Windy Hollow Biscuit House: Restaurant and museum

May 28—The sign outside says Windy Hollow Biscuit House.

But the 5,831-square-foot building in Wesleyan Park Plaza is also a museum and gift shop.

And some diners spend more time looking at the more than 1,000 items on display on the walls and in the nooks and crannies of the building than they do eating Get Yer Goat, Nash-Vegas Chicken, El Toro Burger, Chop Chop, Hallie's Comet, Messy Bessie or any of the other items on the menu.

Biscuits are so big that they make the buns for sandwiches.

Evelyn Miller and her daughter, Hallie McCarty, opened the restaurant two weeks ago.

But its roots run deep in Daviess County.

In 1964, Tom Miller — Evelyn Miller's uncle — opened the original Windy Hollow Restaurant in the Windy Hollow Campgrounds in western Daviess County.

It burned in 1972 and her father, Hal Miller, joined in the enterprise and took it over when Tom Miller — his twin — died in 1974.

When the second Windy Hollow Restaurant & Museum burned in 2006, Hal Miller opened Hal's Windy Hollow Restaurant at 8260 Kentucky 81, serving breakfast only on Sunday mornings.

And the parking lot was always filled with cars from several counties.

When her father died in 2014, Miller took over.

She said she and her daughter had been talking about the Owensboro location for about five years.

But their plans were interrupted by the COVID pandemic.

They finally settled on the former El Toribio location in the shopping center.

It seats 140.

"It's a lot bigger than we had anticipated," Miller said. "It's three times larger."

There was even room for a gift shop in the front.

Hal Miller started out to be an antique dealer, but he couldn't bear to sell the things he liked.

So his collection grew to fill several buildings.

Looking at a walls covered with old western movie posters and other memorabilia, Evelyn Miller says, "All of this came out of the barn. Only a couple of things came from the restaurant. I wasn't planning on covering the walls like this, but I thought it should be out where people can enjoy it."

Jail bars make photo opIn a museum section in the back, jail bars from the old Daviess County Jail downtown offer a photo op for visitors, who sometimes line up to be photographed behind bars.

Biscuits and waffles are big sellers.

So is the classic breakfast.

Miller estimates that the biscuits are four to five inches in diameter.

"You can stack food as tall as you want inside the biscuits," she said.

Why biscuits?

"We know breakfast," Miller said. "Breakfast is the fastest growing segment of the restaurant industry. All we do is breakfast. There are a lot of early risers."

The Biscuit House is only open from 5 to 8 p.m. every other Tuesday night and 7 a.m. to 2 p.m. on Friday, Saturday and Sunday each week.

And at 9:30 a.m. on a recent Friday, it was almost full.

"Sunday mornings are crazy busy," Miller said. "But it hasn't hurt the other place. We've been blessed so far."

There's a "Coming Soon" wallboard from an old theater with a photo of Slim Andrews on one wall.

Miller sold it to the people from the TV series, "American Pickers," a few years back.

Then, one day, she was in their Nashville store, Antique Archeology, saw it and bought it back.

There is a street sign from 13th and Allen streets that became obsolete when 13th became Parrish Avenue.

Two old railroad depot hacks that once hauled suitcases have been converted into a serving station and a display table for items in the gift shop.

There's a menu from the old 1964 restaurant on one wall, a Gulf gas pump, a bar from El Toribio, a door from the old restaurant and much more.

One display case holds empty bottles from the old Green River Distilling Co., which operated from 1885 to 1918. There are even Green River Distilling playing cards.

"I've been too busy to talk with people like I want to," Miller said. "But I've met people from several counties around Owensboro already."

The Windy Hollow Restaurant on Kentucky 81 continues serving its Sunday breakfast buffets, she said.

Keith Lawrence, 270-691-7301 klawrence@messenger-inquirer.com