Music is in the air — and on the walls — at The Genre restaurant.
“If you close your eyes, it’s pretty much like a musical passport,” says chef/owner Lernard Chambers, 29.
Recorded music is played. Album covers and records hang on walls. “Pretty much when you walk in you see music,” Chambers says. “All types of records. Any artist, any genre. From Anita Baker to Michael Jackson to the Beatles.”
The main wall is “a bunch of vinyl record covers. We laminated them and put them up.” The records were nailed to two-by-fours, but close to the hole in the album. “I didn’t want it to be where you could never play them again. If anyone wanted that record, they could ask for it and take it off the wall and still play it.”
That happened, he says. “We had one person, they said they’d been looking for that record for the longest. So they bought it off the wall.”
Chambers and his identical twin brother, Bernard, are DJs — DJ LNB. But the records didn’t come from their collection. They bought a lot of them off eBay, and friends donated others.
A Bob Marley record follows a Beatles record and a Tupac Shakur record follows Marley. “If you follow it, it’s like a timeline of music.”
The restaurant also features live music. “We have had several local artists come through: Courtney Little, Izzy Moore, Devin Crutcher. And then we even had Charles Pender, saxophone player, come and do a saxophone set.”
The Genre’s cuisine, which includes catfish, hot wings, and chicken tenders, has musically inspired names. “One we have is the Reggae Jerk Chicken. We call our lemon pepper [chicken] the Pop Rock. And then one will be the vegan burger, The Badu, after Erykah Badu. ’Cause Erykah is vegan.”
A native Memphian, Chambers got into cooking growing up. “My mom was the ‘in the kitchen cook’ and my dad was ‘the barbecue cook.’ Anything on the grill.”
Lernard was captivated with cooking. “I would see mom’s little tricks on how to make a simple fried chicken wing even better than just flouring it and frying it. She’d take extra steps to make it taste totally different. I’d pay attention to those techniques.”
Everything he did was geared toward one day opening a restaurant. Lernard and Bernard began working at a Piccadilly Cafeteria when they were in high school. They went on to work at other restaurants. “Just build up knowledge of how a kitchen is supposed to flow. How fast to get food out. How to deal with different customers.”
Lernard majored in business management at Southwest Tennessee Community College. The Chambers brothers mowed yards to raise money.
“We got into the party industry. We took pictures and threw parties. The deejaying started blowing up. We started a sound rental company. We provided sound for any DJ you can think of in Memphis.
“The money kind of got there, and we saw a location and went with it. I had the idea all along, and I was just waiting for the right time and place.”
Bernard, a sheriff with the Shelby County Sheriff’s Office, originally told Lernard about the location, which is across the street from the Shelby County Jail at 201 Poplar. “It’s a great security thing. A lot of women feel safe ’cause it’s close to the jail.” And, he says, “A lot of cops come around that area.”
Lernard describes The Genre as “a small urban bistro … a small eatery, with a hookah, gourmet food, and good customer service.
“A modern upscale experience is the way I put it,” he adds. But he wants customers to “also feel comfortable. Where you can come dressed as you are.
“I always wanted it to be kind of like a nightlife atmosphere, but it’s also a place where you can come chill, relax. Low light, music.”
The Genre is at 200 Poplar Avenue, Suite 105; (901) 410-8169.
