Chef Ouita Michel of Midway recognized at UK football game for championing Kentucky's local-food movement

News release and video by University of Kentucky Public Relations and Marketing

The accolades for Kentucky’s food scene have been rolling in the last several years, and few leaders are as responsible for growing the state’s culinary landscape as University of Kentucky alumna Ouita Michel.

Before UK's home football game against the University of Louisville on Saturday, the celebrated chef and restaurateur was recognized on Kroger Field for her work as one of the original champions of Kentucky’s local food movement.

Saturday's rain didn't keep Ouita Michel off the football field.

A James Beard Foundation Award nominee as Outstanding Restaurateur and Best Chef in the Southeast, Michel has built a regional restaurant empire that now includes such popular establishments as Zim’s Cafe, Honeywood, Holly Hill Inn, The Midway Bakery, Smithtown Seafood, Wallace Station, Windy Corner Market and Restaurant and Glenn’s Creek Café.

Michel majored in political science at the UK College of Arts and Sciences and was a member of the debate team, the honors program (now Lewis Honors College) and the first class of Gaines Fellows. In 1986, she became only the second woman to win a national debate championship.

After earning her bachelor’s degree, Michel moved to New York where she graduated from the Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park and met her husband, Chris. The two returned to Kentucky in 1993 for their wedding, and opened their first restaurant, Holly Hill Inn in Midway, in 2000 where she became one of the state’s pioneers of using local-sourced products.