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.

One of Memphis’ long-standing Downtown restaurants will soon expand to accommodate demand.

Elemento Neapolitan Pizza in Crosstown opens Nov. 14 for lunch, and Ronnie Grisanti's Italian Restaurant opens for lunch Nov. 19 in Regalia.

On Saturday I joined 100-plus folks in a banquet room at a Holiday Inn, where we spent the day learning how to be a certified Memphis in May barbecue judge.

Jambalaya, gumbo, lasagna soup, chili, shrimp and crab meat casserole – those are just a small sample of the dishes served up Sunday at Taste of the Boulevard.

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.

Global Cafe is one of the newest restaurants in Crosstown Concourse and it's different from any other place in Memphis.

Vintage901 guests will be journeying to Kenton for the organization’s first outing outside of the Memphis-area on Saturday, Nov. 3.

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.

Business partners Chad Foreman and Kirk Cotham, the creative minds behind Pyro’s Fire Fresh Pizza, The Levee Coffee and Creamery, and Wolf River Brisket, have had a very busy year.

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.