Food and Dining Editor
50 recent articles by Jennifer Biggs:
Here’s an updated list for places open on Thanksgiving. I’ve removed any place that has closed reservations and added another spot. Also, keep in mind that if you don’t want a traditional Thanksgiving meal, you can choose from numerous ethnic restaurants that will be open. Most are; call your favorite spots to check ahead of time and find out their hours. Wherever you celebrate it, Happy Thanksgiving to you and yours.
Well, there’s no room for confusion here. … A couple of months ago, Open Flame Bar and Grill opened at Poplar and Highland, serving Middle Eastern food. Earlier this month, Flames Mediterranean Grill opened on Highland, serving, um, you know. Middle Eastern food.
Shelby Farms Park plans to fill the restaurant space next to the FedEx Event Center as soon as possible. The Kitchen has occupied the space since it opened in 2016 but will close at the end of the year.
In April, Restaurant Iris turned 10 and in June, owner Kelly English shut it down for a complete re-do, the kind where walls get knocked down and menus tossed out. It was a gamble, a throw of the dice. Iris was beloved as it was and after my first visit, I wondered if the coin was going to land heads up.
'Tis the season for a festive drink, but that doesn't mean you have to whip up pumpkin in a latte. At Babalu, where seasonal cocktails rotate through the menu, they're riffing on a holiday cake this year.
Elemento Neapolitan Pizza in Crosstown opens Nov. 14 for lunch, and Ronnie Grisanti's Italian Restaurant opens for lunch Nov. 19 in Regalia.
To build a vertical village, you might as well start with food on the ground floor. Folks have to eat, and at Crosstown Concourse, where they also live, go to school, work and play, choices about where to dine continue to expand.
When Raymond Jackson started interviewing for the chef position at Today & Always in Crosstown Arts, he started eating a vegan diet for the first time in his life.
Belle Tavern owner/bartender Chris Ferri has a nice list of cocktails at the ready, but when I walked in last week and saw cherries marinating, bottles of syrups on one counter, a nice collection of bitters on another and a wall full of spirits, I was moved to request an on-the-spot cocktail.
Sakura has been serving big fat sushi rolls for about 30 years, and we all love 'em. From the crunchies on top of Pickwick to the Big Mac extravagance of the Joyce roll, we can’t stay away. I’m there about once a week and I know that many of you are too, because we say hello.
This is a big week for some Memphis cooks as they head south for the 7th Annual World Food Championships in Orange Beach, Alabama. Several will make the trip, included two first-place winners from last year.
Downtown Dining Week ushers in its 10th year Monday with more than 50 restaurants, about triple the number it started with back in 2008. But all those extra choices will cost you: This year a three-course dinner is $20.18, up 10 cents from $20.08 when it started.
I took a peek inside the soon-to-open Elwood’s Shells last week and was surprised to see how much owner Tim Bednarski has accomplished in the last month or so.
It’s a boy meets boy story that started almost three decades ago and most of you know it by now. Two Italian kids, different schools, different families, but on Sundays, they were the same, gathered around the Sunday table with parents, brothers and sisters, aunts, uncles, cousins and the all-important grandmother.
Open Flame Bar and Grill opened last month in the former Rock ‘n Dough at Poplar and Highland, but don’t get too excited about the first part just yet. The bar is still there but so far the only alcohol sold is beer.
When the weather turns chilly, we turn to soup. When it gets chilly and wet, very little beats a bowl of Vietnamese beef stew, pho no. 20, at Vietnam Restaurant on Cleveland.
The drinks list at Char has always been divided by spirits and when the restaurant opened, this was simply the whiskey cocktail.
Mark Travis is a Facebook friend who posted a photo of a plate of barely-seared tuna a few weeks ago. He seared it frozen, he said, then sliced and refrigerated it until it thawed. It sounded too easy, so I contacted him for step-by-step instructions and, well, that was pretty much all there was to it.
Asian Eatery is the restaurant that started life as Tao Too and has changed its name a time or two. But it’s the same place with mostly the same menu it had when I ate my first bowl of Devil’s Nest Soup in 2010.
Relax. Elemento Neapolitan Pizza is open in Crosstown Concourse and despite more than a few hiccups, you should be able to get pizza today and every day except Sundays henceforth.
When the doors of Andrew Michael Italian Kitchen opened in 2008, the owners had a good idea where they’d be in 10 years but we diners did not. What we saw was a cozy Italian restaurant run by two baby-faced kids who surprised us by actually knowing what they were doing.
Nabbing a $10 deal at a Mexican restaurant for lunch doesn’t take much effort – go to just about any place in town. But Steak Monterrey at Las Margaritas in Cordova is heads above your typical tacos and tamales with rice and beans.
Nothing gets old at Hog & Hominy, where the cocktail menu changes at least seasonally and sometimes more often.
Rebecca Hartman almost threw her golden ticket away because she didn’t know what it was, then almost gave it away when she found out. But in the end, she kept it and on Thursday afternoon created a chocolate known as The Hartman at Phillip Ashley Chocolates in Cooper-Young.
I hate to push Christmas on you when Halloween isn't even here, but we all know I'm not the first to do that. And this is for a good reason.
Gary Williams can cook and Memphians know it: We’ve been eating his mashup menu of Creole, soul and vegan food for 10 years now. But there have been some ups and downs – including a complete shutdown – in that time.
Jonathan Cole is the founder of the blog placeatthetable.net and the Memphis Cooks Facebook group. The Midtown resident (and native Memphian) is a social worker by day and a home cook who likes to cook for sustenance and for fun (noodle around on his blog and check out his upscale adaptation of the bologna cake with Ranch dressing that periodically makes the Facebook rounds). We recently caught up with him to make a batch of soup.
Visitation for Jack Dyson is Friday, Oct. 12, 4-7 p.m. at Bethel AME Church, 2011 Alcy Road. The funeral will be held 11 a.m. Saturday, Oct. 13, at Brown Baptist Church, 7200 Swinnea Road in Southaven, and burial is 1:15 p.m. Monday, Oct. 15, at Forest Hill Funeral Home and Memorial Park East, 2440 Whitten Road.
Jack Dyson was an iconic figure at Memphis’ most iconic restaurant, a 48-year veteran of the Rendezvous, the waiter to big shots and celebrities who took it all in stride.
P.O. Press Public House and Provisions opened in Collierville on Monday and it’s fair to say that owners Jimmy Gentry and Chris Thorn have pulled together an excellent team and created a top-notch fine-dining restaurant with reasonable prices.
No one can complain about lack of new dining, particularly on the East side of the county. Raven and Lily opened in Collierville in August, P.O. Press Public House and Provisions opened last week, Ronnie Grisanti’s at Regalia opened a day before P.O. Press, and now David Grisanti’s is in full swing at the former Ronnie Grisanti’s spot in Sheffield Antiques Mall.
Harold Cook, the head bartender at Sweet Grass and Next Door in Cooper Young, turns to gin and muddled aromatics when asked to pair a cocktail with the oysters at Sweet Grass' oyster bar. This one holds up to the brininess of the oysters, but is light and has a bit of a kick from the chile pepper, too.
About two years ago, Sear Shack showed us how good simple can be. The restaurant opened in Collierville with three items: Burgers, fries and shakes. Sure, you could customize a little—a single or a double, add bacon, put cheese sauce on your fries—but the core menu was limited.
Soon a tiny strip mall in East Memphis will offer all the basics: Garibaldi’s Pizza is opening next to Gibson’s Donuts on Mt. Moriah.
When October comes around, so do the festivals and dinners. You can stay busy from now until the end of the year with good food and drink if that’s what you like – and I’m guessing you do. Coming up soon (more later in the month):
David Parks, a popular longtime bartender, has gone to work at Restaurant Iris. He’s joined the team that includes bar manager Larin Culp and Jacob Leonard, bartender at The Second Line.
Bert Smythe likes whiskey so much that he keeps a selection of 185-plus bottles behind the bar at McEwen’s, the restaurant at 120 Monroe he owns with partner John Littlefield.
Almost everyone loves pizza, and Rock’n Dough Pizza + Brew Co. makes, hands down, one of the best in town. From the USA! USA! (always known in my family as LISA! LISA! because of a boxy font used at the closed Poplar and Highland location) to plain pepperoni to the superb and odiferous Garlic My Pie, the pizzas are solid from the crust up.
Debating the best gyro in town doesn’t inspire the passion of defending your favorite barbecue, but the Greek sandwich wrapped in a pita makes my list of one of the world’s iconic sandwiches, and we’re lucky to have several good versions in town.
Cooper-Young is getting a new restaurant and it’s one Memphians have been waiting on so long they might’ve forgotten about it: Elwood’s Shells will open at 916 Cooper in the former Jasmine Thai & Vegetarian Restaurant by the end of the year.
My friend Peggy Burch frequently makes the stovetop version of Melissa Clark’s Moroccan stew, and one bowlful of it was all it took to convert me to soaking and cooking dried garbanzo beans. Then Clark’s cookbook “Dinner in an Instant” came out, and I switched to this version, close but not exactly the same, that I make in my Instant Pot (I’ve used pressure cookers for years and cannot recommend them enough).
Two new Grisanti restaurants are days away from opening. Ronnie Grisanti’s Italian Restaurant at Regalia is scheduled to open Sept. 28 and David Grisanti’s Italian Restaurant in Collierville is ready—but waiting on the cable company.
Pete & Sam’s celebrates its 70th anniversary this year in a spiffed up restaurant, thanks to the Bomarito brothers taking on local investor partners and a late 2017 fire that caused the place to close for almost five months for cleaning and updating.
The opening of Porch & Parlor in the former Bar Louie spot in Overton Square has been pushed back a bit, from late 2018 to early 2019.
The Memphis episode of Food Network’s “Big Food Truck Tip” aired Wednesday night and viewers found out which of the three featured food trucks received a $10,000 surprise in the tip jar.
Well, I’m back. I’ve felt lost as an outsider, sidelined as we’ve been gearing up to launch The Daily Memphian. Things happened and there was little I could do except hope someone else would get the word to you.
P.O. Press Public House and Provisions, a new restaurant from chef Jimmy Gentry and sommelier Chris Thorn, will open this month on the Collierville Town Square. Gentry also owns Paradox Catering and Paradox Underground. We recently caught up with him to see what led the local chef to where he is today. We found out he does a spot-on impression of his former employer Erling Jensen and shares a love of big – and many – dogs with Jensen.
Some folks can whip up a cake on a whim, but I don’t have a baker’s touch. It’s a production for me, something that requires following a recipe, hauling out a mixer and cleaning up a mess.
After years of hopeful rumors followed by a confirmation then speculation and delay, Trader Joe’s is here, it’s near and you need to get over there. Anyone who was making the 400-mile round trip to the closest Trader Joe’s in Nashville can’t really complain too much about driving from Midtown or East Memphis when now we can travel a few miles out Poplar instead of hauling down I-40. It seems to have caught on already.
Restaurant Iris quietly celebrated its 10th anniversary in April, shut the door in June and did a complete do-over, from the menu to the décor. The tiny two-top bar is gone (repurposed as the vanity counter in the ladies’ room) and the west side of the restaurant is now a bar. There are 12 bar stools, a few two-tops for drinks or walk-in diners, a round banquet in the turret and a new bar menu with signature cocktails and food. Dishes include calas tout chaud with squash soubise (hot savory calas, or rice balls), “unreasonably large seared” foie gras, and a mirliton, shrimp and crabmeat casserole. You can also order from the dinner menu at the bar.
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