saturday. “We bring you a plate, and we put the food on the table like you would at home,” Tammy Deckard says. “We’ll also give you whatever it is you want more of.”

WINNER, WINNER

This old-school formula works. In 2018, Kentucky Living magazine readers voted The Lighthouse the state’s secondbest nonfranchised restaurant. “We’ve been blessed to stay busy all year long,” Deckard says. “When those awards started coming out, we had even more people come. Now, we’ll see many of them every three to four weeks or so.”

She describes the decor as homey and cozy — a little like visiting your grandmother’s house for a family dinner. Despite the old-fashioned vibe, social media is a key ingredient to keeping the restaurant hopping, she says. The

Lighthouse Facebook page boasts more than 35,000 likes, and some users share some of the posts thousands of times over. “We have a lot of fun with the Facebook page,” Deckard says. “People love it. We give away T-shirts, gift certificates and pies. Everybody likes to win something.”

Rodney and Tammy Deckard took over management of The Lighthouse from Tammy’s mother nearly 20 years ago.

FAMILY TRADITION

The Deckards took over managing the restaurant from Tammy’s mother, Norma Ervin, nearly 20 years ago. They went on to purchase it from family after Ervin’s death in 2017. “It’s all I’ve ever really done,” Tammy Deckard says. “I’ve been working here full time since I was 19, and my husband came to work here full time around 1999.”

The restaurant stayed true to its country roots by continuing to offer homemade biscuits, red-eye gravy and strawberry preserves, to name a few of the more popular menu items. When local produce is available, The Lighthouse uses it. It also uses Penn’s Ham out of Mainsville.

When wait times build up, many people walk across the street to spend time at the historic Sulphur Well Park, Deckard says. “We recently purchased those buzzers — the kind that let you know your table’s ready,” she says. “People who were regulars laughed and told us we were moving uptown. But before we got them, we’d have to holler at people over in the park.” But nobody seems to mind waiting, Deckard says. “I guess you would say it’s a destination restaurant,” she says. “It’s all about the experience and spending time together, I suppose.”

ABOUT THE LIGHTHOUSE

The Lighthouse Restaurant is at 1500 Sulphur Well Knob Lick Road in Sulphur Well, across the street from historic Sulphur Well Park and about 12 miles from Edmonton. It is open Thursday, Friday and Saturday, beginning at 10 a.m. each day. The restaurant closes around 8 p.m. on Thursdays and Fridays and 8:30 p.m. on Saturdays. There is space for special events, and catering is available. For more information, visit the website at visitthelighthouserestaurant. com, or check out its Facebook and Instagram pages. You can also call The Lighthouse at 270-565-3095.