Bobby Flay and Girlfriend Christina Pérez Explore Louisville Ahead of the Kentucky Derby
Bill Denver/CSM/Sipa USA
Bobby Flay and his girlfriend Christina Pérez are off to the races!
The pair traveled to Louisville ahead of the Kentucky Derby on Saturday, and are eating their way through the city, according to Pérez's Instagram story.
On Thursday, Pérez started documenting their trip, including some of the art exhibits at 21c Museum Hotel, a hotel and contemporary art museum.
In one video, she kisses Flay's cheek and they pose together in front of artists Camille Utterback and Romy Achituv's installation "Text Rain." She also shared a clip of Portia Munson's installation called "The Garden," which is a room full of floral printed fabric, fake flowers, stuffed animals and other eccentric objects.
Christina Perez/Instagram
Of course, the couple has also been on a food tour while in Kentucky. In one clip, the Food Network star is snacking on some sriracha honey pecans. "A Louisville delicacy," Pérez wrote on the video.
For dinner, the pair went to Barn8 restaurant, a converted horse stable located on Heritage Farm in Goshen, Kentucky that serves food grown on the farm.
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Christina Perez/Instagram
At the restaurant, Pérez only gave fans a small peek into what they ordered for the table. One picture shared to her Instagram story showed the black hummus dish, which combines black sesame seed and nigella tahini with ricotta and is served with vegetables and crackers to dip, and a cured meat with peppers.
The 148th Kentucky Derby kicks off Saturday, May 7, with post time at 6:57 p.m. EST, one of 15 live races televised from Churchill Downs this weekend. The first of the Triple Crown races, the Kentucky Derby is followed by the Preakness Stakes on Saturday, May 21, and the Belmont Stakes on Saturday, June 11.
The two-minute race has become quite the spectacle over the years, as thousands of fans show up and out for the star-studded event, wearing their most colorful southern chic attire and ornate hats.
This is not the first horse event that Flay and Pérez has gone to. Introduced through mutual friends, Flay, 57, and Pérez, 40, first went public with their relationship in November at the 2021 Breeders' Cup World Championship, where Flay's horse Pizza Bianca finished first.
RELATED: Bobby Flay and Girlfriend Christina Pérez Collab in the Kitchen to Make a Pérez Family Recipe
Christina Perez/Instagram
"She's so lovely. I'm really happy to have met her," the Beat Bobby Flay star told PEOPLE in December. "My life is so crazy hectic, and she's always the light at the end of the day for me."
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Pérez, a former staff writer for Glamour, Vogue, and Lucky who also had her work published by various outlets such as Condé Nast Traveler, GQ, and Harper's Bazaar, has influenced Flay's lifestyle, both in and out of the kitchen.
"She's teaching me to cook with a lot less meat," he revealed. "And now all of a sudden I'm a big hiker. I'm learning a little of the Zen California way."
