Author: Erin Williams

Before Sandy Barrios opened the specialty olive oil and vinegar shop Bazaar with her husband John and partner Sheila Smith Thomas, she worked in the insurance industry.

“This is literally the first time I’ve ever sold anything that was fun. Did you ever have fun buying insurance?” Barrios asks.

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Sandy Barrios of Bazaar says, “You’re getting the freshest oil available.”

Bazaar, which opened late last year at Carriage Crossing in Collierville, is billed as a “crazy little food shop,” but with its rustic décor, it couldn’t be more inviting.

Tasting cups sit next to each flavor olive oil and balsamic vinegar. Tasting before you buy is not only expected but encouraged. Four bottle sizes are available, and prices start at $4 for 60 milliliters up to $24.99 for 750 milliliters.

The store is currently rotating 40 flavored and traditional vinegars and oils, the latter of which are from the Southern Hemisphere and were harvested in the spring. “You’re getting the freshest oil that’s available, and that comes through in the taste,” Barrios says.

According to Barrios, Bazaar’s staff hasn’t had to do nearly as much education on the concept as they anticipated. “It’s so much fun to sit back and watch. They’ll taste one and you’ll just hear them say, ‘Ah … oh wow!'”

Bazaar, 4630 Merchant Park Circle at Carriage Crossing (861-7218)

bazaaroliveoil.com

When Carol and Sam Braslow took a vacation to Pensacola in May, they weren’t expecting to leave with a business plan. “There was a store there called the Bodacious Olive. I’d never seen anything like it in my life,” Carol says.

With their store The Mighty Olive, the Braslows would be filling a niche that they hadn’t known existed. They had been looking for a new business to create since Sam’s family sold famed A. Schwab two years prior. They found a spot in Laurelwood and signed the lease in August. They opened November 11th and originally wanted to keep it quiet. “But then everybody found out about it!” Sam says.

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They currently have 50 oils and vinegars on rotation, and there’s a bar for patrons to watch demonstrations as well as mull the tasting possibilities.

“I like to mix the chocolate vinegar and the coconut vinegar and the almond oil and make an Almond Joy,” Sam says of his favorite concoction.

Their Tuscan Herb olive oil, blackberry ginger balsamic vinegar, and fig balsamic vinegar have been among the top sellers. Bottle sizes range from 200 milliliters for $10.98 up to 750 milliliters for $24.98. Additionally, they have pasta, cheese, books, Olivina bath products, and chocolate from Ethereal Confections for sale.

Says Carol, “We’ll make you a believer before you leave.”

The Mighty Olive, 4615 Poplar at Laurelwood Collection (240-6226)

themightyolive.com

After 32 years of taking care of animals, veterinarian Kenny Ford is ready to take a chance on the tastes of the two-legged species as he prepares to open The Square Olive in March at Overton Square.

Ford plans to start with around 24 oils and vinegars available in-store and will have handmade soaps and lotions made with olive oil by his sister. He also plans on renting his space for small oil education gatherings.

The distributor that Ford will be working with will bring in a supply of oils from Argentina, but it might be just a matter of time before you’re dressing your salad with fruits harvested in the South.

“I’ve been looking, and there are a lot of domestic olive oil vineyards, mostly out West. Some are now coming to Florida and southern Alabama and Georgia,” he says. “Everything doesn’t have to come from the Mediterranean or doesn’t have to be imported. I won’t be limited to just one source, one place, one region of the country.”

As of November, Ford officially hung up his stethoscope.

“Instead of doing 50 to 60 hours a week at a veterinary clinic, I’ll be doing it at a store,” Ford says. “It’s different. I’ll meet different people. It’s a totally different thing.”

The Square Olive, 2094 Trimble in Overton Square

Twenty-eight-year-old Leena Asbridge had been working as a field examiner for First Tennessee, but the travel schedule was getting to her. It felt like a good time to start a business: “When we would travel, we would look for somewhere to get dessert or candy and always end up at Fresh Market dipping into the jars of candy,” Asbridge says. “Everybody loves candy.”

Asbridge’s sweets’ shop, Sweet Noshings, offering an array of treats from the standard Hershey’s brands, dried fruit and nuts, and chocolate-covered pretzels to RingDings and malted milk balls, opened in Overton Square a couple weeks ago.

“It’s something truly unique to the Square,” says Elizabeth Berglund, community relations director for Loeb Properties, which leases space in Overton Square. “The fact that someone like Leena, who had a very successful career in the corporate world, was so passionate about opening a candy store specifically in Overton Square really made us excited for her to be a part of it.”

With custom-built cabinetry, benches, and salvaged furniture, Sweet Noshings has a modern industrial feel enhanced by down-home decorations. An old sewing bench nestled in the corner now functions as a candy stand; a chandelier with lime-green bulbs hangs not far from a suspended bicycle, along with various kitchen appliances that were spraypainted and hung directly above the glass jars of candy.

The candy may be the main draw, but Asbridge wants you to stay for the gourmet popcorn that is made in-house and comes in more than 20 flavors. “We’ll have anything from caramel to vanilla and green apple, and then we’ll have all the cheese flavors, then we’ll have all the chocolate varieties — chocolate with Oreos, chocolate with marshmallows,” she says.

Visitors can create their own bulk bags of candy and nuts, as well as design their own popcorn. They can come enjoy a cup of Ugly Mug coffee with a yogurt parfait, muffin, or oatmeal for breakfast. They can get a cookie or slice of cake too: “Everybody gets something,” Asbridge says. “If mom and dad want cake and the kids want gummy worms, everybody can come to one place and sit down. We’re not all eating yogurt and we’re not all having cookies — we’re picking what we want.”

2113 Madison (731-446-8499)

For Phillip Ashley Rix, owner of the recently opened Cooper-Young boutique Phillip Ashley Chocolates, all it took was a taste of a subpar gourmet chocolate to make him think, Man, I can do better.

At the time, he was working with FedEx and had started looking into culinary schools, but it would be awhile before he set foot in a kitchen or even began playing with his own flavors. First, he did some reading — for two years. “All I did was study chocolate and study spices, study ingredients, how we taste, the zones of the palate,” he says. “I never went after this as a hobby.”

A graduate of Bartlett High School and Middle Tennessee State University, Rix moved away and spent more than a decade working in sales and supply-chain management for corporations including UPS, FedEx, and Apple, the latter of which brought him back home to Memphis in 2009. That same year, he finally got into the kitchen and began teaching himself how to blend his own flavors to create the sweets he had been dreaming of. He launched his online chocolate company Chocistry in 2009, later rebranding it Phillip Ashley Chocolates in 2012, after he left his job and went full-time with the brand.

His creations look like they belong in a jewelry box. They are hand-painted in vibrant eye-catching hues and infused with flavors of champagne, passion fruit, egg nog, ginger snaps — and even liquid smoke, as in his cobalt-blue Memphis BBQ chocolate.

The flavors are inspired by what Rix himself likes, including his two-layer Key Lime Chocolate. “I’m a big key lime pie fan, but no one ever thinks about the crust,” he says of his stacked chocolate of key lime rum, marscapone, and graham cracker. “Each piece is communicating with you in a different way. That’s why I say that every chocolate should tell a story. Every piece has a name, every piece has a different look. The flavors have a purpose,” Rix says.

The chocolates are 35 cents a gram; gift boxes run $25 for a six-piece box. Rix wants customers to understand that they are paying for more than just a piece of candy. They’re paying for an experience: “We use the best ingredients. We spend a lot of time making sure everything is beautiful. We don’t just throw anything out here. We respect our customers enough to give them the best all the time. Consistency is our friend,” he says.

The shop holds artwork by Kris Keys and Yancy Calvo-Villa, and are part of Rix’s vision to have a rotating gallery of work by local artists. On Tuesdays, when the shop is open by appointment only, guests are welcomed with a glass of champagne. “We just try to be sexier in the way we present,” says Rix, pointing out that even the boxes, which bear his signature, have magnetic closures. It’s all part of his designer aesthetic.

“I don’t want to just be another chocolate company. I don’t want to just be ‘Oh, the local Memphis shop.’ We love being the local shop, but we’re not just a local shop,” he says. “How great would it be to say, ‘The best chocolate you’ll ever taste in the world is based in Memphis’?”

798 S. Cooper (207-6259)

If you like your food spicy, chances are there’s a bottle of hot sauce somewhere in your kitchen. It might be a generic store brand or the how-did-we-exist-before? Sriracha. They’re good, sure, but are they crazy good?

Jim O’Brien would answer that with a big, fat no, though as the founder of the Crazy Good line of condiments, he’s admittedly biased.

The 38-year-old chef-turned-entrepreneur is the brains behind peppery concoctions with names like Chaos Theory, Fruits of Fire, and Raging Pineapple. “I can’t put out a product that I don’t think is crazy good. It’s about accountability for me,” O’Brien says of the copyrighted name.

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From Shabam! to Chaos Theory and beyond

The Crazy Good line includes five hot sauces, a wing sauce, a salsa, and two chile powders and are sold at Cash Saver, Whole Foods, City Grocery, Miss Cordelia’s, Superlo, and Krogers within Shelby County. It’s also served in some 20 restaurants — Alchemy, Bardog Tavern, Slider Inn, and Young Avenue Deli, among them — around the city. O’Brien is planning to roll out 10 new products in 2014, including a cornbread mix, catfish breading, and Bloody Mary mix.

O’Brien is a St. Louis native who came to Memphis after dropping out of high school. He spent his early 20s learning the ins and outs of a professional kitchen under chefs such as Erling Jensen and Rick Farmer. He then left the city to go to culinary school and eventually wound up in Albuquerque.

The Southwest completely changed O’Brien’s culinary landscape. He was introduced to hot and meaty New Mexico chiles, which are added to everything. “You order anything in a restaurant, they’re going to ask, ‘red or green?’ Do you want red chile or do you want green chile? And if you can’t make up your mind, you say ‘Christmas,’ and you get both,” he says.

O’Brien was working for a food distributor when, on the side, he began working with clients who participated in barbecue competitions, bringing a level of standardization to their work. Soon, others began asking him when he was going to develop his own products, and he realized that actually wasn’t a bad idea. He began brainstorming, set a few guidelines (all-natural, unique, gluten-free), and started experimenting with a few sauce concoctions of his own.

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Though his sauces are indeed hot, O’Brien maintains that he focuses on the food before the pepper in his product development.

“I think when people focus on a certain pepper that they want to use, or a certain spice, those end up being almost a novelty product that becomes too hot for anyone to enjoy. I’m looking at ‘What are we making? What are we using this for?’ At the end of the day, everything’s meant to be enjoyed and to be used on food,” he says.

O’Brien created his hot pineapple, green-hued Southwest Sweet Heat sauce as a complement to fish tacos, and s’mores served as the fire starter for the Chaos Theory Ghost Pepper Sauce. Chaos Theory is O’Brien’s personal favorite and is filled with flavors of cocoa, orange, ginger — and enough ghost peppers to give the back of your throat a nice burn. The Memphis-inspired Shabam! Sauce is a more tame option and can be used on everything from barbecue to red beans and rice.

“I was always kind of annoyed with the fact that Louisiana sauces are a go-to staple for everything when they don’t truly fit the foods of different regions,” O’Brien says, noting that his aim with Crazy Good was to create something that paired well with such regional fare as cornbread, greens, chicken, and catfish. “Personally,” he says, “I think I nailed it.”

crazygoodsauces.com