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.

Singer-songwriter Jimmy Buffett died last week, and this week, our own Clay Bailey, arguably Memphis’ foremost Parrothead, pays tribute. 

But I fear I may owe the late Buffett more of a public apology.

I do a Thursday afternoon radio show on WYXR, the Crosstown-based public station that The Daily Memphian partnered to help launch. My show, “Sing All Kinds,” is thematic, with most shows built around a single topic or idea. Last week: parenthood. This week, and related: getting old. One of my early shows was Thanksgiving-pegged: “The Grab a Plate Show.” It was an hour’s worth of songs about food.

Not on my playlist: Buffett’s “Cheeseburger in Paradise,” definitely one of the signature food songs. 

Sorry, Jimmy. Maybe it’s time for a “Vol. 2” on that topic. I’ll make it up the second time around. 

But Buffett’s death got me thinking about food and music again. These are, to my mind, the two most democratic cultural expressions we have, the ones that get closest to the core of a people and a place. 

Memphis is a music town, historic around the world, and definitely a food town. We know that. It seems like the two should intersect more.

But that first “Grab a Plate Show” did include eight of a total of 18 songs with broader Mid-South connections, if not always Memphis proper. 

It led with the signature Memphis groove, an instrumental with a culinary moniker: Booker T. & the M.G.’s’ “Green Onions.”

And it included what’s probably the best real Memphis food song, one that actually states its case: Wendy Rene’s Stax single “Bar-B-Q.”

If we could vote for an official Memphis anthem, well, I’d vote for Al Green’s “Love and Happiness,” but “Bar-B-Q” would be under consideration.

When our late colleague Jennifer Biggs made weekly appearances on “The Geoff Calkins Show,” her lead-in song was “Memphis, Women and Chicken,” from Memphis Music Hall of Famer Dan Penn. I prefer the slower and swampier live version Penn cut alongside Spooner Oldham, which is the one I used.

In truth, we had more good Memphis food songs during the jug-band/country-blues/jump-blues era. 

There’s Jim Jackson’s ecstatically weird “I Heard the Voice of a Porkchop.” Robert Johnson celebrating Delta-style tamales on “They’re Red Hot.” Mississippi John Hurt discussing the merits of “Shortnin’ Bread,” which you could pair with his “Coffee Blues” to make a meal. 

Recently in The Daily Memphian’s Slack channel, we got into a discussion about cornbread and whether buttermilk or beans was the more classic accompaniment. Tell us you work in Memphis without telling us you work in Memphis, amirite?

Brinkley, Arkansas, jump-blues great Louis Jordan votes “Beans and Cornbread.” If I had to anoint a single musician from the Memphis-Arkansas-Mississippi diaspora as “most underrecognized,” it would be Jordan. A true forgotten titan. I doubled up on him. Cue up “Boogie Woogie Blue Plate.”

I played all of those on that first “Grab a Plate Show.”

I could have also used the Memphis Jug Band’s “Peaches in the Springtime” (seems a little early, guys) or “Sugar Puddin’” — don’t question if the latter is really about food; this is a family column.

Or, while the title doesn’t indicate it, Calvin Boze’s jump-blues song “Beale Street on a Saturday Night.” Inspirational verse: “Slappin’ hush puppies up on the griddle/Keeping time to the big bass fiddle/Spare ribs smokin’, browned just right/That’s Beale Street on a Saturday night.” 

Where’s Elvis? If Big E really cared about peanut butter and banana sandwiches, like they always tell us, then he should have sung about it. At least he made Tony Joe White’s “Polk Salad Annie” a concert staple.

I’m sure I’ve missed plenty, and I’m sure I must have missed some more modern candidates. If not, we need our current musicians to catch some culinary inspiration. 

And, no, I have not forgotten about the 21st-century cult classic “Eat Some Chicken” by the Iron Mic Coalition.

Can one person comprise a cult?

Speaking of which, Memphis can never have too many places to eat some chicken and the area will be getting another later this year, with the opening of the first local Waldo’s Chicken and Beer, a small chain with locations in seven mostly Southern states. 

And speaking of beer, Memphis and music, Beale Street Brewing’s tagline is “tap into the music,” and they’ve paid tribute to Memphis music figures such as 8Ball & MJG, Memphis Slim and Memphis Minnie in their beer-can art over the years. This week, they’re holding an exhibition, “The Art of Liquid Art,” to celebrate the artists who’ve worked on their can designs. 

Beer, incidentally, is a separate song category. There are lots of good beer songs. One of them comes from Memphis Slim himself: “Beer Drinkin’ Woman.” 

The very best beer song might have a Memphis connection. I vote for Todd Snider’s immortal “Beer Run,” an early-career tune that might have been written when Snider still lived here, or at least soon after he departed.

While it might sound like it, Elwood’s Shack doesn’t get its name from a Memphis song.

Note to prospective Memphis restaurateurs: Consider “Slim Jenkins’ Place,” which I borrowed to name my college radio show, way back in the day.

What the beloved Summer Avenue restaurant is about to get, however, is a second location, on Park Avenue. And owner Tim Bednarski says that “Everyone is gonna be shocked.”

Intrigued? Joshua Carlucci has more. 

He also gives a $10 Deal shoutout to the Turkey Spinach Cheesy Grits at Otherlands Coffee Bar. And, well, as someone who shares Josh’s affinity for grits — what am I, a monster? — I’m going to have to take exception with another Memphis Music Hall of Famer, Little Milton. Sorry, Milt, grits are groceries.

No Al Green jokes, please.

Josh also wrote about Toast, a breakfast-themed restaurant set to open in the Klondike-Smokey City area along Jackson Avenue this fall. 

I don’t know of any toast songs, but I’m sure one exists. Instead, I’ll leave you with Booker T. Jones’ solo anthem “Down in Memphis,” which name-checks this too under-recognized neighborhood.

Thanks for reading. Hopefully — hat-tip to Sam & Dave — this has you hummin’ and hungry.