Jere Downs

@JereDowns

A barbecue chain, Martin's BBQ Joint, will take over the "world of swirl" on Barrett Avenue in the long-vacant former home of Lynn's Paradise Cafe next fall.

But first, Pat Martin's whole hog barbecue restaurant opens Thursday in the former Indian Springs Golf Club off Westport Road opposite the Springhurst shopping complex.

Pitmaster Martin’s Tennessee-style barbecue has been celebrated on the Food Network, the Travel Channel and the Today Show, growing to four locations in five years from a rural home outside Nashville.

In the iconic location where Lynn's Paradise Cafe reigned, Martin's BBQ partner Josh Bleidt said he saw an opportunity.

"I figured if we are going to come into the city and do something, what better place to put our roots," Bleidt said Wednesday.

For now, Bleidt said he's more concerned with getting the Springhurst location up and running, where 175-pound hogs will rotate on a spit above a hickory wood-fired pit behind the bar overlooking the former Indian Springs golf course. The restaurant is located at 3408 Indian Lake Drive.

"We cook our food fresh every single day, which means that sometimes we run out. Yep, that's right," Martin said on the restaurant's Facebook page.

Bleidt, a past president of the Louisville chapter of the Kentucky Restaurant Association, said he befriended Martin in a poker game at his first restaurant in Nolensville, Tenn.

The meat cooks on wood, not gas, inside the restaurant with four smokers in addition to the hog spit. There are no microwaves or freezers, either, Martin added.

Lynn's Paradise Cafe, the kitsch-packed, storied home of meatloaf, crab queso and ugly lamps, closed in June 2014. Martin's BBQ Joint is leasing the building from the restaurant group that purchased the former Lynn's Paradise Cafe, Bleidt said.

Jere Downs can be reached at (502) 582-4669, JDowns@Courier-Journal.com and Jere Downs on Facebook.

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