Lard have mercy. This Southern breakfast restaurant chain is now open in Louisville

Lard have mercy, a new Southern restaurant is opening in Louisville.

The cafe space at 984 Barret Ave. will be empty no longer: Big Bad Breakfast, founded by James Beard Award-winning chef John Currence, opens Tuesday.

The Barret Ave. space was formerly Lynn's Paradise Cafe and most recently home to Martin's Bar-B-Que Joint, which closed last January.

Founded in Mississippi in 2008, Big Bad Breakfast is now a Southern breakfast chain with 10 locations across Alabama, Florida, Kentucky, Mississippi, South Carolina and Tennessee.

Louisville's location of Big Bad Breakfast is part of a partnership agreement with Endeavor Restaurant Group, which was founded in 2020 by former Papa Johns International CEO Steve Richie and his wife Melissa. Endeavor Restaurant Group also owns all three LouVino Restaurant and Wine Bar locations and will open Waldo's Chicken & Beer later this year.

The Highlands space has been transformed, with fresh paint in bright yellow, teal and forest green, two dozen squishy teal swivel barstools and paintings of barn animals. One wall has a mural of Louisville celebrities, and another is made of garage doors that can slide up and lead to an outdoor patio. The restaurant even has 22 parking spots in addition to street parking nearby.

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Richie said he had been searching for a unique breakfast restaurant that could compete with the other players in Louisville, and Big Bad Breakfast was the perfect fit for the area.

"I think it's going to do really well," Richie said. "The neighborhood seems excited, people have been coming to the restaurant. What surprised me the most is we were able to hire 55 people when all the restaurants are saying how hard it is. I think it's good, this is a fun gig."

"Louisville has always felt like this warm shell to me," Currence told the Courier Journal. "There's something about it that feels cozy. If the neighborhood will give us a chance...in the course of my 30 years of owning restaurants I've gone into a number of storied spots, and we try to preserve something about what had been there in the past. And I know what an unbelievable challenge that can be. We're not trying to be Lynn's, but we want to tip our hat to it somehow."

That's where the living plants in the dining room came from, paying homage to the tree in the former Lynn's cafe. More decor will be added in the coming months.

The Kentucky menu features a specially curated "Big Bad Hot Brown," made with black pepper buttermilk biscuits, white cheddar mornay, roasted turkey, tomatoes and house-cured tabasco brown sugar bacon ($14).

The breakfast-and-lunch restaurant serves scratch-made biscuits, jellies, bacon, sausage and grits. There are biscuit sandwiches ($4.50-$12), "Eggs & such" plates ($11-$16), pancakes and waffles, skillets, omelets and more.

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Big Bad specialty dishes include a breakfast crumble with a crumbled buttermilk biscuit, grits, tomato gravy, crumbled bacon, tomatoes, poached eggs and green onions ($11.50), a fried oyster scramble ($16), shrimp and grits ($14.50), huevos rancheros made with grits, chicken sausage, saucy black beans, crispy tortillas, cilantro, pico de gallo, two poached eggs, avocado and lime ($14), and a pecan cluster short stack of chocolate chip pancakes ($13.50.)

Currence said while the company is a chain, he tries to make sure each location feels like it is part of its community.

"We really go out of our way to be the anti-chain chain, where the feel of the stores is individual, but the attention to the food and the service is 100% across all of them," Currence said. "As long as I get to be in charge, we'll spend some extra money on each store and continue to make it so the elements here are specific to Louisville."

In each city, Big Bad Breakfast tries to partner with local farms for items like grits, honey, syrup or molasses. In Louisville, for example, Big Bad Breakfast is sourcing coffee from Safai Coffee.

Currence won a James Beard Award — the food world version of an Academy Award — in 2009 for the category of Best Chef, South, at his restaurant City Grocery. He also later also participated in the third season of the Bravo television competition "Top Chef Masters."

Big Bad Breakfast will be open daily from 7 a.m. to 2:30 p.m.

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Features reporter Dahlia Ghabour covers food, dining trends and restaurants in the Louisville area. Send tips on new places or story ideas to dghabour@courier-journal.com or follow on Twitter @dghabour.

This article originally appeared on Louisville Courier Journal: Big Bad Breakfast, new Louisville restaurant, opens with Southern food