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Table Talk: If you can’t stand the heat, try working in a restaurant kitchen

By , Daily Memphian Updated: August 20, 2025 6:13 PM CT | Published: August 20, 2025 5:00 PM CT
Ellen Chamberlain
Daily Memphian

Ellen Chamberlain

Ellen Chamberlain is a global citizen who is happy to call Memphis her forever home. The Michigan native has worked in media for nearly 25 years as a radio broadcaster, journalist and ghostwriter. As The Daily Memphian’s food and restaurant writer, she gives readers inside perspectives of their favorite restaurants and the people behind them, suggestions for the best bites around town and the latest food news from in and around Shelby County.

Welcome to Table Talk, The Daily Memphian’s weekly food and dining newsletter for subscribers only.

I spent this past weekend outdoors, happily toasting (nay, roasting) in the Memphis sun. Where I come from, temperatures rarely climb above 95 degrees, so I often find myself basking in the heat that many Memphians find oppressive.

Somehow, I’d never considered the heat emitting from the kitchens in our city’s restaurants — even as I refuse to turn on my own oven at home, lest the mercury rise above my preferred indoor temperature. But if it’s 100 degrees in the Memphis sun, it’s easily just as hot inside many of the city’s kitchens.

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