It’s 1 p.m. on a Saturday, and your crew can’t choose between breakfast and lunch food. Some of them want pancakes and breakfast tacos; others are in the mood for a burger or a Cuban sandwich. Everyone needs coffee, or a brunch drink or both.

This is the beauty of Broad Liquor Store and East Liquor Store: Both serve the full breakfast and lunch menus all day, every day.

SOB owners buy Hen House and Bangkok Alley

Memphis restauranteurs Ed and Brittney Cabigao purchased The Liquor Store on Broad Avenue from the original owners Lisa and Luis Toro back in February. They have now expanded the popular diner brand with a second location at 669 S. Mendenhall Road in the Williamsburg Village shopping center.

The Cabigaos’ restaurant group, SOB Hospitality, which got its start with South of Beale gastropub Downtown, purchased the former Tenero Butcher Shop & Cafe space (which was Southall Cafe before that) this spring. Shortly after, they also purchased the adjacent dinner spot, Hen House. Both restaurants have new food and drink items. 

New brunch spot in East Memphis

East Liquor Store opened officially on June 29 with some offerings not currently featured at the Broad Avenue store, including a Vice & Virtue coffee counter, homemade pastries, a frozen drink machine and $15 daily lunch specials. 

The restaurant also received a full facelift with a design that fans of The Liquor Store’s original location will recognize.

“We tried to match the Broad (Avenue) vibe with the Miami and Cuban look,” said Brittney Cabigao. “We used the same designer that Broad used, Natalie Lieberman, so it’s nice that she understood the vision.” 

Lieberman, founder of Collect + Curate Studio, used the original Liquor Store branding created by Memphis-based Pretty Useful Co. as a starting point for the look and feel of the brand’s second location. 

The dining area is naturally lit, with large windows, white walls and the restaurant’s signature pops of pink and green and a tropical motif on the tables. There’s also bar seating and a covered patio, two of Memphians’ favorite things.

New food at East Liquor Store

SOB Hospitality’s culinary director, Anthony Finnick, oversees the menus for all of the company’s restaurants, and East Liquor Store’s kitchen manager Robby Brown and general manager Zach Thomas all collaborated on the new recipes for the diner’s second location.

Cabigao said popular Broad Liquor Store items — such as the classic breakfast plate, sweet potato hash and breakfast tacos — all remain on the menu. But the much larger kitchen at the East Memphis brunch spot allows for culinary experimentation and the addition of Southern dishes, like the fried catfish with spaghetti ($15) and the meatloaf ($16).

The latter is a jazzed-up meat-and-two with a thick slice of well-seasoned meatloaf smothered in a shiitake mushroom gravy, plated beside a pile of green beans and a twice-baked sweet potato. The meatloaf is glazed with a house-made harissa Dijon ketchup, giving it a smoky and peppery flavor. No baked-on red ketchup topping here, thankfully.

The potato is a sweet mini Thanksgiving casserole loaded up with candied pecans and bacon pieces. “We take all the filling out, puree it and then pipe it back into the sweet potato and cover it in turbinado sugar and brulee it,” Thomas said. 

For a completely different flavor profile and lightness better suited for these scorching summer days, the ahi tuna grain bowl ($15) is much more like a salad than a usual grain bowl. The addition of crunchy edamame and a kick from citrus wasabi vinaigrette takes this otherwise standard dish up a level or two. 

If your sweet tooth has not been satisfied by the sweet potato situation, it will be no match for the delectable richness of the chocolate truffle peanut butter bar, with layers of fudgy and moist brownie, savory peanut butter and silky ganache dusted with powdered sugar. Credit for this recipe goes to Thomas’ wife, Gillian Lepisto; the two owned Savannah’s Food Co., catering for several years in Memphis.

Lunch specials, cocktails, coffee to-go

Monday through Friday, the restaurant will offer a $15 daily lunch chef’s special. Diners can choose a soup and a salad, a half sandwich and soup, a salad and a cookie — or any combination of two of those items. 

And don’t forget the cocktails. There’s a mimosa setup with a bottle of bubbly and multiple juice options like guava and passion fruit. The Daiquiri Daze is a spirit-forward but fruity sipper that’s more Hemingway than beach drink. 

A week after opening, East Liquor Store received their frozen drink machine; they’ll offer rotating cocktail specials that they call the Frozen Delight. First up is a delicious coffee concoction. “It’s a play on an espresso martini, but a frozen version,” Cabigao said. The blend of vanilla, coffee cordial, Tito’s vodka and coffee will revive even the most bleary-eyed diner and prevent (or at least postpone) that post-brunch nap.

She explained that Anthony Nguyen from their neighboring restaurant, Hen House, helped develop East Liquor Store’s cocktail program, along with operations manager Ben Wiley. East Liquor Store is open during the day and Hen House is open in the evenings.

“It’s been great to be next door and have neighbors that are all your family, everyone’s been embracing it and offering to help each other,” she said. 

If there’s a wait for a table at East Liquor Store, guests can grab a coffee (the dirty chai latte was a great choice for bold flavors) or a drink made with a sparkling botanical tea then relax in the space that was once a butcher counter. The owners partnered with local coffee roaster Vice & Virtue to develop the menu for the coffee bar.

“You can come in before work and grab (coffee) to-go,” Cabigao said. “I feel like there’s not a lot of local coffee places in this area, specifically ... if you don’t want to go to Starbucks.” 

Her husband and business partner Ed Cabigao said the weekends have been busy so far, but weekday mornings are currently relaxed. Parking is a known issue in the shopping center, but visiting at slightly off-peak times can increase your chances of finding a spot. At least until word gets out, morning java seekers can pull up, grab a coffee and a ham and cheese croissant and head on to work.

East Liquor Store at 669 S. Mendenhall Road is open daily from 7:30 a.m. to 3 p.m. The website is theliquorstorediner.com (be sure to select the correct location; the menus are different), and the phone number is 901-405-5477.