Welcome back to Table Talk, where Daily Memphian writers and editors send the latest food news (along with a dash of this and that) directly to your inbox every Wednesday.

There’s a very Southern phrase that The Daily Memphian food and dining editor Jennifer Biggs often used. 

To “visit.” 

Some of us, if we run into someone we know at a restaurant or the grocery store or some other public place, we might stop to say hello. We might exchange pleasantries. Small talk.

We might even chat for a while.

Jennifer would visit. 

This is more of a spoken usage, but Jennifer’s writing was deeply conversational. Her voice came through. To know her and to read her was to hear it. 

And so, when 901 Hot Pot, with its communal cooking/dining experience, opened earlier this year, Jennifer noted that the restaurant provided “a fun way to visit with friends.”

When she took a road trip to Sugaree’s Bakery in New Albany, Mississippi, this winter, she made time to “visit with the townspeople who stop by to say hello and have a look at who’s shown up.”

The Memphis Food & Wine Festival last fall was a great place “to walk around and visit.” 

When a new restaurant opened during the height of COVID, Jennifer noted that, “Sure, we all wore our masks and no, we couldn’t eat indoors. But this is life as we know it and how nice it was to sit outside and visit with people I haven’t seen during COVID or longer.” 

For Jennifer Biggs, this was more than the vernacular of her native Memphis raising. It was not a linguistic distinction without a difference. 

To visit is to invest your time, energy and interest with the person or people with whom you are visiting; to seek a richer interaction. To value the time. And Jennifer visited, with friends and soon-to-be friends wherever she found them.

Jennifer Biggs

As most readers know, Jennifer Biggs died on Aug. 16th. (Yes, the same date as Elvis and Aretha. A royal day, at least.)

Jennifer was 60 years old. She didn’t get enough time, not what she deserved. But she sure valued what she got. 

A quick work lunch with Jennifer always lasted at least 90 minutes, and maybe a little work would get done. There was always so much to say, something else to try. 

She was both empathetic and acerbic, each quality laced with a playful humor. She loved a good book, a good cocktail and good conversation. 

She didn’t come to food immediately as her topic, but she sure found the right one. Food is about sustenance, of course. But it’s also about enjoyment. And it’s about everybody. 

Much has been written about Jennifer in the past week, beautifully. From Jane Roberts and Ron Maxey and Geoff Calkins here at The Daily Memphian. From John Beifuss at The Commercial Appeal and Michael Donahue at The Memphis Flyer. 

In recent weeks, someone observed to Geoff that Jennifer was one of their best friends, but that “everybody thinks they’re one of Jennifer Biggs’ best friends.”

I think a lot of people who knew Jennifer recognized the truth in that observation. I don’t think I knew anyone who made friends as quickly, easily or as enthusiastically. 

On a brief, personal note, Jennifer was a constant presence in my life for the past 10 years, since the day I arrived at The Commercial Appeal, somehow as one of her editors, and she quickly became my friend, too. 

Break the turkey down before you cook it and you can get it out of the oven in about an hour and a half. (Jennifer Biggs/The Daily Memphian file)

In terms of food alone, I’ll now always think of Jennifer whenever I see a fig or a praline. When I fry up okra (fresh, in a skillet, which she knew was the best way) or make my Thanksgiving turkey. (She converted me to her break-it-apart-before-you-roast method.) I’ll see her frown whenever I order the candied yams. I might even think of her every time I order or cook catfish, which will mean thinking of her all the time. We both loved catfish, but only one of us could claim it as a family sigil, a joke/observation of mine that she enjoyed more than I did. 

But conversation, of course, went beyond food. To books we were reading and shows we were watching. (We even did a “Bluff City Law” podcast for brief little while.) Places we were going or wanted to go. To our kids and grandkids, respectively. Listeners to the “Sound Bites” podcast will be familiar with the helpless delight Jennifer took in her grandchildren, Jack and Chloe, whose exploits were fruit for frequent side stories. 

Jennifer’s enthusiasm for her life and the people and things in it was much bigger than her work, but it came through in her writing, her podcasts, her television and public appearances.

She visited with readers each week in this newsletter, which has been her space for the past several years. 

As we continue, in Jennifer’s great absence, to cover food and dining in Memphis, there’s a lot for us at The Daily Memphian to figure out. But Jennifer Biggs’ generous, interested spirit — her insistence on taking the time and energy for a visit — will guide us. 

From the Memphis dining scene this week: 

Chef Keith Clinton poses for a portrait at Chez Philippe Aug. 17. (Patrick Lantrip/The Daily Memphian)

One of the biggest dining chairs in town has been filled. Keith Clinton, a Memphis native recently of Erling Jensen The Restaurant, will lead the kitchen at Chez Philippe in The Peabody. 

A mural inside Petals of a Peony. (Joshua Carlucci/Special to The Daily Memphian)

Memphis hasn’t been totally without Sichuan dining options. There’s a pretty extensive Sichuan menu at Mulan Asian Bistro. But Petals of a Peony appears to be the first Memphis restaurant exclusively devoted to this particular spicy vein of broader Chinese cuisine. Joshua Carlucci checks it out, and says to go for the cumin lamb. My taste buds are still tingling from some Dan Dan noodles I got at Chelsea Market in New York last month. Josh suggests I could go for an encore of that dish on Germantown Parkway now. I think I will. 

Josh had a more disappointing experience at Supper Club on Second, a Memphis concept about to expand to Nashville. 

Vickie Byrd stocks the shelves of High Point Grocery on Aug. 14, 2020. (Patrick Lantrip/The Daily Memphian file)

Aisling Maki checked in on High Point Grocery, a neighborhood grocer success story in Memphis. 

Further east, a former T.J. Mulligan’s location on Quince Road has been reinvented as Serv, and soon to come is a new restaurant in the former Sweet Grass space in Cooper-Young, from the owner of nearby wine bar Knifebird. 

Not so much new as new again is Momma’s, a self-styled beer-and-burgers dive bar and restaurant from the owner of Bardog Tavern, Slider Inn and Aldo’s Pizza Pies, located just off the Memphis end of the I-55 bridge. The restaurant had closed two years ago, amid construction at the bridge and the Crump Boulevard exchange. 

Momma’s, located at 855 Kentucky St., debuted its new menu and renovated space Wednesday, Aug. 16, during a friends and family event. (Sophia Surrett/The Daily Memphian)

As always, thanks for reading.

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