Ed and Brittany Cabigao, owners of the area’s SOB restaurants, have a busy three months ahead. 

They recently bought East Memphis’ Hen House and will launch a new menu at the wine bar starting Tuesday, May 9.

Then in June, they’ll open the second location of The Liquor Store, the Broad Avenue restaurant they bought in February, right next door to Hen House.

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Then it’ll be July and time to open the latest SOB, in Collierville. 

“I know. It’s wild, but we have a great team behind us, and we couldn’t do it without them,” said Brittany Cabigao. “To the public eye, it probably seems all at once, but it’s really all been in the works a while.”

The Cabigaos were only 26 when they opened their first restaurant, SOB on South Main Street, in 2009. SOB stood for South of Beale, but it was a catchy name that some years later spread to Sanderlin Avenue when they opened SOB East.

Now 40, the couple met with relatively easy success with their first restaurant. Folks took to it, and in 2016, they opened Zaka Bowl in East Memphis. In 2017, they invested in Interim, but they wanted to be silent partners.

At the time Interim was owned by Nick Scott, who now owns Salt|Soy and Alchemy, and Tony Westmoreland, who has Tandem Restaurant Partners.

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Those two split and, when the dust settled, the Cabigaos ended up with Interim.

“From 2017 until COVID, we found ourselves being pulled in a lot of different directions,” Ed Cabigao said. “When we ended up with Interim, we connected with Chris Thorn and Jimmy Gentry and that was working, but then COVID hit.”

But there was a silver lining.

“The reason we’re where we are today is because of COVID,” Ed said. “We all learned that the rug can be swept from beneath you at any minute. The restaurant business is very marginal. You don’t realize that if you have to shut down for even a month, it could be over for a lot of people.

“In 2020, SOB was going up, up and up, and Zaka was starting to go up, but Interim wasn’t headed in the right direction. COVID showed us we need to focus on what’s successful.”

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So they shut Interim, reopened it as SOB East, never reopened Zaka Bowl, continued with their plan to move the original SOB to a much larger space down the street, and made a plan.

“We made the conscious decision that we did want to expand, but not on the fly, like we’d done. We wanted to be very intentional,” Ed said.

They hired a controller, a general manager and a culinary director for all the restaurants, even though they only had two at the time.

“We were overstaffed, and that hurt for a while, but we knew where we were headed and we kind of had to go, because we had a team ready and waiting,” Ed said.

And there’s more: They also bought Bangkok Alley, the sole one remaining in Collierville (though the plan is to expand to more locations when the time is right).

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Ed and Luis Toro, the former owner of The Liquor Store alongside his wife, Lisa Toro, are friends who meet up every month or two.

When the Toros wanted to sell The Liquor Store, the Cabigaos were ready to buy. Meanwhile, talks were already taking place about the purchase of Hen House. With the Tenero spot at the north end of Williamsburg Village, next door to Hen House, unexpectedly vacant, it all came together.

Because parking is tight around the Williamsburg Village restaurants, Hen House is supposed to be open only after 3 p.m., and the tenant in the former Tenero space is supposed to be closed after 3 p.m.

As The Liquor Store on Broad is only open for breakfast and lunch, taking the space was a no-brainer.

“We plan to operate it sort of as one restaurant,” Ed said. “Breakfast and lunch at The Liquor Store, then drinks and dinner at Hen House.”

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He thinks that will ease potential parking woes, and it’s possible that the large covered patio in what will be The Liquor Store could be used for Hen House overflow, if needed.

The menu at The Liquor Store will be the same at both locations and won’t change much from its current state, Ed said.

But the new menu at Hen House launches today.

“We found that in the short time we’ve had it, that people really like shareables,” Ed said. “We’re changing the menu up to West Coast small plates.”

Specifically, that means: Baja fish tacos, birria beef sliders, California guacamole (with crabmeat), and San Francisco cioppino. But the menu goes beyond the West Coast, too. There’s a lobster roll, lumpia, yakisoba, pork belly burnt ends and plenty more.

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Staying on the menu are the popular Brussels sprouts, and both Cabigaos are pleased with Hen House’s bar program and don’t intend to change anything there. 

The only thing she’s like to change, Brittany said, is an idea people have about it:

“It seems like there’s this perception that it’s for women, that it’s a feminine place,” she said. “But that’s not the case and there are always men here, too.”

Hen House, 679 S. Mendenhall, is open 4-10 p.m. Sunday through Thursday and 4 p.m.-midnight Friday and Saturday. The website is henhousewinebar.com and the telephone number is 901-499-5436.