Author: Justin Fox Burks

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Food & Wine Food & Drink

Late Night Noshing in Memphis

CREDIT: Justin Fox Burks

Would you order a bowl of ramen noodles from an Italian joint or pick up a fried-rice grilled cheese from a place that specializes in German cuisine? If it’s past any respectable person’s dinnertime and you aren’t going to scarf down a bean burrito in a parking lot in the passenger side of your buddy’s Toyota Corolla, you most certainly would. Lucky for you, the creative chefs at two popular restaurants ditch the constraints of their restaurant concepts and switch up their menus for dinner procrastinators and late-nighters.

David Todd, executive chef at Schweinehaus in Overton Square treats his fourth-mealers to something off-kilter and off-menu. “I think late-night eaters get the short end of the stick sometimes,” he said, “so it’s kind of cool to offer specials and cool new dishes to those who have most likely been serving others in some capacity all day.”

Justin Fox Burks

David Todd

Todd admits that he’s really cooking these imaginative dishes for himself as a creative outlet but loves to share his wild creations with a wider audience. “It’s a nice little window of time every day of no-pressure idea exploration,” he said.

Justin Fox Burks

Schweinehaus’ Brat-chos

So what can you expect if you show up hungry to Schweinehaus between 10 p.m. and 2 a.m? You’re presented with a menu that’s printed up nightly with eight late-night staples, and at the top is a “Late-Night Chef’s Creation” section that has two to three unique choices, including such dishes as Brat-chos (yes, bratwurst nachos), the aforementioned fried-rice grilled cheese, Pancake Breakfast Sandwich, NY Reuben Fries, or the Third Grader, a grilled peanut butter and jelly sandwich. The choices range in price from $7 to $13.

Justin Fox Burks

Schweinehaus’ smoked jerk pork sandwich

I stopped in after 10 p.m. last Saturday and found a full patio and the front room packed with a party of 20-plus millennials having a big time. The menu that night was geared toward the Elvis Week crowd, with an ice-cream sandwich aptly called “The Elvis” and “Fools Loaf,” which is a peanut butter and jelly sandwich with bacon on buttery brioche bread.

Andrew Ticer and Michael Hudman‘s Hog & Hominy on Brookhaven Circle draws late-night eaters in with the smell of oak burning in a traditional wood-fired pizza oven, but the star of the after-hours menu, available from 10 p.m. to midnight, or later if the restaurant is full, isn’t the pizza. It’s two dishes that are pretty far removed from the place’s Italian roots.

The chef duo fell in love with ramen noodles while traveling the country cooking at places like the James Beard House. “The first guest-chef dinner we did at Hog & Hominy was with Chef Tien Ho [of Ma Peche fame],” Hudman told me. “He taught us the proper way of making ramen broth, so we put it on the late-night menu as a way of paying homage to him.”

The chefs are also frying up the much lauded John T. Edge Burger, a deceptively simple-sounding sandwich with onion, yellow mustard, pickled lettuce, and American cheese on a white bun. “The ramen and burger are staples that are always on, but we also do specials like our Frito Pie from time to time,” Nick Talarico, general manager, said.

Hog & Hominy is less than a mile from my house, so I dropped in around 11 p.m. on a weekend night to find an unusually quiet scene. The regulars were all at Live at the Garden’s ZZ Top concert nearby, no doubt singing along to “Sharp Dressed Man” and spinning their fuzzy air guitars. So Talarico joined me at the bar to paint a picture of the typical scene. “We’ll have people in tuxedos and evening gowns eating hot dogs, right alongside servers and cooks from other establishments slurping down ramen noodles,” he said.

A look at the full dinner menu, which is also available until closing, made no mention of the John T. Edge Burger or the ramen noodles. “We make sure to tell every table … although those in the know come here just for the ramen,” Talarico said.

This is one of those rare times when procrastination is rewarded. So go out late and enjoy the creative food being served to other night owls. You could nap through your regular dinnertime or, heck, just go ahead and have another dinner. Or you could call it a really early breakfast.

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Food & Wine Food & Drink

Vegging out at the Super Bowl.

CREDIT: Justin Fox Burks

The Super Bowl is coming up, and while I don’t give a hoot about who wins or loses, I do care deeply about the game. Is it the commercials? No! Could it possibly be the half-time show? Nope! It’s the food, of course!

And though I don’t have a dog in the fight, I came up with recipes that replace the hotdog and sausage with whole, fresh vegetables. Go ahead and give these recipes a shot. They are so easy, and it’ll give y’all something to talk about if the game gets boring.

Charred Carrot Hotdogs

6 very large carrots*

1 teaspoon toasted sesame oil

Kosher salt and cracked black pepper (to taste)

6 whole wheat or gluten-free hot dog buns

Vegetarian chili, cheddar cheese, chopped white onion, sauerkraut, pickles,

ketchup, spicy mustard (to serve)

Over a high flame on your outdoor grill’s side burner or under your oven’s broiler, char the carrots until they are deeply blackened all over. This will take roughly 20 minutes if you turn the carrots 1/4 turn every 5 minutes. Once they are sufficiently blackened, remove them and wrap them tightly in aluminum foil. Allow the charred carrots to rest for 15 minutes. They will finish cooking through during that time, and the smoke flavor will infuse throughout.

If they are cool enough to handle, pull the char off of each carrot just like you would for a roasted red pepper. Drizzle the carrots with sesame oil and add salt and pepper to taste. Feel free to warm them up on the grill if you’d like; serve them on a bun with your favorite toppings. (Serves 4-6.)

*Look for the carrots that are about as big around as a half-dollar and have very little taper to them. The biggest carrots you can find are what’s going to work best here. They shrink slightly during the cooking process, and then you pull off the charred part, so they will be smaller once it comes time to eat.

Justin Fox Burks

Mushroom-Stuffed Mushrooms

Mushroom-Stuffed Mushrooms

2 tablespoons olive oil (divided)

1/4 cup finely chopped shallot

3 cloves garlic (finely chopped)

8 ounces portobello or other mushrooms (finely chopped)

1 cup finely chopped celery (about 2 ribs)

1/2 cup finely chopped carrot (1 medium)

1 1/2 teaspoon rubbed sage

1/2 teaspoon red pepper flakes

1/8 teaspoon clove

1/4 teaspoon nutmeg

1 tablespoon soy sauce (like Bragg’s)

1 tablespoon maple syrup

1 tablespoon spicy mustard (like Zatarain’s)

Kosher salt and cracked black pepper (to taste)

1 cup uncooked quick-cooking oats 

12 to 15 large crimini or button mushroom caps

1/2 cup shredded cheddar cheese (or vegan shreds)

1/4 cup sliced green onions

Use your food processor to make short work of all of the chopping. Just roughly chop shallot, garlic, mushrooms, celery, and carrots, and process them in batches by pulsing the blade until finely chopped.

Heat one tablespoon of the oil in a large 12-inch frying pan over high heat. Add the chopped shallot, garlic, mushrooms, celery, and carrot to the pan. Stir consistently and sauté until all of the liquid has released and then evaporated; this should take about 5 minutes. Add the sage, red pepper flakes, clove, nutmeg, soy sauce, and maple syrup to the pan. Stir to incorporate and remove from heat. Add the uncooked quick-cooking oats and stir the mixture until everything is well incorporated. Add salt and pepper to taste. Cover and set aside in the fridge for at least 15 minutes to allow the moisture to distribute.

Preheat your over to 350 degrees. Pull the stem out of each mushroom cap and save for another use. Place mushrooms gill-side-up in a large casserole dish. Drizzle the caps with the remaining olive oil, and season caps with a little salt and pepper. Using your hands, mound as much filling into each cap as you can. Gently press it in so that it fills all of the air pockets. Repeat until all filling is used.

Cover casserole dish tightly with foil and bake for 30 minutes. Remove the foil, top each with cheddar and bake another 3 minutes or until cheese is melted. Top with sliced green onions and serve. These can be served warm or at room temperature.

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Food & Wine Food & Drink

A selection of hand-painted signs.

Chilitos on Macon

Memphis’ patina of rust and concrete and peeling paint speaks of a city that has lived and built and moved and changed and rebuilt. On brick walls from Orange Mound to downtown, you can find hand-lettered, disappearing ghost signs or freshly painted masterpieces advertising everything from car washes to vacuum cleaner repair.

Chef’s Supply and Design on Hollywood

Central BBQ on Summer

As a food photographer I’ve always been particularly interested in how sign painters represent food. There’s beauty in the dark-outlined representations of ribs, cheeseburgers, and wings that seem to float in mid-air devoid of any context. There’s an abundance of comedy, too, in the cartoon versions of the animals we eat — a chicken cooking a chicken, pigs dancing, a catfish smiling.

Valle’s Italian Rebel on Winchester

Below is a collection of images of some of my personal favorite hand-painted signs of food that I shot throughout the years. Some of the paintings are by artists including the late James “Brick” Brigance and Melvin Upchurch. Other paintings are anonymous and fading. For me, the trick is to look and find the art hidden in plain sight that surrounds us every day.

Memphis Big Burger on Hollywood

Old Style Smokin! BBQ on S. Parkway

Effie’s Lounge on N. Second

Live Catfish on Lamar

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Food & Wine Food & Drink

Cooking for a Cause

CREDIT: Justin Fox Burks

I have a friend who calls me on a fairly regular basis to tell me that she’s whipping up a bunch of vegetarian dishes from her native Vietnam: spring rolls beautifully wrapped in rice paper, rich curry soup made with good full-fat coconut milk, fiery bhan mi sandwiches on just the right kind of bread with just the right amount of heat, amazing salads with cucumber and cashews, and tofu so delicious you’d never believe that it started life as a bland block of bean curd.

I’ve watched her prepare a five-course meal in less than 20 minutes, pulling as many ingredients from her home garden as she does the refrigerator. As she cooks she quickly explains the process. “Burn the onion just a little,” she tells me. “It makes for a more flavorful broth.” Still I’m amazed at the flavors she coaxes from humble ingredients. In my own kitchen I’ve struggle to figure out how to recreate what seems to come so naturally to her.

You may know her, too: Tuyen Le, the always-smiling and energetic creative force formerly of New Que Huong in Collierville. She closed the place last year. Since then she has cooked for the eaTABLE supper club, friends, and family but has stayed away from cooking in restaurants.

As luck would have it, she has decided to come out of retirement to host a meal at Saigon Le restaurant on Cleveland near Madison Avenue in Midtown. The buffet-style dinner will be mostly vegetarian but will feature a few dishes that contain meat. It’s open to the public and will be held on Sunday, July 13th, from 2 to 6 p.m. There are no reservations needed, so it is on a first-come, first-served basis.

So, what brought her out of retirement? I got a call last Sunday about that: “Meet me at the Buddhist Temple on Goodlett at Winchester. I’m cooking, and I want to introduce you to someone,” she told me. I arrived at the temple (the one with the two-story Buddha) and found Le chatting with Thay Hao, whose monastery in Vietnam tragically burned down. “I want to have a dinner to raise money to help Thay Hao rebuild,” Le announced.

Le is a devout Buddhist who often sent her tip money back to Vietnam to help feed orphans and support the temples and monastic life of those who devote themselves to good works like Hao. This is her way of using her talents to give something back.

As anyone who has ever dined with Le can tell you, the food will be a plentiful, delicious, and artfully prepared mix of Vietnamese soups, curries, stir fries, salads, and spring rolls. Among the dishes are Vietnamese barbecue ribs, shrimp with jalapeño, vegetarian stir-fried noodles, vegetarian “beef” stew, and tofu stir fry. Here’s the catch: Le refuses to set a price for the dinner on the 13th. That will be determined by each diner in the form of a donation, depending on how generously he or she would like to give. “If this is a success,” Le’s daughter, Huyen, tells me, “she will definitely host more dinners.”

Vietnamese Dinner Fund-raiser at Saigon Le, Sunday, July 13th, 2-6 p.m.

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Food & Drink Hungry Memphis

Southward Introduces New Vegetable-Laden Special Menu

Chef Ryan Trimm is introducing vegetable-focused nightly specials for $8 apiece at his new East Memphis restaurant Southward. The “Farmers” menu selections will change daily depending on what’s fresh and in-season.

“I wanted to do something to showcase all of the hard work that our farmers put into growing the vegetables we use,” Trimm told me over lunch last week.

Roasted White Pumpkin & Acorn Squash with a pumpkin seed pesto

  • Roasted White Pumpkin & Acorn Squash with a pumpkin seed pesto

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Fried Shishito Peppers with smoked tofu (it usually comes with pork shoulder), fennel, and Matt’s Wild tomatoes

  • Fried Shishito Peppers with smoked tofu (it usually comes with pork shoulder), fennel, and Matt’s Wild tomatoes

These are not just your typical vegetable side dishes — they’re well-thought-out plates with creative combinations and flavorful sauces, the sort of stellar dishes that put the season’s best out there and let it shine. “I want to let the vegetables do all the work,” Trimm remarked with a smile.

Southward’s regular menu is without a vegetarian main dish, but ordering a couple of dishes off of the “Farmers” menu could certainly constitute a meal if you are able to keep your dining companions’ wandering utensils away from your plate.

Baby Squash & Eggplant with poblano, feta, mint, and cashews

  • Baby Squash & Eggplant with poblano, feta, mint, and cashews

Heirloom Tomatoes with basil, olive oil, and a balsamic reduction

  • Heirloom Tomatoes with basil, olive oil, and a balsamic reduction

Sweet Potato Dumplings with Spinach Bechamel

  • Sweet Potato Dumplings with Spinach Bechamel

“If vegetarian diners call ahead, we can go the extra mile and make our stuffed peppers with black-eyed peas and tomato Romesco,” Trimm explained, “but we always have plenty of vegetables around from the “Farmers” menu and also to make a vegetarian version of our pirlau.”

Images: Justin Fox Burks

Categories
Food & Drink Hungry Memphis

Food Fund-raiser for Buddhist Temple this Sunday

CREDIT: Justin Fox Burks

buddha.jpg

This is some super-insider information from my good friend Tuyen (owner of New Que Huong) on where to get authentic, vegetarian Vietnamese food.

This Sunday, August 26th, from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m., the Quan Am Buddhist Temple, located at 3500 South Goodlett St. near Winchester, is having a bake sale of sorts to raise money for the temple. Instead of cookies and pies, they will be selling homemade curries, soups, and authentic Vietnamese dishes packed up to go, and it’s all vegetarian.

I speak from experience when I tell you that the food from this sale is amazing (see image at top). This is something you don’t want to miss. It’s open to the public and everyone is welcome.

Quan Am Buddhist Temple, 3500 S. Goodlett

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Food & Wine Food & Drink

New Homeland

CREDIT: Justin Fox Burks

For five years, I wasn’t allowed to order at Saigon Le. Tuyen Le,
who waited tables there, wouldn’t let me. Instead, Tuyen brought me
whatever she was having.

It was wonderful: noodle dishes, curries, and soups that somehow
reached beyond the expansive menu and into what was for me uncharted
culinary territory. Tuyen would explain that this was traditional
Vietnamese cuisine the way it’s prepared in her native Vietnam and that
it was different from anything that Memphis had to offer. I was taken
with the amplified sour, sweet, and salty flavors of the dishes she
prepared.

In early March, she called to tell me she had left Saigon Le to open
her own restaurant, one with a menu overflowing with traditional
dishes.

At least once a month, Tuyen would call asking if I’d like to stop
by her house to try a few dishes she was considering for the menu. She
showed me inlaid chopsticks and beautiful glazed serving bowls, made in
the shape of the lotus flower, which she had bought in Vietnam to use
in the restaurant. And she told me about how determined she was to find
the perfect location — the space in East Memphis was too small;
the building in Midtown, too expensive. Then one day, she said she had
found the perfect space in Collierville and handed me a business card.
It read “New Que Huong”: new homeland.

On June 15th, the day Tuyen opened the doors of New Que Huong, the
place was full of energy. Tuyen’s youngest daughter Lily paraded around
with an “open” sign she’d made using a box top and markers. Buddhist
monk Nguyen Tanh arrived with flowers as Tuyen filled a table with dish
after dish: smoke-tinged noodles with snow peas, crispy lemongrass
tofu, egg rolls, fresh spring rolls, spicy dipping sauces, and pickled
vegetable salad.

Justin Fox Burks

Tuyen Le

New Que Huong’s menu can be overwhelming. The dishes are numbered up
to 116, and there are still seven more pages of choices after that. I
like the Goi Rong Bien (seaweed salad), but there are a few other
salads to choose from. Also recommended is the tofu with curry, with
its overtones of lemongrass and mint. (Shrimp and beef are also
available under the special “Vietnamese Dishes” section of the menu.)
Lastly, try one of the many Vietnamese hot and sour soups. Pineapple,
okra, and tomato are suspended in a light broth along with fragrant
mint and crunchy bean sprouts. Choose catfish, shrimp, chicken, or a
great vegetarian version with chunks of tofu.

On my last visit to the restaurant, I sat in a booth near the door
because I wanted to watch people’s expressions as they tried this food
for the first time. Tuyen welcomed me, slid into the booth, and lightly
punched me in the arm, her standard greeting for me.

She told me how proud she is that she’s opened the business on her
own, and I asked her about the significance of the name New Que Houng.
“You always remember your homeland,” she explained with her hand over
her heart.

As Tuyen disappeared into the kitchen, her daughter Huyen exclaimed,
“I don’t know why you’re even looking at the menu” and snatched the
bound volume from my hands. This is familiar. I settle in, feeling very
much at home.

Categories
Food & Drink Hungry Memphis

New Que Huong Now Open

14cd/1246477649-teunyng.jpg
Tuyen Le just opened a new restaurant in Collierville called New Que Huong. The name is Vietnamese for “new homeland.”

Regulars of the Midtown mainstay Saigon Le will recognize Tuyen right away as one of the two sisters who waited tables there for years.