Author: John Klyce Minervini

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Food & Wine Food & Drink

Grove Grill’s Jeff Dunham takes the Farmers Market Challenge.

CREDIT: John Klyce Minervini

It’s easy to get distracted at the Agricenter Farmers Market. If the handmade olive oil soaps don’t get you, then Mama D’s Italian Ice will. Fortunately, Jeff Dunham is a man who knows what he wants. On a balmy Saturday morning, he strides up to Peach World Farms and places an order.

“I’ll take a case of peaches and case of cukes. Picklers. Oh, and I better get some corn, too.”

“Bread and Butter or Silver Queen?” asks the attendant.

“Silver Queen.”

John Klyce Minervini

Jeff Dunham in his garden

At 6’4″ and built like a backhoe, Dunham can put away his fair share of food. But the cucumbers aren’t destined for his dinner table. Rather, he’s stocking the pantries of his Ivy Award-winning restaurant, the Grove Grill. Later that day, the peaches will turn up in a grilled peach salad with arugula, barbecued pecans, and fresh goat cheese. The corn is destined for a tasty Tasso ham succotash.

Today, Dunham also happens to be shopping for lunch. He’s agreed to take the Flyer‘s Farmers Market Challenge, in which I team up with a local chef, we go shopping at the farmers market, and the chef cooks a delicious meal with what we bought. (Because why make your own lunch if you can get an award-winning chef to do it? Am I right?)

Keeping up with Dunham is harder than you might think. He walks quickly, and almost before I can write down what he’s bought, he’s on to the next stall. Today, he’s keen on the red fish fillets at Paradise Seafood. This particular fish was caught yesterday off the coast of Gulf Shores, and the fillets are something to behold: pale pink, the color of rose quartz, with white veins zigzagging throughout. We buy a pound.

Before we head home, Dunham rounds out our shopping bag with eggs, Anaheim peppers, and eggplants from Windermere Farms. Then it’s time to start cooking.

Dunham lives with his wife Tracey — with whom he owns the Grove Grill — in a ranch-style house near the White Station and Mendenhall area. The two met at culinary school in the 1980s. Today, we’re also expecting the Dunhams’ daughter, Christine, and her husband, Aaron Lamey.

“Oh, there’s Aaron,” says Tracey, hearing her son-in-law at the door. “We better plug in the waffle maker.”

“Every family has somebody with quirky tastes,” says Dunham, by way of explanation. “Aaron likes some of this stuff, but what he really likes is waffles — so we’re making him waffles.”

While the waffle maker heats up, we wet our whistles with a virgin cocktail: juiced cantaloupe and basil mixed with San Pellegrino Pompelmo, a sparkling grapefruit drink. It’s refreshing and crisp — equal parts melon sweet and citrus tangy — perfect for a lazy summer morning.

Cocktail in hand, Dunham tosses some veggies on the grill: corn, zucchini, okra, and the Anaheim peppers. The okra and zucchini are from his plot at Shelby Farms Community Garden, where he spends one to two hours every day.

“Gardening is how I stay sane,” Dunham confesses, turning the peppers. “There are days I’ll go out there and just pull weeds for two hours. It’s one of those mindless tasks that helps you unwind.”

After the veggies come off the grill, it’s time to roast the red fish. Dunham stokes the fire with some fallen tree branches, courtesy of the ancient oak trees in his backyard. This, he explains, will allow the fire to burn hotter than charcoal, while also flavoring the fish.

Back in the kitchen, he prepares a puree of roasted eggplant, tomatoes, and onions. He peels the peppers and stuffs them with corn and zucchini — a vegetarian relleno for summer. Last of all, he fries the eggs, flipping them as though it were no big deal. Had he been planning this all along?

John Klyce Minervini

The plated lunch

“If you’re asking me if I knew in advance what this plate was gonna look like,” Dunham replies, snacking on a cherry tomato, “then the answer is, no. Really, I’m just making it up as I go along.”

For an off-the-cuff brunch, it’s pretty darn impressive. The fish is immaculately plated, served over eggplant puree with a tomato-and-onion slaw. It’s wonderfully light and flaky — but is it weird that I like the eggplant puree best of all? It’s savory and just a little sweet, flavored with basil, lemon, thyme, and oregano.

After a short grace, we tuck into our food, attacking the fried eggs and cornering the chili rellenos. As for Aaron, he’s happy as a clam with his waffles.

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Food & Drink Hungry Memphis

Gotta Try This: High Cotton’s New Session IPA

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Over the last 10 years, craft brewers have pushed beer to its limits, chasing the hoppiest, most alcoholic, most badass beer they can make. Beers like Dogfish Head’s My Antonia and Goose Island’s Bourbon County Stout.

And really, who can blame them? In the first place, it’s delicious. Maybe more importantly, it’s macho. And for most brewers, that’s kind of a big deal.

The problem with extreme beers is that once you’ve had two or three, you’re toast. And most of us-well, we don’t want to seal the deal that quickly. We want a beer that can take us through the night. We want a beer that we can sit down and get to know.

Enter High Cotton‘s new Session IPA. At 4% alcohol by volume, it’s the kind of beer that can take you through a summer barbecue-the kind of thing where you can have a beer an hour for five hours and not get drunk. Even better: it’s delicious.

“Don’t get me wrong,” says brewer Ryan Staggs, “I’m all about big, bad beers. But extreme hops and high alcohol content can cover a lot of sins. For me, the bigger challenge is to develop a lighter beer that tastes good and still exhibits the characteristics of a given style.”

Staggs is the chief operating officer at High Cotton and the brains behind their new Session IPA. To make it, he started with Great Western malt-a light base malt-and added a little bit of Vienna malt for body.

To flavor the beer, Staggs chose two kinds of hops: Chinook and Sorachi Ace. The result is an eminently drinkable summer beer, with lemon peel and citrus in the nose. The flavor is light and clean, starting off sweet and ending with just a hint of bitterness.

In other words: fire up the grill.

“You know it’s a good IPA,” says Staggs, “when you burp and you can taste the hops. And you’re like, hey, that’s pretty good actually. That’s a fine IPA.”

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Food & Drink Food Reviews

Peabody’s 145th Birthday Dinner, plus Oysters and more at Local

CREDIT: Justin Fox Burks

This year the Peabody turns 145, and to celebrate, they’re throwing themselves a party on Thursday, September 4th. It starts with a reception in the lobby, from 4:30 to 6 p.m. Anybody can come to that. But the main event is a seated, five-course dinner at Chez Philippe. The dinner is $85 per person (an additional $35 for wine pairing), and reservations are required.

For each course, the Peabody has recruited a different chef from the history of Chez Philippe. Jason Dallas — currently executive chef at Interim — opens the evening with leek-wrapped scallops. Then it’s Andreas Kistler‘s turn. The current chef at Chez Philippe will prepare pan-roasted pheasant with dried berries and Peruvian potato-truffle puree.

Did the Peabody’s 145-year history affect Kistler’s choice of menu? Well — not exactly.

Justin Fox Burks

The Peabody’s Andreas Kistler and Konrad Spitzbart

“I was going through some of the old menus,” says Kistler. “They’re fun to look at, but I don’t think I could spell most of that stuff, let alone make money with it. Back then they ate kidneys and livers. I don’t want to eat that!”

The evening closes with a strawberry shortcake by chef Konrad Spitzbart, served with mascarpone, basil gel, and a crisp pepper meringue. It’s certainly a change from 1869, the year the Peabody opened. Back then you could get a room and two meals for $4. But then, you might have had trouble finding any basil gel or Peruvian potato-truffle puree.

Jeff Johnson recently finished installing a 48-tap draft beer system — the largest in town — at Local in Overton Square. It’s a veritable bowling alley of shiny chrome and colorful tap handles, boasting craft beers from around the United States.

“Our goal is simple,” confesses Johnson. “We wanna be the place people come to get beer.”

The new tap system means that kegs won’t have to be stored behind the bar; chilled pipes allow them to be tapped remotely. The move has freed up space for a raw bar. On a recent Wednesday, oysters from the Gulf Coast and James River were offered.

And really, what goes better with craft beer than oysters? Start with the fried gulf oysters in wing sauce ($12 for a half dozen). They’re lightly breaded, so you can still taste the oyster, and the sauce is lusciously garlicky. Pair them with a pint of Goose Island Lolita, a tart Belgian-style beer aged in wine barrels with fresh raspberries.

Justin Fox Burks

Oysters from Local’s new raw bar

Interested in a classier bivalve? Try chef Russell Casey‘s grilled oysters with bacon, leek butter, and parmesan ($12 for a half dozen). Pairing bacon with oysters is almost always a good idea — the hearty crunch adds so much — and in this case, the leek butter seals the deal. Pair them with a Dogfish Head Sixty-One, a complex IPA finished with the juice of Syrah grapes.

Or you know what? Just eat ’em raw. Now that it’s September, the oysters have stopped spawning, the red tides have subsided, and this gastronome is eager for slimy delights.

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Food & Wine Food & Drink

Blind Bear Brings Back Lunch Service; a Second Location for Lisa’s Lunchbox.

CREDIT: John Klyce Minervini

Seven years ago, Lisa Clay Getske founded Lisa’s Lunchbox, a sandwich joint, inside an office tower near Poplar and I-240. You can’t see it from the street, and in anybody else’s hands, it would have gone out of business in six months.

But not Lisa’s Lunchbox. There’s a line out the door every day, and Getske has just opened a second location on Poplar, next to Casablanca. What’s her secret?

“Well,” reflects Getske, “I guess for starters, we only use real food. I remember, when I first opened, my food purveyor tried to sell me some pre-cooked chicken with grill marks on it. I was like, No thank you.”

It’s difficult to describe what makes Lisa’s Lunchbox work so well. Is it the menu, handwritten on colorful pieces of construction paper taped to the wall? Or is it the crunchy, oven-baked bacon, deployed in dishes like the chicken club wrap ($7.32) and the potato soup ($3.20)?

What’s easier to pin down is consistent quality — and freshness — of the fare. Just about everything, from the humble ranch dressing to the mighty chicken breast, is prepared onsite, every day.

The new Lisa’s Lunchbox was a smoothie bar before Getske leased the space. From the former tenants she inherited some very colorful walls — the color of mango sorbet — but also a unique opportunity: she got to buy their appliances.

That has led to a tasty innovation: They now offer a full line of smoothies and juices. Start off with a couple of ginger shots ($2.50). (In case you hadn’t heard, ginger is the new wheatgrass.) Faintly sweet and intensely spicy, it will heat you up and change your mood.

From there, graduate to a Memphis Mango smoothie ($4), a delicious slurry of mango, banana, cashews, vanilla, almond milk, and — if you ask for it — spinach and kale. Sweet but not too sweet, it’ll help you stay cool in the sticky weather.

“The last tenants,” remembers Getske, “put ice cream in all their smoothies. We’re trying to steer people toward real food and show them it can be just as delicious.”

John Klyce Minervini

The Gangster Philly

No one can appreciate comfort food quite like a server. The Blind Bear was founded in 2011 by three bartenders. So it makes sense that when, earlier this month, they started serving lunch again, they went for the kind of food they themselves would want to eat: comfort food classics like fried okra ($3) and barbecued bologna ($12).

“Downtown has a lot of expensive, nice food,” says co-founder Jeanette West. “But we also know that people work here. They want veggies, they want options, but they don’t want to spend their whole paycheck on a meal.”

For lunch, try the pepper jack mac & cheese ($3), which is faintly spicy, or the collard greens ($3), which are satisfyingly crisp. Chef Jeremy “JJ” Jaggers knows that many of his clientele don’t eat meat, so all sides are 100-percent vegetarian.

For me, it’s all about the Gangster Philly ($12). When developing the recipe, chef Jaggers went back to the source: Pat’s King of Steaks in Philadelphia, PA.

Jaggers starts with a rib-eye steak, which he slow-roasts to medium rare. Next, he slices the meat and finishes it on a flat-top griddle, before serving it with sauteed peppers and onions in a crusty Italian roll. But the sine qua non of this dish is the provolone béchamel sauce, a cheesy delight that will be waiting for me when I get to heaven.

“I’m a meat-eating chef,” confesses Jaggers. “So when I sit down for lunch, I want meat and cheese and bread. And I want the cheese to be nice and gooey and melty.”

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Food & Drink Hungry Memphis

The Best Puns from the 2014 ASBEE World Kosher BBQ Championship

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Everybody knows Memphis can do pork. But did you know we also have the world’s largest kosher (beef and chicken) barbecue contest?

Since 1988, Memphis’s Anshei Sphard-Beth El Emeth Congregation—the oldest Orthodox Jewish congregation in the South—has hosted the World Kosher Barbecue Championships. Each year, over 40 teams compete in six categories, including Best Beef Brisket, Best Beef Ribs, and Best Booth.

This year’s contest was on Sunday, August 24th. The barbecue was geshmak—that’s Yiddish for “delicious”—and a good time was had by all, Jews and Gentiles alike. I especially liked the beef ribs at the Temple Israel Brotherhood booth; the meat was a beautiful pink color; perfectly spiced, it fell right off the bone.

But what really got my attention were the puns in the booth names. So many puns! Steaking Bad, Downton ASBEE, Fleishbook. You get the idea.

So here, for your delectation, is a photo slideshow of some of the best puns from this year’s competition. How’s your Yiddish? And which is your favorite? Let us know in the comments section below.

[slideshow-1]

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Food & Drink Hungry Memphis

Gotta Try This: The Grove Grill’s Pickled Green Tomato Martini

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When it comes to cocktails, it’s getting hard to shock people. I mean, come on. We’re putting bacon in our eggnog and butternut squash in our bloody marys.

But once in a while, a cocktail comes along that makes you tilt your head and say, “huh?” Case in point: the Grove Grill’s Pickled Green Tomato Martini.

To be fair, martinis have long included pickles—pickled olives, to be precise. But hey, did you even know that pickled green tomatoes were a thing? I didn’t.

So I drove on over to the Grove Grill and got general manager Ed Parramore to shake me up a drink. The ingredients are Brandon’s Gin—from Little Rock, who’d a thunk?—pickle juice, and a couple of tomato slices, personally pickled by Grove Grill owner and chef Jeff Dunham.

Guys, it’s a hit. The first sip is a bit of a surprise: the vinegar from the pickle juice jumps up and slaps you in the mouth. But the second sip is delicious, and every sip thereafter. This cocktail is all about the marriage of sweet and savory: the sweet botanicals in the gin plus the tart tang of the pickled tomato.

Be forewarned: this is not a sugary beverage. It’s more like a dirty martini than a cosmo. But if you like your martini to bite back—and I do—this is a drink for your bucket list.

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Food & Drink Food Reviews

Ryan Trimm takes the Farmers Market Challenge.

CREDIT: John Minervini

“Man, these farmers are so green,” mutters Ryan Trimm, “you’d think they’d use paper bags, right?”

Moments later, he smiles and accepts a plastic bag full of plump Tennessee lady peas from Yang Farms in Toone, Tennessee. It’s Saturday morning, and we’re up bright and early, shopping for lunch at the Cooper-Young Community Farmers Market. Trimm’s daughter, 3-year-old Emma Kate, has gallantly agreed to come along and help.

“What do you want to eat, baby?” asks Trimm, boosting her up into his arms.

But Emma Kate is suddenly feeling a little shy. She blinks her glacier-blue eyes and buries her head in her father’s neck.

In addition to his many other appealing qualities, Trimm also happens to be very brave. The executive chef at Southward Fare & Libations, Sweet Grass, and Next Door, he’s agreed to be my guinea pig for the Flyer‘s very first Farmers Market Challenge. That’s where I team up with a local chef, we go shopping at the farmers market, and the chef cooks a delicious meal with what we bought.

I know, right? It’s a tough job, but somebody’s gotta eat all that delicious food.

John Minervini

Chef Ryan Trimm and daughter Emma Kate shop for peppers at the Cooper-Young Farmers Market.

Today, Trimm is taken with the peppers from Tubby Creek Farm in Ashland, Mississippi. And no wonder, these peppers are works of art. The lipstick pimentos are little rainbows, grading in color from lime green to vermilion. And the Italian sweet peppers are downright sexy, long and plump with a taut, red skin. Trimm buys a pint of each.

Before we go, we stock up on tomatoes, okra, Texas sweet onions, herbs, and a butterscotch melon. The melon — from Hanna Farms, in Osceola, Arkansas — is like a cantaloupe, but smaller, about the size of a bocce ball. It’s got a delicious caramel flavor, with a scent of gardenia.

“Smell that,” says Trimm, holding up the melon. “You just can’t find that in the grocery store.”

food Feature By John Klyce Minervini

Chef Ryan Trimm eats lunch with son Thomas and daughter Emma Kate at their home in East Memphis.

Trimm lives with his wife and two children in a spacious, two-story Georgian Revival near Park and Ridgeway. When we get to the house, Trimm’s wife Sarah is trying to soothe 3-month-old Thomas, who has been sick this morning. Sarah, who teaches first grade at St. Mary’s, says she met Ryan in high school, when she was a junior at St. Agnes and he was a senior at Christian Brothers.

“At this point, I’ve known him for over half my life,” she says, burping baby Thomas. “I still can’t get over how weird that is.”

Everybody’s getting hungry, so Trimm slices the melon, serving it with feta cheese and a bit of lemon verbena. It’s an inspired combination. The cheese is just piquant enough to balance the melon’s honeysuckle sweetness, and the citrusy lemon verbena puts an exclamation mark at the end of the sentence, so to speak.

Meanwhile, Trimm gets to work on the main course, what he playfully calls a “cornless succotash.” Succotash — from the Narragansett word for “broken corn” — is a dish that New England colonists learned from Native Americans back in the 17th century. In its simplest form, it consists of corn and lima beans, prepared with cream or butter.

Today, we’re cutting out the corn in favor of those scrumptious-looking lady peas. First, Trimm blanches the peas in boiling water. Then he fires up the sauté pan, and it’s go time. One by one, veggies start to sizzle as they hit the hot oil: pimento peppers, okra, lady peas, and herbs. Trimm cuts the heat before tossing the mixture with butter and tomatoes. (Get the full recipe at memphisflyer.com).

Finally it’s time to eat. We take our lunch in the sunroom, an airy space with a view of the family swimming pool. Alongside the succotash, Trimm serves the Italian sweet peppers, pan-roasted with parsley and garlic, and a crudité of tomatoes and onions.

“All right guys,” says Trimm, rounding up the family. “Time for lunch.”

It’s an embarrassment of culinary riches. The tomatoes — Brandywines and Cherokee Purples from Lazy Dog Farms in Bethel Springs, Tennessee — are a meal unto themselves, tangy and sweet with a perfect texture. They go well with the Italian sweet peppers, which are smoky and savory, with a hint of sweetness.

But the okra in the succotash definitely steals the show. The taste is both unforgettable and hard to describe, somewhere between eggplant and asparagus. On my way out the door, I confess that this is the first time I’ve had okra that wasn’t pickled or fried, and Trimm offers some tips for selecting okra at the farmers market.

“You really don’t want it to be any bigger than that,” he says, holding up his little finger. “Once you go bigger, the insides start to hollow out, and you get less meat for your bite.”

Categories
Food & Drink Hungry Memphis

Ryan Trimm’s Cornless Succotash Recipe

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This week’s Flyer unveiled its very first Farmers Market Challenge. That’s where we team up with a local chef, go shopping at a farmers market, and make a delicious meal with what we bought.

To christen the series, I met up with Ryan Trimm, of Southward and Sweet Grass, who whipped up a delicious cornless succotash. And ladies and gentleman, it was delicious: crisp and fresh, like sticking your fork in a summer garden.

Then I started thinking. I was like, you know what? I could do that. All right, yes, it takes a culinary rockstar like Ryan Trimm to come up with the recipe. But once you’ve got instructions, it’s really not that difficult to make.

So below, for your delectation, is the recipe for Ryan Trimm’s Cornless Succotash.

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Ryan Trimm’s Cornless Succotash
40 minutes
4 servings

Ingredients:

½ tbsp. olive oil
½ tbsp. vegetable oil
1 cup Tennessee lady peas
6 lipstick pimento peppers, halved and seeded
12-15 okra, halved lengthwise
½ shallot or Texas sweet onion, sliced thin
1 cup grape tomatoes, halved
1 tbsp. fresh chives, minced
1 tbsp. fresh parsley, minced
1 tbsp. butter
salt and pepper to taste.

In a small pot, bring 1 quart of lightly salted water to boil. Boil lady peas for 1-2 minutes, until just tender. Drain. In a large pan, bring olive oil / vegetable oil mixture to medium-high heat. Add peppers. Sauté until skin blisters, appx. 1½ minutes, stirring constantly. Add okra; sauté for an additional 1½ minutes. Add shallots; sauté for an additional 30 seconds. Add peas; sauté for an additional 1½ minutes. Remove pan from heat. Add tomatoes, herbs and butter. Toss until butter has melted. Salt and pepper to taste. Serve immediately with fresh fish—or enjoy it by itself!

As always, we recommend sourcing your veggies locally. But in case you can’t find lipstick pimento peppers—or just don’t have time—here are a few substitutions. Tennessee lady peas can be swapped with purple hull peas. Lipstick pimentos can be swapped with two cups of any sweet peppers, sliced thick. Texas sweet onions can be swapped for shallots.

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Food & Wine Food & Drink

Now Open: Suga Shack and High Cotton

CREDIT: John Minervini

Monroe has long had a wealth of restaurants and bars — McEwen’s on Monroe, Felicia Suzanne’s, Little Tea Shop, Bardog, Kudzu’s, and Bon Ton Cafe. Now there’s even a night club — although you may have a bit of trouble finding it.

Here’s a hint: Follow the sound of Larry Springfield‘s house band — the funky grooves, the smoky vocals — and it will lead you to the corner of Monroe and Third. There, at the bottom of an unmarked staircase, in a brick basement below Bon Ton, you’ll find one of the best places to hear live music in Memphis — the Suga Shack.

“We like to say we’re keeping it in the cut,” says co-owner Springfield. “That means it’s your own private little situation — something only you and a few friends know about, and you wanna keep it that way.”

Springfield is an R&B singer who has toured with Al Green, Barry White, and BB King. His songs “All the Way to Love” and “Stand by My Woman” climbed the R&B charts in the early 1990s. Today, Springfield fronts the house band at Suga Shack, where, in addition to his own songs, he sings soul standards by the likes of Marvin Gaye and Frankie Maze.

John Minervini

Suga Shack

And the crowd eats it up. On a recent Saturday night, they sang along to Luther Ingram’s “If Loving You is Wrong.” And when it came time for Marvin Gaye’s “Let’s Get it On,” people couldn’t stay in their seats.

In between sets, DJ Len Williamson keeps the crowd moving with a series of line dances to R&B hits, songs like “Step and Stomp” by J Dallas and “Zydeco Bounce” by TK Soul. There’s even a line dance for Robyn Thicke’s 2013 hit, “Blurred Lines.” I actually tried to learn this dance, with mixed results.

As far as refreshments, Suga Shack serves a selection of comfort food from the menu at Bon Ton — like fried dill pickles ($4.99) and chicken and waffles ($9.99). There’s also an impressive array of house cocktails. Try the Sno Cone ($8), a dangerously drinkable concoction of vodka and watermelon liqueur drizzled with Blue Curacao. Open Friday and Saturday night.

Suga Shack isn’t the only big news on Monroe these days. Farther up the street, on the far side of AutoZone Park, craft brewers Brice Timmons and Ryan Staggs have added a chic taproom to the front of High Cotton Brewing Company.

It seems like a funny place to put a brew pub. Fifty years ago, this neighborhood — called “The Edge” for its location between Downtown and the Medical District — was a bustling music hub, home to record labels such as Sun Studios and Phillips Recording. But these days, it’s fallen into disrepair, full of empty lots and abandoned warehouses.

Timmons says that’s precisely the point. When choosing a location for its taproom, High Cotton could have gone with established dining corridors like South Main or Cooper-Young. Instead, they chose The Edge with the intention of bringing some life back to this struggling neighborhood.

“Historically,” says Timmons, “craft breweries have always been a source of economic revitalization. By opening a bar here, we actually thought we could do some good.”

John Minervini

High Cotton’s new taproom

So far, it seems to be working. Since it opened on June 14th, the taproom — a spare, post-industrial space by Memphis designer Graham Reese — has consistently been crowded, and Timmons says High Cotton’s biggest challenge has been keeping up with demand.

“Which, when you think about it,” he continues, “really isn’t a bad problem to have.”

High Cotton currently serves nine craft brews, and they plan to debut a 10th — the High Cotton Pilsner — this week. The Scottish Ale ($5) is rich and chocolatey, with a beautiful, tan-coloured head. By contrast, the Biere de Garde ($5) is bright and aromatic — “a sipper, not a guzzler,” in the words of one friendly bar patron.

Want a little curried goat ($8) with your beer? Come on Thursday night, when Paul’s Cariflavor Caribbean Cuisine food truck is parked outside on Monroe. True to its startup ethos, High Cotton is focusing on what it does well — the beer — and leaving the food to someone else.

To that end, they have enlisted a rotating cast of food trucks to park outside the taproom on weekend nights. Other food trucks include Fresh Gulf Shrimp, Stickem, and Rock ‘n’ Dough Pizza Company. Open Thursday through Saturday.

Categories
Food & Drink Hungry Memphis

Gotta Try This: Interim’s new Seared Ahi Tuna with Peach & Arugula Slaw

Seared ahi tuna with peach and arugula slaw on a bed of beet orzo

  • Seared ahi tuna with peach and arugula slaw on a bed of beet orzo

Food pics are a dime a dozen, and at this point we’re pretty jaded. What’s that, you say? A photo of a life-changing yellow pukka curry from celebrity chef Jamie Oliver? Yawn. Yet another garden-fresh watermelon salad from Real Simple editor Sarah Copeland? Wake me when it’s over.

But once in a while, a food pic comes along that really gets our attention. That’s what happened on Wednesday night, when Interim Restaurant and Bar posted this photo on their Facebook feed. It shows a forthcoming menu item, the house-cured gravlax on German rye bread ($12).

I mean, come on, right? I had to try it.

Salmon Gravlax

  • Salmon Gravlax

Gravlax is a Scandinavian dish that consists of salmon that has been dry-cured with a mixture of salt, sugar, and fresh herbs. At Interim, they serve it over arugula, with crème fraiche and capers. It’s a thrilling flavor combination, and the salmon is so good that they could have served it by itself, alone on a plate. If you order the gravlax, be sure to nibble on a bit of the fish without the fixins. Yum.

But what really stood out was the seafood special: seared ahi tuna with peach and arugula slaw on a bed of beet orzo (market price, usually about $30). Chef Jason Dallas, formerly of Chez Philippe, developed it together with sous chefs Sepand Mazahery and Ysaac Ramirez.

The orzo is rich and hearty, picking up earthy undertones from the beets. The slaw is sweet and a little spicy. And in between, the fish is just terrific. It’s wild-caught, sushi-grade tuna from the Gulf of Mexico, and it tastes like it just came out of the water.

And as a matter of fact, did just come out of the water. Chef Dallas handed me the tracking tags from Gulf Wild, a Florida company that works with Gulf fishermen to ensure sustainability, accountability, and freshness. By using a tracking number, I was able to determine that the tuna I was eating had been caught earlier in the week by fisherman Robert Carter, aboard his vessel the Blackjack 1.

Now that’s pretty cool. If you’re looking for a good example of what Memphis chefs are capable of, you could do worse than to start here.