The legendary man, Harlan Sanders, and his legendary Kentucky Fried Chicken.

I remember my mom telling me once about meeting Colonel Harlan Sanders. She was a nurse and he was one of her patients. She said he was incredibly warm, gracious, and friendly. She also said he lit up the room when he smiled.

As a huge fan of his insanely popular restaurants and delicious food, I wish I’d met him and gotten the opportunity to shake his hand!  I’m an even bigger fan of his personal story. His is a true American success story and it completely boggles the mind.

I’m really excited about a new website that has been launched to introduce this great American icon to a whole new generation. Kids, today, are often surprised to learn that the friendly man dressed in white was a REAL LIFE man.  What’s more, he was a resilient, determined, and self-made man.  The sort that any generation should get to know better.

The website is Colonel Sanders.com and I hope you’ll get a chance to check it out.  I’ve spent about 30 minutes enjoying the site, myself, and am now officially DYING for KFC. I have visions of chicken legs, biscuits, mashed potatoes & gravy, coleslaw (seriously, the best coleslaw on earth), and baked beans dancing around my head.   Kentucky Fried Chicken has been comfort food for me my entire life.  I guess it goes all the way back to sitting beneath the giant bucket in Madisonville, Kentucky’s Kentucky Fried Chicken with my parents so often.

When I became an adult, my husband and daughters and I ate KFC every Sunday night – it was a wonderful family tradition that we all looked forward to.  We’d all go to the video store where we’d rent a few movies, then we’d grab a huge meal to go from Kentucky Fried Chicken (again in Madisonville, Kentucky).  After dinner, bathtime, doing dishes, and reading my daughters bedtime stories, my husband and I would enjoy leftovers while watching the movies we’d rented.  We lived, at the time, in a big house in Hanson, Kentucky and I’ve always associated that house with the birth of our youngest daughter (Stephany) and Kentucky Fried Chicken!

Even today, I can’t get enough of Kentucky Fried Chicken.  Not only is the food exceptional, Kentucky Fried Chicken (the tastes, smells, logo…) brings about a comfortable, warm, and wonderful feeling.  I suspect that it’s true for most Kentuckians. Kentucky Fried Chicken just tastes like home.  Memories of wonderful and cherished times come flooding back with each bite.

Great memories and great food – where can you beat it?

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Although I was born and raised in Madisonville, Kentucky, it never ceases to amaze me.

Since moving away, we’ve lived in the Henderson area, Louisville, Wichita (Kansas), Rantoul (Illlinois), and on Pensacola Beach, Florida.  We currently live in Owensboro Kentucky and have for some time.

We frequently visit Madisonville – the place, in the words of  Montgomery Gentry, “Where I was born…where I was raised… where I keep all my yesterdays…”

A few days ago, I was working online from our home when my husband called me from his office.  It seems he had to go to Madisonville to check a building site and wanted to know if I’d be interested in riding shotgun and eating at Foxy’s Barbecue.

I’ve lived in Owensboro (BBQ Capital of the world!) long enough to jump through hoops for barbecue, so I promptly threw aside what I was doing online and threw on a favorite sweater.

This was the first time I’d been inside the new restaurant and I was very, very impressed.  It looks fantastic – very cozy and very comfortable.

More importantly, the food was outstanding.  As a rule (in my experience – personal dining as well as dining out while reviewing restaurants), most barbecue restaurants have a weakness – whether it’s the potato salad, coleslaw, fries, onion rings, sauce, or pork.  You know – somewhere that they drop the ball and seem to not care if that item is as good as the rest or not.

I can’t find Foxy’s weak spot.  I suspect they don’t have a weak spot.

I’ve eaten barbecue from here to Kingdom Come – including infamous restaurants in Nashville Tennessee – yet just about every single one of them has a weak spot.  Then, here you have a barbecue restaurant in humble little Madisonville, Kentucky and they’re like, “Weak spot… what’s that?” Beautiful.

The pork is wonderfully smoky and full of delectable flavor.  It’s JUST how I want my barbecued pork to taste.  The pulled pork sandwich was sheer perfection.  The sauce was equally delicious.  In fact it was so good, I was searching around for things to dunk into it.

The potato salad was superb, exactly how potato salad should taste – like a summer picnic. If you read any of my writings on any of my sites, you know that I’m all about sides at restaurants.  Sure the meat is important, as is the bread.  The desserts?  Supremely important!  But I’m crazy mad about sides.   You know one of the reasons?  It’s where you can tell JUST how important a restaurant’s customers are to them and JUST how passionate the cook is about his/her food. Trust me, it’s in the sides.

Think about it – if a cook is only half-heartedly into what they’re serving, where will they slack off?  Not the meat – it’s considered the star of the show.  Usually not the bread (important co-star, you know) – and definitely not the dessert.  Most restaurants realize that the dessert is the last thing a customer eats and the last impression they’ll have.  That’s why so many desserts are so spectacular and why I have to walk each and every day. Sometimes twice.

If a restaurant is going to slack off anywhere, it’s in the sides.  Of course the great restaurants wouldn’t even consider such a thing.

And that’s what you must understand about Foxy’s – Foxy’s is a great restaurant.  Not only did the potato salad blow me away, my husband’s coleslaw was exceptional too.  When we’re eating someplace that I’ll be reviewing for this site – we’ll order a little bit of everything, so I can have a really well-rounded idea about what the menu entails.  I always order baked beans, if they’re on the menu – because they’re a personal favorite. LOVE baked beans!  These particular baked beans made me want to stand up and dance.  A lot of times you order baked beans in restaurants and they taste like someone opened a can of Pork ‘n Beans and heated them up for you.   There are a few where I’m certain they did just that.

Foxy’s baked beans taste like baked beans are supposed to taste. It’s as though they were made to be the star of the show.  Truth be told, that’s what makes Foxy’s so special – each item stands on its own, as though it’s the main event.  You can taste Foxy’s passion for food and pride in their name in each and every bite.

They don’t just say, “This is a BBQ place, let’s focus all of our attention on the barbecue… just throw some mustard in some potatoes and open up a few cans of beans.“  Fortunately for their diners, Foxy’s has too much pride in their food and respect for their customers for that.

The servers and the hostess could not have been any friendlier.  They were what I call, “Mayberry Friendly.”  I love  friendly, smiling, warm hostesses and servers – people who seem genuinely happy to be doing what they’re doing and happy to see guests.  That makes a huge impression on me.  These vital individuals also reflect well on the restaurant.   I’m convinced that workers actually reflect the managers and owners.  Friendly, warm people draw in and want to surround themselves with friendly warm people.  Grumps?  They don’t mind other grumps and people lacking personalities never notice if one’s missing in another person.

Foxy’s obviously knows more than the average restaurant… which is why they’re way above average.  After seeing AVATAR, I have a new favorite word – one that is my highest praise, and that word is “Outstanding.”  Foxy’s is Outstanding in every way.

I purposely saved the Loaded Potato Soup for last for a perfectly good reason.  If I got to thinking about this soup earlier in the review, I wouldn’t have been able to concentrate on anything except the memory of each bite.

How do I even begin to describe it?  I work with words all day, every day.  I string them together for Self Help articles, I  make them play nice together for reviews of restaurants, books, kitchen and office gadgets, office supplies, and kitchen appliances.  I write articles for 16 different websites and blogs and never, ever find myself at a loss for words.  Yet this soup has me stumbling and stalling, searching for adverbs that are up for the task.  It’s usually around this time that I make up words.  But I won’t do that to you this early in the year.

The Loaded Potato Soup at Foxy’s is stupid good.  Make that stooooopid good!  It’s ridiculously, perfectly, deliciously, amazingly perfect.  Stoooooopid good.  Thick and creamy with big chunks of potatoes, topped off with real bacon (not bits, pieces, or pebbles), chopped green onion, shredded mozzarella cheese and shredded cheddar cheese.  It’s mind boggling delicious and you simply MUST have some as soon as you possibly can.

Don’t wait until you’re in or near Madisonville, Kentucky to pay a visit to Foxy’s Barbecue Restaurant – just go. I don’t care where you live, it’s worth the drive.

Foxy’s is located at 301 East Center Street. Visit their website (Foxy’s Barbecue in Madisonville Kentucky) for more information as well as a menu. Best of all there are pics of a personal hero of mine who visited Foxy’s – Coach John “I brought the magic back” Calipari.

When you go to Foxy’s (and why haven’t you left yet), tell them you read about their restaurant on Genuine Kentucky and that the writer has a big ole crush on their restaurant.   Big ole stoooooopid crush.

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