Month: December 2017

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We Recommend We Recommend

Holiday Concerts at Graceland

In its early days as a tourist destination, tour guides would welcome visitors on the steps of Graceland with the line, “This was all farm country when Elvis moved to the neighborhood, but before long the city grew out to meet him.” But times change, people seldom play tourist in their own hometown, and it’s hard to say just how many locals drop by to pay their respects these days. That dynamic could shift again this week when a Memphis cultural artifact — and one of the Presley estate’s most historically significant pieces — returns to Graceland after a 40-year hiatus. Elvis’ white baby grand piano — once the house piano for Ellis Auditorium — will soon be installed in the mansion’s fully restored music room. Also, a series of three holiday concerts marks Graceland’s first baby steps as a regular music venue.

Elvis had long admired the white 1912-vintage Knabe & Co piano. As a teenager he saw it in use often whenever his gospel heroes (and neighborhood record store owners) the Blackwood Brothers put on a show. Cab Calloway and Count Basie had both sat down to its keyboard, and it had been featured in musical performances led by W.C. Handy. The piano was re-sold in 1971 and changed hands many times over the years before it turned up on eBay earlier this year. It’s being described as the focal point of a music room that’s being returned to its 1960s-era look.

Holiday King

Graceland’s first-ever holiday concert events kick off Friday December 15th at the Sound Stage, Graceland’s new entertainment complex, where concertgoers can take in an orchestral performance with Elvis on the big screen. A pair of concerts follow on Saturday December 16th. An Elvis Gospel Christmas show will be followed with what’s being described as “an Elvis star-studded Rock-and-Roll show.”

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News The Fly-By

Answering the Call

The number 911 is shorthand for a situation that can’t wait, but if you called that number in Memphis a year ago, that’s just what you did.

Last year, some 911 callers here would wait for up to 100 seconds — more than a minute and a half — before talking with a dispatcher. Since then, that wait time has been cut to 20 seconds for nearly all calls, according to Mike Spencer, the emergency communications administrator for the Memphis Police Department (MPD).

And wait times continue to shrink. For the 50,000 calls made in October, the average wait time was 8.5 seconds, while 93 percent of calls were answered within 20 seconds.

Spencer said that answering calls quicker is solving another problem: abandoned calls. This happens when callers dial 911 and hang up after waiting for a while. Operators then have to call those callers back, which leads to a “cycle of trying to get caught up.”

He said that quicker responses are partly due to the recent influx of hires at dispatch centers, as well as data-driven approaches now used to staff centers appropriately based on the time of day.

Wait times are way down.

Still, the city’s administration isn’t content. Two years ago it set a goal of answering 95 percent of all calls within 20 seconds. Reaching that goal would get the city in line with the National Emergency Number Association’s recommendation and the national standard.

“This is a success story, but we are not satisfied until we reach the national standard of 95 percent … and 95 is not the ceiling, it’s the floor,” said Doug McGowen, the city’s chief operating officer.

Memphis City Council member Worth Morgan, who is leading the council’s charge to reduce 911 answer times, said the progress made in the last two years is “remarkable and necessary.”

“We’re almost there at 95 percent and hoping for a good Christmas,” he said.

The council also hopes to raise emergency response efficiency by cracking down on false alarms. Council members approved a new rule that will require businesses with multiple false alarm incidents to verify there’s an emergency before police are dispatched to the scene.

This applies to commercial businesses that have been cited for six or more false alarms since July 1, 2017. Currently, that includes 34 businesses, each having 15 or more false alarms since that time.

Those repeat-false-alarm offenders now must confirm unauthorized entrance to their business either through an in-person or digital inspection before police respond to an alarm activated there.

McGowen said the goal is “not necessarily to punish anyone,” but rather to reduce the number of false alarm incidents in the city that “take away from critical public safety assets that we have too few of in the first place.”

Responding to the 34 businesses’ false alarms, he said, took 7.5 hours of police time. Responding to all false alarms in Memphis costs the city more than $1.6 million annually.

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News The Fly-By

Fly on the Wall 1503

Dammit, Gannett

It’s nice to see Memphis’ daily newspaper of record, The Commercial Appeal, honoring Memphis businesses and highlighting all the best places to work in a hard-working town.

But wouldn’t it be even nicer for all the winners if the plaques they were awarded had a picture of the Memphis skyline on them, instead of the Nashville skyline?

Oh, well, it’s the thought that counts, and at least they got the right state. And a bridge.

#WiseChoices

The face of Memphis TV news is changing. Last week WMC-TV’s longtime consumer advocate Andy Wise announced he would be leaving his post effective December 15th.

In a teary goodbye on Facebook Live, Wise said he was leaving to pursue a lifelong dream of living on a beach. He also spoke extensively about plans for a marketing and consumer advocacy venture called Wise Choices.

Neverending Elvis

This week’s Headline of the Week award goes to the BBC. Thanks, BBC.

Categories
News News Feature

Shop Local East

This holiday season, we’re encouraging our readers to support local businesses by shopping right here at home.

Frost Bake Shop

Cookies, cupcakes, pie — oh my! The dessert masters at Frost know how to satisfy a sweet tooth. For a gift or a gathering, pick up a heavenly decadent chocolate silk pie. The creamy smooth filling sits inside a deliciously flaky crust. Topped with lightly sweetened house-made whipped cream and grated chocolate, it’s sure to be a hit ($21). Visit Frost Bake Shop at 394 S. Grove Park or frostbakeshop.com.

Novel.

A good book is a great go-to for the hard-to-buy-for folks in your life. Fans of the long-shuttered Libertyland theme park might enjoy Images of Modern America: Libertyland by John Stevenson. This look at the park’s history — accompanied by a collection of photographs provided by former park employees, guests, and historians — will take your giftee on a roller coaster ride down memory lane. Visit Novel. at 387 Perkins Extended or novelmemphis.com.

Dinstuhl’s

Sour, salty, sweet, or decadent — whatever your craving, Dinstuhl’s homemade candies are the cure. Since 1902, the candy-makers at this Memphis institution have produced local favorites, such as their legendary Cashew Crunch toffee topped with flecks of coconut ($10.95/8 oz., $19.95/lb.). To purchase this or other delightful offerings, stop by one of three convenient locations (436 Grove Park, 7730 Poplar Avenue #3 in Germantown, or 5280 Pleasant View) or visit dinstuhls.com.

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Book Features Books

A new collection from Jeffrey Eugenides.

My main complaint with Jeffrey Eugenides is that he doesn’t turn out novels fast enough. That’s not really his problem, though, as much as it’s mine. I’m a fan, and what a fan wants most is to consume. But books — especially really good books — need time to cook. So take your time in the kitchen, Mr. Eugenides; I’ll wait.

Until the next novel makes its way onto my plate, Fresh Complaint (Farrar, Straus and Giroux), Eugenides’ short story collection, is new on the menu.

Eugenides imbues many of these 10 stories with a sense of urgency, one that drills into the chest of the reader to get at the valve that regulates heart rate. With each page, as the story nears its inevitable conclusion, we feel as though we’re there with the protagonist, that what is about to befall them will also befall us.

In the title story, a young immigrant woman is so panicked over her imminent arranged marriage that, in desperation, she brings ruin upon a visiting writer to her college.

Or does he bring ruin upon himself? As the married man invites her to his hotel room, runs out for condoms, and comes back to complete the act, he knows it’s wrong. We’re right there with him, heart pounding, conscience churning, as he thinks of his family back home and the damage this could cause.

Yet, it happens. And, while it appears that only one gains from the encounter, both suffer.

This sense of peril is felt, too, in “Great Experiment,” when a once-promising poet takes stock of his life and the ways in which it might improve. Though he once had the literary world at his fingertips, Kendall is, these days, the editor for a small publishing house. Working from his absentee boss’ penthouse on the Gold Coast of Chicago, it is as if Kendall becomes awakened to his opulent surroundings by the company’s accountant. Why not us? The bean counter suggests, and Kendall wonders the same when he goes home to his wife and kids and the house they’d bought to fix up, but which is still in a state of disrepair after so many years.

When the two make the leap into the world of embezzlement, the warm embrace of security takes over. But underneath is that dread, the danger that something, somewhere, is amiss and just waiting to be overturned.

But perhaps we aren’t all familiar with that sense of foreboding and dread, as though something just beneath the surface is pressing upward and threatening to tear the fabric of your comfortable life. Good for you if not. In “Air Mail,” the subject is something we can all relate to: poop. Okay, it’s dysentery, and perhaps we haven’t all experienced that. But remember that stomach bug you had just before the holidays? There you go.

Mitchell is on a journey, both physically as he travels the world, and spiritually, as he takes stock of himself among humanity. During an unintended extended layover on an island off the coast of Thailand, Mitchell is overcome by amoebic dysentery and the inward thoughts of a man whose innards are emptying out. Convalescing in a bamboo hut, he writes a series of letters home to his parents, informing them of his mystic insights. He self-medicates by starving himself, as he describes to his parents: “Rather than being some weird penance, fasting is actually a very sane and scientific method of quieting the body, of turning the body off. And when the body turns off, the mind turns on. The Sanskrit for this is ‘moksa’, which means total liberation from the body.”

There is a little something for everyone in Eugenides’ collection, and, as I read it over the Thanksgiving holiday, it was more like leftovers — a series of turkey sandwiches — as opposed to the heavier meal of his Pulitzer Prize-winning Middlesex or his debut The Virgin Suicides. The stories hit me just right, if not making me a bit uncomfortable, just when my hunger was at its greatest.

Categories
Food & Wine Food & Drink

Armando Gagliano’s path to becoming a chef

CREDIT: Michael Donahue

Porcini mushroom ravioli from Michael Donahue on Vimeo.

Armando Gagliano’s path to becoming a chef

Armando Gagliano’s mother blindfolded him when he was five or six years old, but it wasn’t to play Blind Man’s Seek.

“She would blindfold me and give me different things to eat and taste, and I’d have to tell her what it was,” Gagliano says. “She’d even let me taste wine — just a little sip — and she’d ask, ‘What nuance of the wine do you see? What do you taste?’ She was training my palate. Not on purpose, but because she saw that I took an interest in food and flavors.”

Gagliano loved hanging out in the kitchen. “When my mom would be cooking when we were younger, I would be the only one in the kitchen just staring at her. Like ‘What are you doing? What is that?’ I guess she picked up on my interest.”

The tables have turned — literally. Now when Gagliano is in the kitchen cooking at Libro or Ecco on Overton Park, his mother, Sabine Bachmann, who owns both restaurants, often stands by asking similar questions.

Gagliano, 28, is executive chef of Libro, the restaurant in the new Novel bookstore in Laurelwood, and at Ecco.

Growing up, Gagliano was interested in architecture. He loved drawing, sketching, and painting. When he was 8 years old, he told his mother he wanted to own a restaurant named Silly Wolf’s. He remembers “drawing plans of the building. So, there was a little bit of the artistry, then some of the architecture, then the food, all in one deal. I was like, ‘I want to design my own kitchen and the front of the building, then the menu.'”

His first job was making sandwiches and pasta salad when he was 13 at his mom’s former restaurant, Fratelli’s. “It was long hours, but it was fun.”

Gagliano thought of becoming a nurse practitioner, but before the final day to register, he told his mom, “I’m not going to register for class. I’m going to save that money and go buy a knife set, then go get a job at a restaurant.”

He got a job as a prep cook at Sweet Grass. His idea was to work his way up in different kitchens and one day become a chef de cuisine. But six months later, Bachmann opened Ecco and asked Gagliano if he could run the kitchen. “She said, ‘I’ve always eaten your food and loved it. You just come up with the menu. Do whatever you want back there.'”

Gagliano decided on a Mediterranean menu, but he uses ingredients from all over — Italy, southern Spain, Germany, Israel, North Africa, Asia. “I like the flavors that just punch you in the face. We used to do this steak dish that was marinated in guajillo chiles and soy sauce. So, it was like an American steak with a Mexican and Asian marinade. With French beans. Why omit all the other ingredients and flavors that you can zest up your food with or expand upon by trying to keep it a set cuisine when you can be global? Global cuisine.”

Gagliano spent four months last year in Italy at the Italian Culinary Institute. He came back with “more of an appreciation for how much time and effort people will put into food. In the type of food that I love, which is mainly Italian.”

Two weeks after returning to Memphis, Bachmann was asked by his mom to become the chef at Libro.

Trying to get him to keep the same menu as Ecco, a family friend told Gagliano, “Don’t fix something unless it’s broken.”

“I say, ‘I like to break things purposely so I can fix them in a different way.'”

“My mom says, ‘We’re not trying to do fancy Michelin-style food here, okay? We want to do a nice lunch with some dinner items, homemade bread. We use clean, fresh ingredients. And then, every once in a while, if you want to to a special with your little crazy crap on it, do that.'”

Says Gagliano: “I didn’t want to do any super-eclectic stuff here in East Memphis. We have some typical American items, like a BLT. Chicken salad.”

But he also serves Mediterranean-influenced items, including porcini mushroom ravioli.

And, he says, “We do our own house-made Italian sausage here with baked beans. But it’s not like American-style baked beans. It is and it isn’t. They have some sweetness. We put balsamic vinegar in with the beans and molasses and some honey and brown sugar. So, it’s got a little twist in there with the Italian sausage and the balsamic. Then, also, with my roots in the South, the baked beans.”

Categories
Food & Wine Food & Drink

Wassail! A Christmas Tradition Worth Preserving.

CREDIT: Rafer | Dreamstime

It’s one of those old Christmas traditions that nearly everyone has heard of, many have plans to execute, but few ever pull the trigger on. With the deranged commercialization of the holidays, making a wassail just seems like too much trouble. You’ve got things to do, and that credit limit isn’t going to blow itself up without help.

The very word “wassail” is old — Pagan-era old. “Waes hael” was a traditional Saxon greeting meaning “to your health.” And they did a lot of drinking to health in those days. It was important because the Saxons were short on modern medicine and long on marauding Norsemen. A drink might ward off an infection, but it’s hardly a hedge against being cloven in twain by a Dane.

By 1066, when the Normans showed up in England, wassailing was a solid tradition, and not necessarily a Christmas one. In the November harvest, revelers would head out to the apple orchard, where they soaked pieces of toast in cider and put them up in a tree to attract robins, which were believed to carry good spirits. Then they yelled and carried on to scare off the evil spirits and, presumably, those lucky robins. What it lacked in effectiveness it made up for in style, and to this day we “toast” one another for good fortune.

All this good cheer was consumed from a communal wooden bowl, creepily called “The Loving Cup.” They’d drink, lift the bowl over their heads, and yell “Wassail.” If you are keeping track, Wassail has gone from a greeting, to a cheer, to a verb and a noun. Sort of like “Roll Tide” with ‘Bama fans.

The point was to get drunk enough to sing to a tree. At some point, city-folk decided that the whole thing sounded like a hoot. Lacking apple orchards in the grimy alleys of London, wassailing got moved to Christmas, and the town-folk just got drunk enough to sing to a door. From there it quickly devolved into an inebriated caroling/trick-or-treat mash-up. Except this wasn’t a couple of adorable neighborhood kids dressed like princesses and firefighters, but a half-in-the-bag horde of your social inferiors demanding that you fill up their creepy drinking bowl and, because it’s cold outside, make with some munchies, while you’re at it.

“And we won’t go until we’ve got some/ We won’t go until we’ve got some, so bring some out here.” Sounds a lot less quaint coming from a well-gassed mob. At any rate, people started making a festive punch to slosh out to the wassailers so they’d eventually go away.

Rafer | Dreamstime

Here’s a very traditional Anglo-Saxon Christmas Wassail you can try at home, just so you’re prepared:

1 orange

6 cloves

6 small apples, cored

6 tsp soft brown sugar

7 oz. extra-fine sugar

water for sprinkling

3 ½ pints cider

10 ½ fl. oz. port

10 ½ fl. oz. sherry or madeira

2 cinnamon sticks

½ tsp ground ginger

¼ tsp ground nutmeg

1 lemon, halved

Stud the orange with cloves to feel like a celebrity chef. Core the apples and sprinkle with sugar and water. Bake the orange and apples at 375°F for 30 minutes or until tender. Leave apples in the dish to keep warm and take the orange out. Cut in half and place in a large saucepan. Add the rest of the ingredients and the juices from the apple roasting dish to the saucepan, and gently heat until the sugar is dissolved. Do not boil. Leave for 30 minutes. Strain and pour over the roasted apples.

If that sounds like too much trouble, here’s another option. In college, I learned a simplified version at a Christmas party in Mobile, Alabama: Fill up a coffee percolator with vodka, and heat it up. Add a bunch of Red Hots candy. Serve warm.

I have no idea how my college-mates made the leap from making wassail to making this horrific concoction. And if I’m going to be completely honest, at the time, I didn’t much care.

Categories
Opinion The Last Word

Equally Educated?

CREDIT: Shelby County Schools

Richland, a 67 percent white and 18 percent black elementary school that sits in the third-most affluent neighborhood in Memphis, is getting a $4 million renovation.

The East Memphis school is slated to get a new gym and two-story classroom building by next fall to replace the school’s portable buildings. Because apparently, classrooms in portables just won’t cut it for the kiddos at Richland.

That’s all fine and good, but having to go to class in portables is not the worst thing in the world. What about the other schools in some of the city’s lower-income neighborhoods that lack more basic necessities — like teachers and other personnel, supplies, and equipment?

What about the 43 schools in Memphis that are in the lowest-performing 5 percent of schools in the state?

Not having doors on all the bathroom stalls, a current problem at KIPP Academy in North Memphis, seems like it would be a higher priority for school board members than a school having to hold a couple of classes in portables — especially at a school that is already ranked the 10th-best elementary school in the state. Doors on bathroom stalls are a standard privacy need, and privacy is a basic human right. A Basic. Human. Right.

Just as disconcerting is the situation at Booker T. Washington High School, where students went nearly the entirety of last school year without a chemistry teacher, at a school where 96 percent of students are black and 99 percent are “economically disadvantaged,” according to Shelby County Schools (SCS). Instead, for the majority of the year, the students were taught a complicated subject by a substitute teacher with no teaching license or background in chemistry.

So, when it came time for the state chemistry test last year, it’s no surprise that 92 percent of the 65 students there who took the test scored in the lowest percentile.

Shelby County Schools

Quite frankly, that’s not fair at all. From the start, they didn’t even have the chance to perform as well as their counterparts at other schools in higher-income neighborhoods.

Currently, only 39 percent of third-graders in Memphis are proficient in reading; by seventh grade, that percentage decreases to 38. That’s an issue.

Although this can’t be completely attributed to the school board, perhaps instead of SCS focusing on building state-of-the-art gyms and classrooms for elementary school kids, they should invest equally in every school, to ensure that each has at least the fundamental essentials for students to adequately learn.

It would seem to be common sense that schools need well-trained teachers who are invested in their students’ learning. Schools need textbooks. And schools need doors on the bathroom stalls, running water, and clean classrooms.

If you were the coach of a basketball team in a developmental league, would you spend limited resources training the few star players who are already scoring 20 points a game, or would you use those resources to develop the less-skilled players who have not yet reached their full potential?

It’s the same for schools. It’s only fair that every school gets an equal amount of proper attention and care to help level the playing field for all students. It all goes back to the claim of “liberty and justice for all” — words of a pledge that most students are strongly “encouraged” to recite every day. True liberty, justice, and equality for all would mean that every child in Memphis has access to a quality education, no matter where they grow up or where their neighborhood school happens to be.

This issue is not isolated to Memphis. Nationwide, 67 percent of third-graders are not reading at proficiency levels. More than 80 percent of those third-graders are from low-income families. If the problem goes unchecked, efforts to end intergenerational poverty, close the achievement gap, reduce high school dropout rates, and increase college enrollment are undermined.

If something is not done about the disparity in facilities and personnel present across the county’s school system, and in systems throughout the country, then how can we expect all students to thrive in school and have equal opportunities of success in the future?

The short answer is: We can’t.

Maya Smith is a Flyer staff writer.

Categories
Music Record Reviews

Love Light Orchestra: New Release is Red, Hot and Live

The key comment in the liner notes for the Love Light Orchestra’s first collected recordings comes from producer/engineer Matt Ross-Sprang: “This music is really supposed to be heard live, to be in the room to feel the horns.” To that extent LLO’s terrific Live From Bar DKC in Memphis, TN! Feels like an emphatic calling card — something to lure in a crowd for the real deal or maybe the souvenir reminder of a magic night in the 901. It’s a horn-driven, cover-laden party record mining great R&B traditions. Works just fine for folks who like to push back the furniture and dance around the living room.

10-piece blues orchestras are a hard thing to sustain when you’re playing for a piece of the door, but that kind of show band was standard once upon a time, fronted by sonic pioneers like Willie Mitchell, Bobby Blue Bland, etc. The LLO — named for the Bland his “Turn on Your Love Light” — puts vocalist John Nemeth up front but it’s a player’s record with tight horn grooves lead by trumpeter Mark Franklin with Art Edmalston on Tenor sax. Jo Restivo’s spare electric guitar solos provide just the right amount of pepper on top

Live at Bar DKDC includes some nice original tracks by Restivo, Franklin, and Nemeth but even when they’re doing their own thing the LLO is an unapologetic tribute to the sounds of another Memphis — a Memphis that predates and presages the Sun’s guitar grit and Stax’s horny grind. Highlights include faithful covers of Bland’s “Poverty,” Junior Parker’s “Sometimes,” and a wicked run through Charles Sheffield’s “It’s Your Voodoo Working,” a minor-key corn-popper that really shows off Nemeth’s range and the gravelly-now-molten-later quality that makes his voice a perfect instrument for this kind of material.

LLO’s loving cover of Percy Mayfield’s 1950 hit “Send Me Someone to Love,” is another noteworthy track. It’s a transcendent, atomic age ballad, pining for love before “hate will put[s] the world in a flame— what a shame.” The evocative cover may never supplant the original — and was clearly never intended to, but where else can you get this live? Which brings me back to my original point…

The LLO’s big band shows are rare and wonderful things: next time you see them on the horizon, go get some.

Categories
Food & Drink Hungry Memphis

New Central BBQ to open

Central BBQ is slated to open its newest location at 6201 Poplar in late spring 2018.

The new location formerly housed LYFE Kitchen.

This will be the fourth Central BBQ in Memphis.

“I definitely am looking forward to this one opening,” said Craig Blondis, a member of the ownership group. “It’s going to be, basically, the flagship for going forward and our footprint as we had out of the city with Central BBQ.”