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Another barbecue contest?

How about a celebration instead?

When Forward Momentum, the company behind the fall Mempho Music Festival, announced last month that it would be staging a new spring music festival at Tom Lee Park, essentially replacing the longtime (and already on hiatus) Memphis in May Beale Street Music Festival, that was no surprise. 

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I knew something along those lines was coming and had made the point — years before Mempho existed — that if park operators wanted a music festival in the redeveloped space, they could simply hire a promoter to design one fresh. I assumed that’s what they’d do.

By contrast, I figured when the Memphis in May World Championship Barbecue Cooking Contest announced an exit from Tom Lee Park, park operators would just say “good riddance.”

It was the barbecue contest, after all, that caused the most drama and most damage. 

Quite the contrary. 

Last week, the same Mempho parent company announced it had been contracted by the Memphis River Parks Partnership to stage a new barbecue event at Tom Lee Park. When I saw that this event would take the form of a contest — one which promises to “increase prize money in major categories substantially compared to previous competitions,” per a release — and that it would also take place the same week that the Memphis in May barbecue contest is set to happen at Liberty Park … well, I laughed. 

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I thought of the movie “Anchorman,” where there was only one way for rival news teams to settle their differences: Rumble in the street. 

Dueling rib racks at high noon? 

I’m not at all sure that rival barbecue contests at two major Memphis public spaces at the same time is a great or certainly necessary idea. 

Perhaps retaining the “contest” aspect in the new event is key to bringing in out-of-town visitors to fill up Downtown hotel rooms, as the Forward Momentum release suggests.

And I suppose proving that such an event can succeed in the new park has its own value, at least to some.

New Eats: New Asia maintains menu with a dim sum addition

But my advice and hope is that this event strives to be different rather than just trying to be a better version of the same thing that will still be happening elsewhere. 

Memphis in May’s World Championship Barbecue Cooking Contest is often thought of as a quintessentially Memphis event. But I’d argue that this has been a little too true: A largely middle-class white gathering built on the foundation of a heavily Black working class form. An archipelago of private parties that evokes a college football tailgate more than a community festival.

This is great fun for those competing or “competing.” (I was on a barbecue team for several years and definitely belonged more in the “competing” group.) But it leaves plenty behind.

With the longtime contest still around, I’d rather a new event feel and function differently. That it root its approach to barbecue more explicitly in Memphis and Southern culture and the people who make it. Perhaps extend this to incorporating other foods, music and arts and crafts, as well. 

There’s an awareness of this challenge, with the same event announcement noting a desire “to be more inclusive and interactive with new events and activities appealing to a broad group of local residents and visitors alike.”

Groovy Gratitude juice-and-smoothie bar set for Uptown

“Inclusive” is a buzzword, but it needs to be more than a box to check here. 

The now decades-old Memphis in May contest is often colloquially called “BBQ Fest.” Contest or not, if the rival event wants to distinguish itself, it should take the “festival” notion to heart and make it one that represents Memphis, and Memphis barbecue, more fully, beyond just its competitors.

Come May, we’ll see what happens. 

Speaking of Downtown, it’s been an up-and-down autumn for the Carlisle Restaurant Group. 

Last month, the group’s fine-dining restaurant, Amelia Gene’s, opened, with a high-end menu that Joshua Calucci explored this week, sinking his teeth into sea urchin, foie gras, charred octopus and more. 

Fancy’s Fish House closes to prepare for new concept

This week, the group’s adjacent Fancy’s Fish House, which opened to fanfare last spring, closed for the year, with plans to re-emerge in some new form next year. 

Restaurants open, restaurants close, and restaurants change.

A couple of others that have changed recently: I visited New Asia, which held a kind of “grand opening” event just before Thanksgiving. 

This longtime Germantown favorite changed ownership in late summer, and never fully closed, but it has completed a transition that left the former restaurant’s menu and preparations intact while adding a large dim sum menu derived from the new owners’ previous food truck operation. 

One place that did close for reinvention was Farm Burger, the chain “grass-fed” burger restaurant at Crosstown Concourse. Farm Burger re-opened this week, and the menu changes are pretty minor, near as I can tell.

But the burgers are still good and the fries better, a not-uncommon feature of many burger restaurants. The old “FB fries” — with garlic and parmesan — remain, with the addition (I think?) of pimento cheese fries and Greek feta fries. 

The Greek feta fries sent me down memory lane. 

There was a Middle Eastern dive restaurant next to my college that sustained me through four years on cheap chicken-kabob plates adorned with mounds of crinkle cut fries and cubes of feta cheese. So, yeah, they had me at “feta fries.” 

In other recent food news: “Uptown juice bar” is not as memorable a Memphis phrase as “Uptown Funk,” but “Groovy Gratitude” is at least close. This particular juice-and-smoothie bar is coming to the Uptown neighborhood next spring. 

And just in case your Whataburger fever still rages, an eighth Memphis-area location of the long-sought fast-food chain is Raleigh-bound. 

Thanks for reading, everyone. Here’s to a week of good eating.