Welcome back to Table Talk, where Daily Memphian food and dining editor Jennifer Biggs sends the latest food news (along with a dash of this and that) to your inbox every Wednesday.

Andy Ticer and Michael Hudman have proven Thomas Wolfe wrong, because at Hog and Hominy Tuesday night, we found that you can indeed go home again. In fact, home is even better than before.

You can read the story I wrote last week about Hog and Hominy reopening after the January 2020 fire (take note that this time around, they’ve dropped the ampersand in favor of ‘and’), but after my first dinner in the new space, I have a little more to say. 

It looks great, much larger, welcoming with warm light and wood walls, spacious with an east wall of windows and a domed ceiling, the latter designed to trap and hold noise. Our first impression is that it doesn’t work — the restaurant is as loud as ever.

Chicken Nashvillanses at Hog and Hominy. (Jennifer Biggs/Daily Memphian)

But as the night wore on, I noticed something interesting. The restaurant was completely full, yet the noise was buzzy, not booming. It was the happy, familiar and comfortable sounds of a restaurant: Murmurs of conversation, laughter, silverware on plates, glasses clinking.

At the end of the night, after we’d told everyone who asked that yes, it was too loud, I noticed that my throat didn’t hurt. I hadn’t strained my voice to talk at my table and I had no trouble hearing.

Eating was no trouble either, believe me. The menu includes old favorites and fun new dishes. Our favorite from Tuesday’s soft opening (by a table vote) was the Chicken Nashvillanses. We expected some sort of chicken planks in a hot sauce, but ordered it because we wanted to mix it up, old school and new.

The plate came nearly covered by a piece of chicken paillard — pounded thin — with a small salad on the side. It looked suspiciously fiery, but it wasn’t hot, just intensely flavorful. The distinct sesame flavor took the Nashvillanses to a place far from its namesake city, somewhere across the vast sea, to Shanghai, to Tokyo, maybe to Casablanca or Cairo, someplace where sesame is integral to the cuisine, not a garnish on a hamburger bun.

Mort and Mindy (front) is a new pizza at Hog and Hominy; the classic Thunderbird is back. (Jennifer Biggs/Daily Memphian)

The sweetbreads, thank heavens, are back, and they’re as good as ever. Don’t be scared to try them — think of them as chicken if you must, instead of the thymus gland and pancreas. They’re tender, cooked crisp, served in a spicy and creamy sauce, and have long been a H and H favorite.

For pizzas we went with the Thunderbird, meaty with pepperoni and calabrese, sweetened with Calabrian honey; it was as good as remembered and the crust is possibly better. Mort and Mindy, a new pizza with mortadella, creamy stracciatella, pepperoncini and green onion goes to the top of my list; I loved it.

There will be plenty more to come about Hog and Hominy, which officially opens Nov. 5, but it’s not the only restaurant news of the week. Kelly English’s Pantà opened last weekend and Chris Herrington provides an excellent account of preview night here, and again, you can expect more on that soon. 

Speaking of Chris, on Monday we drove to West Memphis to eat at Pancho’s, where he learned that sometimes, contrary to Hog and Hominy’s success, you can’t go home again, at least where Mexican cheeseburgers are concerned. And we learned that they’re still not sure when they’re closing; it seems safe to say they’re open through this week (but call before you go to be sure; I see something from a Pancho’s regular on Facebook who says today is the last day and there’s no answer at the restaurant). It was a fun tiny road trip and we came back to the office and recorded an episode of Sound Bites about our meal and the evolution of Mexican food in Memphis. 

Speaking of which, Chris also told us about a $10 Deal at Caminos de Michoacan, a gem of a Mexican restaurant with a panaderia on Macon Road in Berclair, and I brought to you the first of the holiday foods by way of My Favorite Things: The apple pie at Sweet Grass is fabulous, and a worthy splurge for your Thanksgiving table.

At dinner at Hog and Hominy, we talked about what to buy at Trader Joe’s and that reminded me to share this soup with you. This is beyond simple, a work-from-home lunch you can pull together in minutes but also satisfying enough for a light dinner. Just keep a bag of Trader Joe’s Chicken Cilantro Mini Wontons in your freezer and I mean it — minutes. Here’s the recipe.

Have a great week, bring in your plants and bundle up your bodies. When it’s in the 30s at night, that’s coat weather for me.

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