Get in the groove with some waffles and celebrate National Waffle Day on August 24th.
And if you missed National Cheesecake Day on July 30th, you can celebrate both days at Fannie Lou’s Gourmet Chicken & Waffles at 500 Tennessee Street, Number 166.
Owner Kevin Matthews is serving his tantalizing chicken and waffles and other chicken dishes, including a chicken waffle pizza. He’s also selling his iconic cheesecakes that he made at his old place, The Cheesecake Corner.
Instead of fried chicken, Matthews uses roasted chicken. He seasons chicken wings with his own blend of ingredients. “We call it ‘oven roasted to perfection,’” Matthews says.
He also makes the waffle batter with his own blend of ingredients and serves them with “warm butter and warm syrup.”
People are always curious about the “Fannie Lou” in the restaurant’s name, Matthews says. They’ve asked him, “Who’s Fannie Lou?” and “How is Fannie Lou?”
Matthews named his restaurant after his mother, the late Fannie Lou Matthews, but he doesn’t use her recipes. “All of these are my recipes, my creation,” he says.
But that is his mother pictured on the sign in front. Matthews wanted a “vintage name,” so he jotted down names, including those of family members, before deciding to go with his mother’s name. His graphic artist told him he wanted an image to go with the logo, so Matthews went with a picture of his mother.
A native of Birmingham, Alabama, Matthews studied fashion merchandising at Jefferson State Community College. “I was thinking about possibly opening a men’s clothing store.”
Things changed when he was 18 and he got his first restaurant job. “I started out as a dishwasher and ended up as a line cook.”
He made his first cheesecake while he was working at a seafood restaurant.
Matthews came across a cheesecake recipe, which “seemed pretty interesting,” in one of his mother’s magazines.
“My mother was an excellent cook and baker. She was a homemaker, but she didn’t bake cheesecakes. I think that’s what drew me to it,” he says. He used his own money to buy the ingredients and a “springform pan.”
As for his first stab at a cheesecake, Matthews says, “All I remember is, it was something with pineapple.”
He does remember that it “didn’t come out perfect.” But, he says, “My dad kept asking for more.”
That cinched it. “I kept at it until I perfected it.”
Even today, he says, “I take my time and put in everything that it takes to produce a superb cheesecake.”
Cheesecakes are complicated to make, expensive, and time-consuming. They also have to be cooled and refrigerated.
“If it’s not baked, then it’s not a cheesecake. A real cheesecake has real eggs and all that stuff in it, and it has to be cooked.”
After leaving the restaurant business, Matthews worked in the steel industry. He was a heater technician, controlling “the temperature of the coke oven.”
Ten years later, when he was ready to return to the kitchen oven, Matthews opened his own cafe, The Cheesecake Corner, in Mountain Brook, Alabama. In addition to cheesecakes, he served soup, salad, sandwiches, and quiche. Matthews did the baking and the chef he hired did the cooking.
Matthews specialized in more than 100 different flavors of cheesecakes. “Twenty-four flavors were available by the slice on any given day.”
Two years later, Matthews closed his restaurant and moved to Memphis. A restaurant owner he knew in Birmingham also owned one in Memphis. Matthews had always thought about moving to another city and opening a restaurant, so, he says, “I decided to take a chance and move to Memphis and just feel it out and see if that was a good market to do what I wanted to do.”
He worked as a cook at Amerigo Italian Restaurant for a few years before opening The Cheesecake Corner on G. E. Patterson Avenue in 2002. “I was ready to do a brick-and-mortar space.”
The Arcade Restaurant was nearby, but the South Main area was pretty empty. “A lot of people thought I was crazy.”
After a slow start, his cheesecakes, which he sold by the slice, eventually took off.
Matthews then thought about opening an additional business. “I wanted to create a chicken concept. I wanted a restaurant concept that didn’t consume so much of me. The cheesecake concept consumes all of me.”
The cheesecake business is “a very complicated concept on a daily basis. It’s very difficult to expand it and it maintain its quality.”
Matthews opened Fannie Lou’s in November 2019 while he was still running The Cheesecake Corner. This was “a few months before the pandemic.”
“I was planning to do a grand opening in spring 2020 and the pandemic hit,” he adds. “I ended up with two restaurants and no workers.”
After 21 years, Matthews closed The Cheesecake Corner in May 2023.
He originally wanted to start a Fannie Lou’s franchise, but the pandemic messed that up, too, Matthews says. “So it’s almost like I’m creating a totally new concept in real time.”
“Once I perfect the concept,” he adds, “I may open another one somewhere. And if it goes well, if it’s a proven concept to me, then I will look at expanding.”
And Matthews is diplomatic when people ask him to name his favorite cheesecake. “If I don’t like it, I don’t make it. When I get ready to enjoy a slice, I’m probably just like my customers. I’m there pondering.”
