Author: Michael Donahue

Michael Donahue began his career in 1975 at the now-defunct Memphis Press-Scimitar and moved to The Commercial Appeal in 1984, where he wrote about food and dining, music, and covered social events until early 2017, when he joined Contemporary Media.

Categories
Food & Drink Hungry Memphis

5 Spot will return!

CREDIT: Michael Donahue

Michael Donahue

5 Spot is slated to re-open early 2018.

The 5 Spot restaurant is in the same spot – behind Earnestine & Hazel’s – but it’s getting a facelift.

The restaurant is slated to re-open early 2018, said owner Bud Chittom.

As for the decor, Chittom said, “Much like the same with some new stuff. Bigger kitchen. More cool stuff on the walls. And we’ll probably change the chairs. We did some painting.”

The menu, he said, will include “some stuff with pork shank, some shrimp stuff.”

Veteran restaurateur John Wills is helping develop the menu. “I have tried to develop a menu that’s kind of the best of New Orleans to Memphis. Including all the Delta.”

The menu isn’t set in stone, Wills said, but he’s planning to put “Delta-style hot tamales, which Bud has had experience with at Blues City Cafe for years, going back to Doe’s.”

Wills, who owned the old John Wills BBQ restaurant, wants to add barbecue spaghetti, an Italian soul classic. It’s the best. Memphis has a heritage of Italians doing barbecue restaurants – Coletta’s, Beretta’s, Fracchia’s. There was an Italian barbecue place everywhere.”

They plan to feature shrimp and grits among other shrimp dishes. “Shrimp is in a lot of applications on the menu. Six different times.”

The plan on serving shrimp remoulade crostinis – a little cracker with lettuce tossed with remoulade and then the shrimp with more remoulade. Wills described it as “like one bite of Heaven.”

One shrimp dish – Willie T’s shrimp – is in homage of the late Russell George, who owned Earnestine & Hazel’s. “We’re putting a new twist on it and serving it on pasta.”

The 5 Spot also will serve French press coffee and beignets late into the evening.

“We’ll have a bar menu after 10:30 during the week and after 11:30 on the weekends,” Chittom said. “We’ll keep the bar open.”

They’ll also deliver food in the Downtown area, Chittom said. “Remember our delivery motto: ‘We not only put out, we deliver.’”

Categories
Food & Wine Food & Drink

Armando Gagliano’s path to becoming a chef

CREDIT: Michael Donahue

Porcini mushroom ravioli from Michael Donahue on Vimeo.

Armando Gagliano’s path to becoming a chef

Armando Gagliano’s mother blindfolded him when he was five or six years old, but it wasn’t to play Blind Man’s Seek.

“She would blindfold me and give me different things to eat and taste, and I’d have to tell her what it was,” Gagliano says. “She’d even let me taste wine — just a little sip — and she’d ask, ‘What nuance of the wine do you see? What do you taste?’ She was training my palate. Not on purpose, but because she saw that I took an interest in food and flavors.”

Gagliano loved hanging out in the kitchen. “When my mom would be cooking when we were younger, I would be the only one in the kitchen just staring at her. Like ‘What are you doing? What is that?’ I guess she picked up on my interest.”

The tables have turned — literally. Now when Gagliano is in the kitchen cooking at Libro or Ecco on Overton Park, his mother, Sabine Bachmann, who owns both restaurants, often stands by asking similar questions.

Gagliano, 28, is executive chef of Libro, the restaurant in the new Novel bookstore in Laurelwood, and at Ecco.

Growing up, Gagliano was interested in architecture. He loved drawing, sketching, and painting. When he was 8 years old, he told his mother he wanted to own a restaurant named Silly Wolf’s. He remembers “drawing plans of the building. So, there was a little bit of the artistry, then some of the architecture, then the food, all in one deal. I was like, ‘I want to design my own kitchen and the front of the building, then the menu.'”

His first job was making sandwiches and pasta salad when he was 13 at his mom’s former restaurant, Fratelli’s. “It was long hours, but it was fun.”

Gagliano thought of becoming a nurse practitioner, but before the final day to register, he told his mom, “I’m not going to register for class. I’m going to save that money and go buy a knife set, then go get a job at a restaurant.”

He got a job as a prep cook at Sweet Grass. His idea was to work his way up in different kitchens and one day become a chef de cuisine. But six months later, Bachmann opened Ecco and asked Gagliano if he could run the kitchen. “She said, ‘I’ve always eaten your food and loved it. You just come up with the menu. Do whatever you want back there.'”

Gagliano decided on a Mediterranean menu, but he uses ingredients from all over — Italy, southern Spain, Germany, Israel, North Africa, Asia. “I like the flavors that just punch you in the face. We used to do this steak dish that was marinated in guajillo chiles and soy sauce. So, it was like an American steak with a Mexican and Asian marinade. With French beans. Why omit all the other ingredients and flavors that you can zest up your food with or expand upon by trying to keep it a set cuisine when you can be global? Global cuisine.”

Gagliano spent four months last year in Italy at the Italian Culinary Institute. He came back with “more of an appreciation for how much time and effort people will put into food. In the type of food that I love, which is mainly Italian.”

Two weeks after returning to Memphis, Bachmann was asked by his mom to become the chef at Libro.

Trying to get him to keep the same menu as Ecco, a family friend told Gagliano, “Don’t fix something unless it’s broken.”

“I say, ‘I like to break things purposely so I can fix them in a different way.'”

“My mom says, ‘We’re not trying to do fancy Michelin-style food here, okay? We want to do a nice lunch with some dinner items, homemade bread. We use clean, fresh ingredients. And then, every once in a while, if you want to to a special with your little crazy crap on it, do that.'”

Says Gagliano: “I didn’t want to do any super-eclectic stuff here in East Memphis. We have some typical American items, like a BLT. Chicken salad.”

But he also serves Mediterranean-influenced items, including porcini mushroom ravioli.

And, he says, “We do our own house-made Italian sausage here with baked beans. But it’s not like American-style baked beans. It is and it isn’t. They have some sweetness. We put balsamic vinegar in with the beans and molasses and some honey and brown sugar. So, it’s got a little twist in there with the Italian sausage and the balsamic. Then, also, with my roots in the South, the baked beans.”

Categories
Food & Drink Hungry Memphis

New Central BBQ to open

Central BBQ is slated to open its newest location at 6201 Poplar in late spring 2018.

The new location formerly housed LYFE Kitchen.

This will be the fourth Central BBQ in Memphis.

“I definitely am looking forward to this one opening,” said Craig Blondis, a member of the ownership group. “It’s going to be, basically, the flagship for going forward and our footprint as we had out of the city with Central BBQ.”


Categories
News News Blog

Fire damages Pete and Sam’s restaurant

CREDIT: Michael Donahue

Michael Donahue

Michael Bomarito examines fire damage in the prep area of Pete and Sam’s restaurant.

Michael Donahue

Pete and Sam’s is closed after a fire around midnight Dec. 12.

Michael Donahue

Fire didn’t spread to the dining areas of Pete and Sam’s.

Pete and Sam’s Italian restaurant may be closed for one or two months due to a fire that broke out early Dec. 12.

“Merry Christmas,” said Michael Bomarito, one of the owners, as he stood in the dark, chilly building later that afternoon.

The fire broke out around midnight, but nobody was in the restaurant, he said. They had a slow night, so everybody was gone by 11 p.m., he said.

A worker who was across the street at a gas station noticed the fire and sent Bomarito a four-second video. Bomarito saw the blaze when he arrived.

The fire happened in the prep area around the range hood, Bomarito said, but they’ve had “no confirmation from the fire department.”

It appears to be the same thing that happened in 1998 when a fire left the legendary restaurant at 3886 Park closed for three months, he said.

This time, thought, there was no smoke damage in the dining rooms, which, like the kitchen, appeared normal.

The insurance adjuster hasn’t yet been to the restaurant, so Bomarito doesn’t know how much damage was done and how much it will cost to get the restaurant open.

He anticipates Pete and Sam’s could be closed one or two months.

“The ravioli machine was undamaged, so it will be rolling soon,” Bomarito said.

Categories
We Recommend We Saw You

Carousel is here!

CREDIT: Michael Donahue

Michael Donahue

All aboard the Memphis Grand Carousel.

A total of 1,400 people rode the Memphis Grand Carousel on its opening day Dec. 2. That’s between the time Mayor Jim Strickland and Children’s Museum of Memphis board chair Bridgette Speake cut the ribbon at 10 a.m. and before the museum closed at 5 p.m.

The carousel, which was built in 1909, is one of the oldest wooden carousels in the United States. It was burned, but restored by Dentzel Carousel Co. in the 1920s.

Memphis purchased the carousel in 1923. It was in operation at the Mid-South Fairgrounds and Libertyland until it was dismantled in the 1990s and crated at the Mid-South Coliseum.

Restoration of the carousel, which took more than two years to complete, cost $1 million. The Children’s Museum of Memphis is one of three accredited children’s museums to house an authentic operational Dentzel grand carousel.

All 48 horses were sold for $4,500 each, Speake said. They all have names, but Speake’s goddaughter, Mary Martin Wick, 5, who rode “Pegasus,” came up with her own name for the horse: “Pink Flower.”


………

Michael Donahue

Deck the halls with fa la la la la at the Jingle Bell Ball.

Hundreds of youngsters decked the halls with fa la la la la’s at the Jingle Bell Ball Dec. 2 at The Peabody.

The Jingle Bell Ball is the umbrella name for several parties: the Cookie Party for toddlers through second grade; Rock for third and fourth graders; The Mistletoe Mash for fifth and sixth graders; and the Special Honorees Party for special needs kids.

“It’s the only dress up thing I think kids get to do that I’m aware of,” said Jingle Bell Ball founder/general chair Pat Kerr Tigrett. “And they love dressing up.”

Among those assisting at the parties were jooker Ryan Haskett and dancers Sheron Moore, who portrayed a prince, and Maria Bittick, who was Cinderella.

“We’re already beginning to gear up for the 30th anniversary next year, which is unbelievable,” Tigrett said.

Michael Donahue

Madeline Golson, Parker Ingle, Justin True, Bethany Turner, Kristin Dannemiller at South Main Market.

……..

South Main Market, Memphis’s first food hall concept, held its grand opening Dec. 2.

Daniel Masters, an owner with Justin Dyer of the market in the historic South Main Arts District, described the opening as “more of a soft opening in my area.”

His area is “charcuterie that are locally sourced along with craft cocktails.”

Masters now has his beer license, but, he said, “We should be good to go in a couple of weeks for the sale of spirits.”

As for the soft opening, he said, “I could see where the potential lies in the concept.”

Cole Jeanes, the chef and creative mind behind three new concepts Coco, Kinfolk and Magnolia at South Main Market, ran out of food.

“We were doing chicken biscuits,” he said. “You can get eggs and bacon on them. We opened at 8 and sold out at 11:30.”

That was at Coco and Kinfolk. “So, we closed down and prepped back up. We opened Magnolia and we sold out of that.”

They were serving sui gyoza Japanese dumplings. “We opened at 4 and sold out at 6:30.”

….

Michael Donahue

Joyce Gingold at her David Lusk Gallery opening.

Joyce Gingold held a pop up exhibition featuring her new works Dec. 2 at David Lusk Gallery.

Gingold, who was born in New York City in 1924, was an educator of generations of Memphians. Her new group of patinated bronzes includes birds, horses and rabbits.

Gallery owner David Lusk said: “The beauty of Joyce Gingold’s sculpture is how apparent her fingers and hands are on each piece. She first models clay into an animal shape or female torso using just her hands and fingers. Then that is cast into a bronze work. But even in the bronze the marks and energy from her hands is obvious.”

…..

Michael Donahue

Le Jardin Gourmet to Go one year anniversary party.

Le Jardin Gourmet to Go celebrated its first anniversary Dec. 1.

The business, which owner John Matthews described as “chef-prepared meals ready to heat and eat,”’ is located at 2877 Poplar Avenue.

Guests sipped wine and dined on array of foods prepared by executive chef Alyssa Holliday. Fare included bacon-wrapped dates stuffed with Gorgonzola cheese, spicy deviled eggs, wild mushroom pate on crustinis and tilapia, shrimp and crab casserole.

They serve “upscale” cuisine, which is delivered between Perkins and Downtown, Matthews said. “What sets us apart is the quality,” he said. “We do beef bourguignon, Maryland style crab cakes, veal piccata. Things like that. We try to use local ingredients whenever possible. And we change up the menu twice a week. Small artisinal batches. So, when it’s gone, it’s gone.”

Carousel Ride from Michael Donahue on Vimeo.

Carousel is here!

[slideshow-1]




Categories
We Recommend We Saw You

Jason Motte, Indie Memphis, John T. Prather, Nutcracker

CREDIT: Handout

Michael Donahue

Michael and Katie Hudman, Jason and Caitlin Motte and Karie and Andrew Ticer at The Jason Motte Foundation Cornhole Challenge.


“The Jason Motte Foundation Cornhole Challenge” isn’t your basic sit-down-eat-dinner-listen-to-live-entertainment-party.

This party is where you compete in cornhole – a game in which people throw bean bags into a hole in a raised platform.

Forty teams participated in this year’s event, which was held Nov. 18 at The Columns.

Jason Motte, a free agent who played Major League Baseball with St. Louis Cardinals, Chicago Cubs, Colorado Rockies and Atlanta Braves, and his wife, Caitlin, host the annual event.

They used to do more of a traditional party, but two years ago they decided “to kind of mix up the event a little,” Caitlin said.

Cornhole is “more of a way for people to be truly interactive with the event,” she said. “It allows people to be more a part of things.”

Asked why this event is important to him, Jason said, “When Caitlin’s grandfather was diagnosed with stage one cancer before our wedding in 2010, we said, ‘How can we help those going through the same thing?’”

They were impressed with West Clinic, where Caitlin’s grandfather, the late Lynn Doyle, was being treated. They wanted to do an event “here in memphis to raise money and raise awareness for those going through the same kind of fight.”

They raised around $47,500 this year, Caitlin said.

“This is our sixth year doing an event here in Memphis,” Jason said. “Between our event in Memphis and events we’ve had in St. Louis, Chicago and our T-shirt sales, we’ve raised over $1 million. It’s going back to charity funding research. Helping to find a cure and helping those who are in this fight.”

…………

Michael Donahue

Kentucker Audley and Caroline White at the Official Unofficial Indie Memphis Filmmakers Party.

Chris McCoy and his wife, Laura Jean Hocking, hosted the 13th edition of the Indie Memphis Filmmakers Party. Their front and back yards and inside their home was packed at the party, which capped off the recent Indie Memphis Film Festival.

“It’s a great party,” McCoy said. “It’s always been a great party because we get interesting people from all over the world. We had people from Saudi Arabia this year. Jason Baldwin (from the West Memphis Three), drank his first beer as a free man at that party in 2011.”

Asked the purpose of the party, McCoy said, “When you’re a filmmaker and you go to film festivals, a lot of the time you’re herded around like prize cattle. The purpose of the Filmmakers Party is to allow filmmakers who come to Memphis to have a place to socialize and relax and just talk to each other.

“I’ve always loved that party because I can walk from the front of my house to the back of my house and every conversation I hear is interesting.”

Also making the party more exciting are the awards – Best Hometowner Feature, Audience Award and Poster Contest – Hocking won at this year’s festival for the film, “Good Grief,” which she co-directed with Melissa Sweazy.

……..

Michael Donahue

Debra Powell, Arrington Howard, Volodymyr Tkachenko and Anna Radik at the Moscow Ballet’s Nutcracker.

Forty dance students, most of them from Studio B Dance Inc. danced in the 25th anniversary production of Moscow Ballet’s Great Russian Nutcracker, which was held Nov. 24 at the Cannon Center.

“We have over 250 people in our studio,” said Studio B owner/director/Debra Bradshaw Powell.. “Not everybody does it.”

Someone with the Moscow Ballet visits Memphis for a week to “teach them everything,” Powell said. “The kids pay a nominal fee and that’s for the woman to come in and audition them and rehearse them for a week. And to rent the costume.”

The students get to the Cannon Center at 9 a.m. and get fitted for their costume and take part in photo shoots. The Moscow Ballet dancers arrive around 1 and run through a rehearsal with the local dancers. “Work out kinks. Run through everything on stage.”

When they’re not on stage, the students watch the backstage action as well as the show. “They’re excited to have their turn on stage. They can’t wait to get out there. Not one of them said, ‘I’m nervous.’”

………..

Handout

John T. Prather

“The Nephilim Virus,” a novel by former Memphian John T. Prather, was released Nov. 30.

“It’s a post apocalyptical thriller about a guy who wakes from a coma for three years and realizes this ancient virus has infected two thirds of the world,” he said.

Prather, who describes the novel as “party detective novel, part thriller,” is a graduate of the University of Memphis. He now lives in Los Angeles, but he’s planning a Memphis trip around the holidays to visit his mom, Nadene Prather, and some of his other sibling.

You might have seen Prather on TV or on the movie screen. He’s been in a couple of mini series, including “Project Phoenix,” and a short indie film, “The Glass.”

He’s also been photographed in People, GQ and Men’s Health. “I do fitness modeling pretty regularly,” he said. “I’ve kind of gotten lucky with the model stuff.”

And, he said, he and his wife are expecting twins.

[slideshow-1]

Categories
Art Art Feature

Work by Pam Cobb

Pam Cobb’s husband gave her a table saw for Christmas one year. He gave her a miter saw another year.

“I have this arsenal of tools you would not believe,” Cobb says.

She goes to Home Depot and buys doors and drill bits, but she’s not making home repairs. She’s making art.

Work by Cobb, who is exhibiting her paintings and sculptures at Jay Etkin Gallery, is included in corporate commissions in offices, banks, and lobbies, including the Westin Memphis Beale Street, and in public art projects, including her UrbanArt Commission sculptures at Cordova Library.

A Memphis native, Cobb took art class in grade school. “All they did was give us a piece of manila paper, and we had some crumbly crayons. I mean, that was the extent of the art.”

But she says, “I guess I realized early on that my pictures looked better than other people’s.”

Art was “just something I did with zero training.”

Her father “was a carpenter. Not by trade. But he built a room on the back of our house. He built a carport, patio. And he didn’t have power tools. He cut the joists with a handsaw.”

Cobb helped. “I was handing him bricks when he was laying our patio. And I just figured that’s what you did. You grew up with your father building things. I have always felt extremely comfortable around tools.”

She met her husband when they were in college, where she was more interested in Alpha Gamma than acyclic oil. “I was sort of a proper sorority girl.”

Cobb majored in English, so she could teach school and put her husband through law school.

She began teaching in Fayette County after they were married. She taught art after her principal saw her do a giant frieze of a snow scene on butcher paper for her classroom. Her principal and some teachers also had her do portraits of their children. After school, she would “stay up at night and paint.”

Cobb began learning to paint from the owner of a Germantown art gallery after her husband graduated. She began showing and selling her work — and winning awards — at outdoor festivals around the country. “I was painting the obligatory wagon wheels and rustic things.”

Her work became more semi-abstract after she joined the Germantown Art League, where she remained until she went back to school at Memphis State University and got her master’s degree.

She sculpted and painted at MSU. “Most of it was fairly abstract, and most of it had to do with water.”

Over the years, Cobb taught at MSU, Shelby State Community College, and she founded the art department at Christian Brothers University.

Her first of many Jay Etkin shows was in 1991.

She likes wooden doors. “I liked being able to mutilate the surface and dig into it and carve into it and everything. To this day, I paint on hollow-core doors that I get over at Home Depot. It’s not like a solid wood door. The door is like $25, and you can get more than one painting out of a door.”

She also did huge botanicals — like a painting of a geranium over gold leaf — and giant fruit.

Among the works in her new show are carvings made from 100-year-old wood. Most of the show is about “random vegetation. The carvings are about trees and water. Trees reflecting in the water, but you don’t even really see that.”

The show is “about the bayou. Out in the shallow areas around our little place at Pickwick, there’s all this random vegetation, and it just pops up here and there and I love it.”

Cobb found her mantra on TV. “My kids were watching The Jeffersons one morning in their pajamas in our den. I was walking through the den and George Jefferson said something that has stayed with me most of my life. He said, ‘If you’re not going to leave your mark on the world, why show up in the first place?’ I have lived by that.”

Her legacy? “I want them to know that I want to wring out everything that is in me. I never want to stop.”

“Divisions” is on view through December 11th at Jay Etkin Gallery.

Categories
We Recommend We Saw You

Christmas tree, Crafts and Drafts, U of M, VESTA

CREDIT: Michael Donahue

Michael Donahue

The majestic 60-foot tree was the star of the City of Memphis Christmas tree lighting at Memphis Botanic Garden.

Of course, Santa was standing by for the lighting ceremony of the City of Memphis Christmas tree, which was held Nov. 24th at Memphis Botanic Garden.

This is the first time the City of Memphis tree is housed at the garden.

The tree ceremony kicked off Holiday Wonders at the Garden. The Snowy Nights area as well as two new expansions – Trees Alight and Sculptures Bright – were showcased. Trees Alight is an innovative light show and Sculptures Bright is an illuminated collection of locally created sculpture.

The IKEA Outdoor Lounge also debuted. Visitors can drink hot cocoa or a drink while gazing at the Christmas tree.

Joining Santa for the tree lighting were Mayor Jim Strickland, city councilman Worth Morgan, Memphis Botanic Garden director Michael Allen, the garden’s board president Vance Lewis and emcee Ron Olson.

St. Jude patient Raniya Raheem, 7, did the honors of pulling the lever to turn on the tree lights, which changed colors. Music was synchronized with the lights.

“We were pleased to squeeze about 700 guests into our Conifer Garden to see the City of Memphis Christmas Tree lit for the very first time,” Allen said. “This 60-foot-tall contorted white pine is situated along our Cherry Road fence line. Even on nights when Holiday Wonders at the Garden is not operating, the city tree is visible to drivers passing by.”

Micihael Donahue

Beer and crafts – and 2,500 people – at Memphis Flyer’s Crafts & Drafts.

…….

About 2,500 attended Memphis Flyer’s third annual Crafts & Drafts, held Nov. 10 in the Crosstown Concourse parking lot.

Craft beers were available for shoppers as they visited more than 60 craft booths.

DJ Jordan Rogers provided music to shop – and sip – to.

…….

Michael Donahue

‘This is Memphis’ was held at the historic Clayborn Temple.

“This is Memphis” also could be titled “This is University of Memphis.” Students from the school’s Rudi E. Scheidt School of Music were featured in concert Nov. 5 at the historic Clayborn Temple.

Produced by the U of M student record label, Blue Tom Records, the festival featured Drew Erwin, Curtis Scott, Phillip Bond, Shawn Campbell, Compton McMurray, Haley Daniels and The PRVLG.

“We produce festivals every semester – ‘This is Memphis’ in Fall and ‘Hear 901’ in the spring,” said U of M music professor Ben Yonas. “The purpose is to give students in the Rudi E. Scheidt School of Music the opportunity not only in the performing, but in producing, promoting and marketing. It’s all about giving them real world experience. It’s also an opportunity to showcase talent.

“This was a really special festival for us this year ‘cause we tried something new. We wanted to feature acoustic renditions of songs – all original songs written by Rudi E. Scheidt School of Music students. And also pair them with arrangers and composers that would create the string arrangements. So, each song featured a different collaboration with student composers, singer songwriters and arrangers. And the arrangers were up there conducting the string ensemble.”

Yonas gave a shout out to violinist Hannah Hart. “She put the whole thing together from a logistics standpoint. This wasn’t her idea, but she took it on. It was part of her senior project.”

He was pleased with the show. “I think this will be a new tradition. We’ll do this kind of thing more often.”

Erwin, who performed two songs, said, “Collaborating with the strings for ‘This is Memphis’ was one of the coolest things I’ve done in my entire music career. I could have never written those arrangements.”

As for Clayborn Temple, Erwin said, “It was the perfect environment for the music.”

….

Michael Donahue

Music, food and visits to houses were on tap at the VESTA Home Show industry preview party.

DJ Mark Anderson put together the recordings for the VESTA Home Show industry preview party, which was held Nov. 17.

So, some guests might not be familiar with “Ramona” and other tunes associated with the 1920s. The twenties was the theme of this year’s party, so guests dressed in tuxes or their flapper best.

About 800 attended, said Don Glays, West Tennessee Home Builders executive director. “We had a committee of several people that put the party on. Through their brainstorming they came up with something a little different.”

T

Crafts & Drafts from Michael Donahue on Vimeo.

Christmas tree, Crafts and Drafts, U of M, VESTA (2)

his year’s VESTA Home Show features six state-of-the-art houses in Chapel Cove in Germantown. The 

City of Memphis Christmas tree lighting. from Michael Donahue on Vimeo.

Christmas tree, Crafts and Drafts, U of M, VESTA

show runs through Dec. 10.

[slideshow-1]

Categories
We Recommend We Saw You

Royal Studios’ 60th, Le Bon Appetit, Exceptional Foundation Chili Cook-Off

CREDIT: Michael Donahue

Michael Donahue

Celebrating backstage at ‘Sixty Soulful Years.’

Willie Mitchell’s Royal Studios 60th-anniversary celebration concluded Nov. 18 with “Sixty Soulful Years” at the Orpheum.

Robert Cray, The Masqueraders and Boz Scaggs were among the performers at the event. Following the concert, guests traveled a red carpet to the Halloran Centre for Performing Arts & Education for the after party.

Royal Studios owner/manager Lawrence “Boo” Mitchell was pleased with the event. “Man, it was magical,” he said. “Like a cool thing about it was the artists were all backstage getting a kick out of watching each other’s performances. Boz Scaggs watching SIMO: ‘Man. Amazing.’”

Asked if he was making any plans for Royal’s 100th anniversary, Boo said, “Maybe 75?”

Michael Donahue

Meghan Heimke and Kelly English at Le Bon Appetit kickoff party.

………

Guests are encouraged to show up with good appetites at Le Bon Appetit, which will be held June 9 at Crosstown Concourse. More than 40 chefs, including local and out-of-town chefs, will participate in the event, which benefits Le Bonheur Children’s Hospital.

Among the out-of-town chefs are Jonathon Sawyer of The Greenhouse Tavern in Cleveland, Ohio; Ashley Christensen of Poole’s Diner in Raleigh, North Carolina; John Currence of City Grocery in Oxford; Aaron Sanchez of Johnny Sanchez in New Orleans; and Levon Wallace of Gray & Dudley in Nashville.

Le Bon Appetit will be hosted by Kelly English, chef/owner of Restaurant Iris, Second Line, Iris, Etc.; and Magnolia House, and Le Bonheur’s founding organization, Le Bonheur Club. English and the Le Bonheur Club founded the Le Bon Appetit.

“I think Le Bonheur is easily the best asset we have for this city and insuring the future of our city,” English said. “Insuring the next generation of not just Memphians, but people regionally. It’s an amazing place.

“When I was a kid I spent a long time in a hospital for adults. I fell out of my grandmother’s window and broke pretty much the left side of my body and ended up in traction and a body cast for six months. I had to learn how to walk again. And the hospital I was at was fine, but when you go to Le Bonheur and you see all the little things they do. Not just the big things, but the little things. And not just distracting kids, but letting them know that things aren’t as scary as they would be.

“They’ve got this toy run. Before a kid goes into surgery they go through a toy run. They get to pick something out. And when they get out of surgery, they have it. And that’s just one of the little things they do.”

Le Bon Appetit, which was held in 2012, 2014 and 2016, has raised more than $800,000 for the hospital.

Michael Donahue

Tasting the goods at the Exceptional Foundation of West Tennessee Chili Cook-Off

….

Guests spiced up their lives at the Exceptional Foundation of West Tennessee Sixth annual Chili Cook-Off, which was held Nov. 4 at Overton Square Courtyard.

Money raised at the event “goes to scholarships for low-income individuals with intellectual disabilities,” said director Jo Anne Fusco. “We are ‘A Special Place for Those with Special Needs.’”

The cook-off is “our main fundraiser. Overton Square has been a great a location for us and it has helped to create awareness in the city of who we are.”

Chili Cook-Off Winners were Process and Power, first place; Shane Greer, Smokey Bottom Boys, second place; Jason Abis and Big John, third place. West Cancer Center received the Jon Poulin Spirit Award. And the People’s Choice Winners were Shane Greer, Smokey Bottom Boys, first place; RBG Accounting Firm, second place; and Temple Israel Brotherhood, Adam McColllum, third place.

[slideshow-1]

Categories
Food & Wine Food & Drink

Chef Ryan McCarty on moving on, moving back, and Ronnie Grisanti

Ryan McCarty saved the pocket from the first chef’s jacket he wore when he worked at Ronnie Grisanti’s restaurant.

He was very proud of the jacket.

“It’s a badge of honor, I guess,” says McCarty, 31, executive sous chef at Ronnie Grisanti’s Restaurant in Sheffield Antiques Mall in Collierville. “You work very hard for it. The kitchen is not a place for somebody who just wants to give up easy. It’s ‘grind or get out.'”

Why just the pocket? “I’m sure with all the work and everything, the pocket’s probably the cleanest spot.”

McCarty remembers when Grisanti gave him the jacket and said, “Son, get back to work.”

The jacket was “the first one he gave to me, one given from a chef to another chef. Well, I was still a cook then.”

A native of Orange County, California, McCarty, who grew up in a Mexican-American family, began playing ice hockey when he was 5 years old. “I played all the way through high school.”

When he was 9, his family moved to the Memphis area, where McCarty attended Cordova High School.

When he wasn’t on the rink, McCarty loved to be in the kitchen. “Every holiday, I was making tamales, pozole. It was just all the smells in the kitchen and always helping out. Making the masa. Just making taquitos and empanadas. I just wanted to hang out in the kitchen when I was a kid. I didn’t want to leave.”

McCarty also helped his dad on the grill. “I was grilling the steaks because I could do the perfect medium rare.”

He flirted with the idea of going into sports medicine in college, but he decided it was boring. “I always knew I wanted to cook.”

McCarty began working with a catering company. “I would do prep or whatever. And I was like, ‘Oh, wow. I dig this.’ Then I worked in the kitchen, and I just liked it. I get my knives. I can wear my chef’s coat. I was like, ‘Yes!'”

He got a job as a cook at Grisanti’s restaurant after his buddy, Travis Tungseth, told him Grisanti was looking for some help.

McCarty, who began making pasta and “infusing the rosemary in the meat sauce,” says Grisanti was very patient. “He just wanted to make sure you did it right, and the way he does it. Very patient and great with that, but super stubborn. You mess it up, then it’s going in the trash.”

About two years later, McCarty took a job at the old Chiwawa in Overton Square. “That’s when Midtown started booming. That’s when they started doing all that renewal stuff. Then the opportunities started coming and knocking, and a bunch of buddies started doing the ‘journey to Mecca.’ That’s what I called it.”

Grisanti wasn’t angry when McCarty told him he was leaving. He wanted his chefs to grow and “go to the next thing,” McCarty says.

After two years at Chiwawa, McCarty moved to Salem, Oregon, where he became a catering chef. He stayed two years in Oregon, where the emphasis was on seafood and baking artisan breads.

He moved to Memphis after his dad died. McCarty’s son, Zayden, 6, also lives in Memphis.

McCarty had some restaurant offers, but he went back to work for Ronnie Grisanti. “I didn’t think twice about it because I missed Ronnie and the family and all that. I just came straight here. I didn’t care about pay. I didn’t care about anything. I just wanted to work in a cool kitchen again.”

And, he says, “I’m a ‘son.'”

The first thing Grisanti said to him was, “Come here, son.”

McCarty answered, “Yes, sir, Cap.”

McCarty creates specials at the restaurant. “I love doing soups. Especially being out there at the Pacific Northwest. Chowder soup and all that.”

Grisanti died June 30th. McCarty and the other chefs from Ronnie Grisanti’s Restaurant sat together at his funeral. The chefs and kitchen staff are family — even if some of them have gone on to other restaurants, McCarty says. “It was like a brotherhood back there. I guess that’s why all the guys who worked there — we’re still friends to this day. I still hang out with these guys.”

Porcini Crusted Scallops from Michael Donahue on Vimeo.

Chef Ryan McCarty on moving on, moving back, and Ronnie Grisanti

Ronnie Grisanti’s Restaurant, 684 W. Poplar, 850-0191