Full of steamed fried rice, Somali goat, Mexican soul food and good local beer, we left the first leg of our Summer Avenue tour and now continue east, from Highland Street to Waring Street.

We begin a block north of the Annunciation Greek Orthodox Church, where every May you can find some of the best food in town at the annual Memphis Greek Festival, another slice of the international food scene on and around Summer. 

In that spirit — and in the form of some sit-down Japanese, some classic takeout Chinese and the unlikely union of meat-and-three and Thai — this stretch of Summer illustrates that “old Memphis” and “international Memphis” are often one and the same.

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Turning back time with teppanyaki

For 41 years and three months, Nagasaki Inn (3951 Summer Ave.; 901-454-0320) has occupied what was once a George Lindsey’s Family Steak House. Chances are good you’ve been at some point, and if you were lucky, Harold Do was your wisecracking chef.

What you likely don’t know is that Do has owned the restaurant since 1999, or that he started working there just two months after he arrived in Memphis.

Back then he was riding a bike to work every day from a small apartment on Central Avenue, and his job was cleaning up the place. He was 22 years old, and within a year, he was the head chef.

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But Do’s story starts in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, where he left, along with 10 members of his extended family and 48 other people, on a boat in 1980.

He survived an attack by pirating fishermen that he said left everyone alive, but with nothing except sugarcane and a small amount of drinking water.

Do and his boatmates chewed the cane for energy as they rowed and drifted for 16 days. They were spotted by an oil freighter, rescued, and taken to Thailand, where they spent four months in a camp awaiting relocation.

After four more months in Malaysia, they were taken to California, and two months later, Catholic Charities brought Do and family members to Memphis. Nagasaki was just opening in the massive Summer Avenue restaurant that started life as part of the now long-defunct Blaz’r Steaks chain before becoming a George Lindsey. (Yes, the actor who played Goober, Gomer Pyle’s cousin, on “The Andy Griffith Show.”)

But Nagasaki was opening to stay.

In 1999, Do purchased the restaurant from his former employer. It’s a family business, as Do’s two sons — 17 years apart — work there, too. Tony, who is 37, juggles the restaurant with another full-time job. Charlie is 20 and a student at the University of Memphis; he rolls sushi part-time.

“I’m 63 and it’s time for me to retire, but I don’t know when. Hopefully my son Tony will take it over, but he’ll need to be here all the time like I am, and we need to get more employees,” Do said.

Like all restaurants, COVID has resulted in fewer people on staff at Nagasaki.

“Right now, we have 12 people. If someone goes on vacation, we’re gonna be in trouble,” Do said.

Teppanyaki grills don’t run themselves, and spatulas and knives are just utensils unless they’re in skilled hands, props for a culinary performance artist to tap out a beat as he prepares dinner around the table, deftly slicing shrimp to resemble a rabbit before it’s presented as a gift to a lucky diner.

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“Luckily, we still have a lot of business,” Do said. “We have regulars who come in and sit at the bar.”

A look at the cocktail list could explain why. It might not have changed since the restaurant opened and includes drinks such as a Walk Me Down, Long Island Tea, Mai Tai and the very popular Nagasaki Special (lots of rum), all priced at $8 or less.

So could that cozy and familiar feeling that washes over you when you open the door and find it leads to a preserved and welcoming 1981, when all the years to come were still a hopeful promise.

Down the Street

East of Highland, the first Summer Avenue food stop is Willie Mae’s (630 N. Highland St., 901-347-7144) inside the Citgo station on the south side of the street.

Willie Mae Stevens has served soul food there for three years and was open all through COVID. As she said, when everyone else was closed, people still needed to eat. She serves breakfast and lunch six days a week (though says if she’s too busy, sometimes she can’t get around to breakfast) and is open on the occasional Sunday. Good to know: Neckbones on Monday, oxtails on Saturday. Keep that in mind.

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We both miss the humble, homey bowl of beans from Colombian restaurant Arepas Deliciosas, which long occupied a converted house on the north side of Summer. It closed recently, with signage promising something coming under “new administration.” That, it turns out, will be El Pollo Latino (3698 Summer Ave.), which owner Yuri Restrepo says should open in July. She’s the owner of El Sabor Latino on Avon Road (coming later in our Summer series) and says her new place will serve, well, chicken.

Panda Garden (3735 Summer Ave., 901-323-4819) was takeout-only since COVID, until resuming dine-in after more than two years earlier this month. Eating at Panda Garden can once again be a great default on those nights when you simply can’t decide what to eat, don’t want to cook but also don’t want to spend a lot of money. And the lunch specials are a great deal, whether you eat in or take it home and eat it pandemic-style: Warmed up and for dinner. The hot and sour soup, by the way, is a contender for best in town, and now that you can eat in again, don’t miss the hot and sour wonton appetizer. It didn’t travel well, but is a great way to start a meal in the restaurant. (Note: This has been edited to reflect that the restaurant has reopened for dine-in.)

$10 Deal: Panda Garden’s lunch special is hard to beat

If we each picked our favorite standard Mexican restaurant on Summer — the first installment’s La Llamarada being a kind of genre unto itself — we might pick places along this stretch of the street but perhaps different ones. 

For Jennifer Biggs, that might be Crazy Cactus. For Chris Herrington, it’s Picosos: 

Tucked into a small strip mall across the parking lot from Nagasaki, Picosos (3937 Summer Ave., 901-323-7003) might have the best restaurant tacos on Summer, with the pastor and carnitas both standouts. But the feature attraction is the pollo al carbon — smoked chicken — served on weekends.

Smoking meat or poultry rubbed with a barbecue-style spice mix is as Memphis as a “Whoop That Trick” chant, but the chile-powered variation at Picosos, along with the smoky flavor and tenderness of the bird itself, would be the envy of any pitmaster. You can order a quarter, half or whole. It’s advertised as coming with rice, beans, salsa and tortillas, but every time we’ve had it, it’s come with a little extra. French fries one time, a little bowl of charro beans another. 

Picosos expanded during COVID, knocking down what was once its south wall and taking over the adjacent storefront. This has doubled the dining area, but also changed the vibe in a pleasant way, creating a more open space with more natural light. 

On the other side of Nagasaki, Bryant’s Breakfast (3965 Summer Ave., 901-324-7494) vies with Brother Juniper’s as the city’s best-loved place to grab that all-important first meal of the day, though they are different places for sure.

Bryant’s has been at Summer and Graham Street since 1977 and the breakfast became so popular in the 1980s that what was once Bryant’s BBQ quit selling barbecue and eventually changed its name. In 2021, owner Phil Bryant died, but not before selling the restaurant to cousins Judd and David Tashie, who have kept almost all of the longtime employees. So, yes, the biscuits are made by the same woman, the bacon fried by the same man.

The biscuits, the bacon and the long lines return to Bryant’s

Two doors down from Bryant’s, Tequila Town (3967 Summer Ave., 901-249-7623) might be the only restaurant in town that has a large vending machine just inside the front door. Do we need to snack while we wait? A bite to go? It’s mystifying, but not so much as this: Who buys the $250 cantarito that’s on the menu? How many does it serve? This question — how does it taste? — has at least finally been answered with a much more modest serving. Fresh and fruity, full of orange, grapefruit and lime juice, topped with a fizzy splash of Squirt grapefruit soda, and plenty of tequila, too.

The food here, particularly if you like ceviche, is also good. That tower? Super, super fresh, full of shrimp and cucumber, avocado, red onion, peppers — just delightful. 

A taco truck new to Summer since we surveyed the street’s taco-truck scene a few years ago is Taqueria Hay Jalisco (3985 Summer Ave.), in the large lot of an Exxon station at Summer and Graham. We’ve only tried the tacos at this cash-only truck so far, and they were four-for-four, with the pastor, carnitas, asada and barbacoa tacos ($1.50 each) all well above par, with a bright red salsa and a mild, flavorful avocado salsa that both taste house-made. This truck also has multiple burrito options, including an egg, potato and chorizo breakfast burrito for $5. 

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At the French Village Square shopping center — more international flavor on Summer — the food choices begin with Palmar (4069 Summer Ave., 901-323-0373), and while the taco-and-burrito basics fall a little short of our other Summer Avenue faves, a house special such as a pork chop plate in salsa verde is a good bet.

Another is something you won’t find on every Mexican menu in town: A huitlacoche quesadilla. Huitlacoche — also known by the less appetizing name “corn smut” — is a mushroom-like edible fungus that grows on corn and is a kind of delicacy in Mexican cuisine. This earthy, very mildly sweet dish is not for all tastes but offers an interesting alternative to more familiar Mexican restaurant menu fare. 

Even if we were to split up for Mexican meals along this stretch of Summer, we would surely come back together at La Michoacana (4075 Summer Ave., 901-555-1234), the largest of five Memphis-area locations of this paleteria and ice cream shop and the most tenured of the Three Ms of Memphis Sweets. (Muddy’s, MemPops and La Michoacana, natch.)

Mexican paletas are akin to popsicles, but richer, in every way, than your average American pop, more consistently made with fresh fruits and creamy bases. At La Michoacana, you can go sharp (mango chile), bright (pineapple), indulgent (these cookie and cream paletas might hold a full cookie inside, or maybe two) or pleasingly mild (rice pudding pops are underrated). The options are dizzying.

On the ice cream side, try flavors you may not find elsewhere: Mamey (a salmon-colored fruit similar to papaya), tres leches or sweet corn, which transforms Mexico’s greatest gustatory gift into cold, creamy perfection. It’s not just for elote or tortillas, y’all. 

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The Cottage (4085 Summer Ave., 901-324-4447) has seen some changes in its decades of gracing Summer Avenue — it opened in 1957 — but none as big as the last one: Now there are more than 50 Thai appetizers, salads, soups and entrees on the menu.

You can still get breakfast all day and there are daily specials like chicken and dumplings, chicken and dressing, fried chicken, salmon patties and so on. There’s a large selection of vegetables available every day, though one or two might not be available and a couple aren’t homemade (you can bet that mac and cheese is from a box). Others are, and the fried okra is as close as you will get to skillet-fried. It’s fresh, battered in the kitchen and while it’s deep-fried, it’s almost as good as iron-skillet okra. 

Thai dishes have been hit or miss, but there are plenty to choose from, and there are worse things to do than spend a little time in the company of owner Tom Tomgumpen and Linda Osborne, the server who’s been at The Cottage for decades. Both are delightful: Friendly, welcoming and full of unsolicited advice in a homespun, well-intended way. 

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Even if Crazy Cactus (4090 Summer Ave., 901-207-2881) didn’t have a killer frozen margarita, even if it didn’t have the some of the friendliest servers on the avenue, even if it didn’t have happy hour specials on those margaritas, well, it would still have enchiladas rancheros and that would be enough. 

Blueprint: Three cheese enchiladas, topped with fork-tender chunks of carnitas, smothered in a ranchero sauce, if you order it from the menu. Pro tip: You can ask for the salsa verde instead, but you better put your tongue armor on. It’s always hot but sometimes it will light you up, so super pro tip: Ask for a taste before you order it. If you want something in the middle, ask for the tomatillo sauce. Or, do what we say and not what we do and just order it straight from the menu. Go once and you’ll go back, as will everyone you send.

If TacoNGanas (4255 Summer Ave.) brought the birria taco trend to Memphis, they don’t call their version that. They offer a “TacoNGanas style” option on all but their very tasty shrimp tacos, which means tortillas dipped in a chile oil before they hit the griddle and some cheese along with the protein of choice. Their spicy, stew-like consomme, a dipping sauce, a soup or — hey, why choose? — both, is sold separately. Taconganas-style beef barbacoa tacos paired with the consomme is the signature order here. 

While the quality is high, what’s set Tacoganas apart on the taco truck scene — really the food truck scene writ large — are their increasingly nice set-ups: Fenced-in lots with parking, covering seating, coolers of bottled drinks, festive lighting and more. They have four locations now, but the Summer one is arguably their trademark spot. 

Summer Avenue taco truck tour: TacoNGanas stands out in a rich array of mobile Mexican street food

And don’t miss

Located just a couple of doors down from the former Pop Tunes record store on Summer, the street’s second Tops Bar-B-Q (4183 Summer Ave., 901-324-4325) location boasts a big, airy front dining room bracketed by large windows on three sides. Tops is known more for its takeout burgers than its dine-in ambiance, but this is probably one of the chain’s better “have it for here” locations. 

Tops Bar-B-Q sells part of its real estate

La Espiga Panaderia (3969 Summer Ave., 901-249-8869) is next door to Tequila Town and is the first bakery you’ll encounter coming from the west. It’s a small shop but big enough. Grab a tray, open the glass doors and use the tongs to select from dozens of breads and sweets, from conchas to churros.

In Memphis, wing spots are so ubiquitous it feels like they’ve passed barbecue joints in the fast lane and have churches in their sights. 

Wherever you stand along this stretch of Summer, you can probably hurl a drummie (the lesser half of the wing) and hit one. We’ll confess that we haven’t sampled them all for a proper compare-and-contrast, but for the record, there’s Wing House (630 N. Highland St., 901-458-3700) on the southeast corner of Summer and Highland, Habee’s Wings and Deli (3670 Summer Ave., 901-452-2300) at Summer and Freeman Street, All Star Hot Wings (4091 Summer Ave., 901-729-7923) in the same strip as La Michoacana, the Cottage and Palmar, and Captain JJ Fish & Chicken (4300 Summer Ave., 901-347-2287) in a major parking lot near Summer and Waring. 

Groaning yet? Don’t get delicate now, because we’re only half done. Get your stretchy pants on and come back next week, when we keep moving west and visit what might be the most diverse tenth of a mile in town.