Author: Simone Wilson

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Food & Wine Food & Drink

Dishing the Delta

When we last checked in with Jimmy Gentry a year and a half ago, the former chef de cuisine at Erling Jensen was using his classical French training and his taste for Asian cuisine to inject a bit of ethnic creativity into the dishes at Grand Casino’s LB’s Steakhouse. During Gentry’s tenure, LB’s received an award of excellence from Distinguished Restaurants of North America and Wine Spectator.

Now it appears that with his new gig at Horseshoe Casino’s Magnolia — A Delta Grille, Gentry’s cooking has gone South.

The newly opened Magnolia serves Southern comfort food that’s a step up from down-home but not entirely upscale. You can start off dinner with a grown-up version of Southern sweet tea, made with peach-flavored vodka and sweet iced tea, before you move on to “Chicken Livers Three Ways” (blackened, fried, and sautéed), buttermilk fried frog legs in a butter sauce, or “Arkansas Mushroom and Chicken Gumbo.”

Among the entrées are the usual suspects — bass, strip steak, Gulf red snapper, filet of beef, and rack of lamb — as well as some unusual ones, such as fried chicken and waffles (buttermilk fried chicken with toasted waffles and warm maple syrup) and ham hocks that are braised and served with white beans and sweet cornbread.

Southern favorites dominate the dessert menu — lemon ice box pie, sweet potato pie, white chocolate bread pudding — but surely you won’t be able to resist ordering the “Chocolate Pepsi Cola Cake,” a chocolate cake made with layers of peanut-butter mousse and served with Jack Daniel’s ice cream.

Magnolia — A Delta Grille, Horseshoe Casino (1-800-303-7463)

If you’re interested in Southern food, you shouldn’t wait to register for this year’s Southern Foodways Symposium at the University of Mississippi in Oxford, October 25th through 28th.

This year’s symposium is its 10th anniversary, and it looks like it’s going to be one hell of a party. California cuisine guru Alice Waters is flying in for the event. Other participants include the Kitchen Sisters (Davia Nelson and Nikki Silva) and chef Frank Stitt.

This year’s symposium will examine the state of Southern food, both the present and the future. On Friday and Saturday, cooks, chefs, food writers, scholars, and curious eaters will ponder the diverse food cultures of the South, focusing on topics such as the “Creolization of Southern Foodways”; “20th Century Farm Policy”; and “Class and Consumption.”

Also part of the symposium is its annual sidetrip, the Delta Divertissement, on October 24th. This overnight trip to Greenwood, Mississippi, will take in all things porcine.

Led by Southern Foodways Alliance oral historian and “Delta champion” Amy Evans (along with Pluto Plantation native Martha Foose), the group will “break down” a pig with the help of sausage man Bruce Aidells, learn to stuff boudin and fry gratons with chef Donald Link, and gather for a breakfast of artisanal bacon and creamy grits.

Naturally, you will not go hungry during the symposium. On the menu this year during the event’s various lunches, brunches, and snacktimes: whole-hog barbecue doused with vinegar sauce, pig ears in mustard sauce, tacos pollo frito, refried black-eyed peas, and boiled-peanut cotton candy.

For more information about the Southern Foodways Symposium and the Delta Divertissement or to register, visit

www.southernfoodways.com.

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Food & Wine Food & Drink

Screen Time

CREDIT: Photo Courtesy of the Pink Palace

You know the scenario: You feel like ordering in, but your options are limited because you’re not sure which places offer take-out, and even if you did, you don’t have the menu and wouldn’t know what to order. This is where ordertogomenus.com comes in.

Jason Denison, a self-taught Webmaster, got tired of the standard to-go pizza and Asian fare and created ordertogomenus.com, which features menus from Memphis-area restaurants that offer take-out. So far, the site includes menus from more than 80 restaurants, grouped by cuisine, including American (Huey’s, Half Shell, O’Charley’s), Mexican (El Mezcal, On the Border, Abuelo’s), and Italian (Macaroni Grill, Memphis Pizza Café).

“I do most of my work from home, and I work a lot, which means I have little time and order out quite a bit,” Denison explains. He started with about 75 menus from restaurants around town. That was the easy part. He then had to type up every single menu to fit into the site’s format. Although some restaurants have caught on to the free service Denison provides, he still gathers a lot of the menus himself as he slowly expands the site.

“I spend many, many hours on this, but I felt that Memphis needed a service like this,” Denison says. “I would like to see it spread to other cities so that locals as well as people from out of town could use it.”

Although Denison is currently not making any profit from the site, he feels strongly about continuing to offer it as a free service to both restaurateurs and customers.

“I don’t plan to ever charge for the service, but I do hope that it’ll eventually grow and possibly attract more advertisers,” Denison says.

www.ordertogomenus.com

For his second season of Feasting on Asphalt, Food Network personality, cinematographer, and chef Alton Brown took a motorcycle trip along the Mississippi River from Venice, Louisiana, to Lake Itasca State Park, Minnesota. After riding along the Tamale Trail, Brown and his crew stopped in Memphis to sample the local fare.

Feasting on Asphalt explores the history of road food and follows Brown and crew as they sample food at various stops, talk to local foodies, and often sleep under the stars.

For this season’s third episode, “Soul Food Survivor,” the team visited the Pink Palace Museum and Mansion, Jim Neely’s Interstate BBQ, Wiles-Smith Drugs, and Melanie’s Soul Food. The show also includes Doe’s Eat Place and Joe’s White Front Café, both in Greenville, Mississippi.

The show will air on the Food Network on Saturday, August 18th, at 8 p.m.

Davis-Kidd Booksellers is now selling whole-bean coffee from local coffee roaster Julie Ray of Café Francisco. The two available varieties, Mixed Breed/Regular Bite and CattichinoMix/Decattinated Coffee, cost $10 for the three-quarter-pound bag. Fifty percent of the proceeds from coffee sales will benefit the Animal Protection Association’s low-cost spay and neuter clinic. The coffee can be found in the bookstore’s Memphis section, which is located near the magazine racks. For more information, call 683-9801.

Davis-Kidd Booksellers, 387 Perkins Ext.

River Oaks Restaurant might soon be the favorite spot for Memphis’ cheese lovers. The restaurant now offers cheese tastings every Tuesday from 5 to 6:30 p.m. The restaurant currently carries 48 different cheeses. Although the cheese menu is offered daily and priced at $12 (four cheeses), $17 (six cheeses), and $24 (nine cheeses), the Tuesday-night event is a bargain at $12 per person.

River Oaks Restaurant, 5871 Poplar (683-9305)

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Food & Wine Food & Drink

Open for Business

CREDIT: Justin Fox Burks

If you haven’t heard of Newk’s Express Café, you will soon. Newk’s is a fast-casual restaurant franchise that originated in Oxford, Mississippi, in 2003. Two years ago, it was one of Franchise Times magazine’s “20 to watch.” Today, there are a total of nine Newk’s in Mississippi, Alabama, Tennessee (three in the Memphis area), and Texas, with eight more scheduled to open this year.

Newk’s founders, Don Newcomb, Debra Bryson, and Chris Newcomb are no newcomers to the restaurant business. The team started McAlister’s Deli in a converted gas station in Oxford almost 20 years ago and sold the concept in 1999, knowing that they would come back with something different when the time was right. Don Newcomb was in no hurry when he started McAlister’s and took his time with Newk’s too.

“I was in dentistry for 34 years,” Newcomb says, “but we always had a passion for the restaurant industry and knew that that’s what we eventually wanted to do.”

This time around it didn’t take 34 years of carefully watching the market, tracking winners and losers, and waiting for the right moment to enter the business. Newcomb and his partners took a four-year hiatus after selling McAlister’s before starting all over again with Newk’s, a nickname for Newcomb.

The restaurant woos customers with fresh ingredients in a stylish atmosphere that includes an open kitchen. The menu is simple and offers gourmet salads (“Newk’s Favorite” comes with mixed greens, grilled chicken breast, gorgonzola-style cheese, pecans, dried cranberries, grapes, artichoke hearts, pecans, and croutons); California-style pizzas (veggie, spicy chicken, five-cheese, and Greek are a few of the choices); oven-baked sandwiches (grilled steak, smoked ham, chicken salad, and Italian are options); and homemade cakes for dessert.

Newk’s Café, 3075 East Goodman in Southaven (662-536-4307); 3680 South Houston Levee in Collierville (861-1245); Cordova location on Germantown Parkway opening soon.

www.newkscafe.com

For those of you who dread the trip to the grocery store, or most any store for that matter, Halle and Derek Whitlock now offer a solution: The Shopping Bag, a locally owned and operated shopping and delivery service.

Living in East Memphis during the week and their downtown condominium on weekends, the Whitlocks soon discovered that buying groceries was an unwelcome task.

“We have two young children, so I know how hard a simple trip to the grocery can be,” Halle explains. Inspired by shopping and delivery services in other cities, the couple felt it was time for something similar in Memphis.

“Groceries are what people need on a regular basis, but that’s not all we do,” Derek says. “We are a shopping service, and we also get office supplies, housewares, electronics, prescriptions, and even gifts.”

Shopping Bag delivers to downtown, Midtown, and select areas of East Memphis. Customers place their order online or via phone or fax 24 hours before expected delivery time. Shopping Bag charges 15 percent of the total cost of the goods delivered, with a $20 minimum charge.

To simplify the process, sample grocery lists and special-request instructions are included on the company’s Web site. Among the stores Shopping Bag uses are Wild Oats and Fresh Market. They’re also planning to add prepared meals and menu ideas to their services soon.

The Shopping Bag (484-4054)

www.memphisshoppingbag.com

After 30 years in business, Memphis’ bastion of French cuisine, La Tourelle, has closed its doors. It was no easy decision for owners Glenn and Martha Hayes, who had their hearts invested in the upscale neighborhood restaurant.

But not all is lost. The Hayeses, who also own Café 1912, have decided to shift the culinary focus of La Tourelle. In its place is Tuscany, an Italian restaurant with a traditional menu of antipasti, primo (a first course, which often consists of pasta), secondo (second course), fromaggio and frutta (cheese and fruit), and dolce (dessert). The atmosphere at Tuscany will be relaxed and casual, similar to Café 1912, with a “one price fits all,” mostly Italian wine list.

Tuscany, 2146 Monroe (726-5771)

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Food & Wine Food & Drink

A Fresh Attitude

CREDIT: Justin Fox Burks

Stephen Hassinger, chef de cuisine at the Inn at Hunt Phelan, was strolling around the downtown Memphis Farmers Market with his wife Kathleen Hall, when they began to crave something that would make the heat more bearable. Inspired by the fresh produce, they decided to make homemade ice cream to sell at the market. Thus was born De La Creme.

“It all started on the Fourth of July, with a White Mountain Ice Cream Freezer, a bunch of rock salt, ice, and lots of hot coffee because my wife and I were standing in the restaurant’s freezer, making ice cream for our first weekend at the market,” Hassinger remembers. But the couple soon discovered that the old-fashioned ice-cream maker wasn’t up to the task.

“This thing was a wooden bucket with an engine of a half horse power that’s moving the scraper blade,” Hassinger says. “After wearing out three of those, we moved on to a better ice-cream maker, which looks more like a front-loading washing machine.”

With the kinks worked out and with the help of their two kids, who are responsible for taste-testing and quality control, production is now running full-force. Best-sellers include honey vanilla, mint chocolate chip, and pecan praline. A couple of weeks ago, the couple offered its first sorbets: blueberry, blackberry, ginger/peach, and lemongrass/wild blackberry. Most of the ice-cream and sorbet flavors are based on what’s available at the Farmers Market.

“We typically buy what looks good to us that day, eat some of it, and make ice cream from the rest,” Hassinger says.

The ice cream costs $4 to $5 for a 12-ounce container. However, biodegradable packaging is an important concern. Hassinger and his wife will soon be using a smaller, eco-friendly container. When available, they try to use organic ingredients, inclucing whole milk from Rock Springs Dairy in Wildersville, Tennessee, about 100 miles east of Memphis.

“Of course, the ingredients we use have a big impact on how our ice cream tastes,” Hassinger says. “But another reason why homemade ice cream tastes so much better than even the premium ice cream at the store is because it’s made a few days before it’s sold. It doesn’t have to be shipped halfway across the country, and it’s kept at a constant temperature, which affects taste and consistency.”

De La Creme ice cream is available at the Memphis Farmers Market.

Two of Hassinger’s co-workers from Hunt Phelan are also selling their wares at the Farmers Market. Pastry chef Sherri McKelvie and sous chef Russell Casey have recently teamed up to create La Cucina, which sells European-style breads and freshly made mozzarella. McKelvie, who once ran her own wholesale bakery, La Morinda, finally gave in to the market’s plea for artisan bread.

“I don’t think I would ever want to have my own full-blown bakery again, even though I still love baking bread,” McKelvie says. “This is really the best of both worlds. I can bake some bread once a week, and I can meet the people who buy it.”

At the market, McKelvie sells a honey whole-wheat loaf with sunflowers, rosemary olive oil and jalapeno cheddar breads, baguettes, and tomato Parmesan focaccias. The breads cost from $3 to $5 each. Casey’s mozzarella sells for $5 for five to six ounces.

La Cucina products are available at the Memphis Farmers Market.

On August 7th, several downtown restaurants will be participating in the “Moveable Feast,” which will feature produce from area farmers. For this progressive dinner, chefs from Felicia Suzanne’s, Grill 83, McEwen’s on Monroe, and

Stella will prepare dishes using four main ingredients: Bonnie Blue Farm’s goat cheese, Mississippi striped bass, local suckling pig, and Delta pecans. Wines will be provided by Grateful Palate Imports.

Cost for the dinner is $95 per person, all-inclusive. Dinner begins at 7 p.m., with a seating for 40 at each restaurant. Reservations are required.

A Moveable Feast, August 7th, 7 p.m. For reservations, call Felicia Suzanne’s at 523-0877.

The Memphis Farmers Market, located at the Central Station Pavillion at Front Street and G.E. Patterson, will be open every Saturday from 7 a.m. to 1 p.m. through October 27th.

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Food & Wine Food & Drink

Lounging Around

Although Karen Carrier once said she has no interest in adding another restaurant to the four she currently owns (Automatic Slim’s, Cielo, the Beauty Shop, DŌ), that doesn’t mean she’s going to sit back and relax. It’s just not her style. So Carrier recently set out to reinvent Cielo, her fine-dining restaurant in downtown’s Victorian Village.

“I’m not fine-dining,” Carrier says. “I’m casual. I’m funky. I want my restaurants to reflect that. I don’t want this place to be a special-occasion place. I want it to be a place where people can hang out, listen to live music, have a couple of drinks, and order a few small items from the menu without busting their wallets.”

In true Carrier fashion, Cielo has been turned upside-down and inside-out, stripped, painted, and wallpapered to re-emerge as the Molly Fontaine Lounge, scheduled to open in about two weeks.

Molly Fontaine Lounge

“I’ve been going to estate sales for seven months. I have looked at books of European lounges from all eras over and over again, and I have this picture in my head of social clubs in New York City years ago,” Carrier says, describing the concept for the lounge.

“To me, making this home into a lounge is like taking it back,” Carrier says. She’s referring to the mood set a few decades back by a previous owner, a notorious ladies’ man, and his friends. “It was a big party house with a different woman on every floor,” she says.

The building that houses the soon-to-be lounge was built in 1886 as a wedding present for Molly Woodruff Fontaine and is one of the few homes of its type in Victorian Village that didn’t get torn down during the 1960s. Carrier’s late husband Bob bought the house in 1985.

Initially, the house was both home to the couple and an outlet for Carrier’s newly established catering business, Another Roadside Attraction. A few years later, with a $35,000 loan from her dad, Carrier renovated the home’s carriage house and moved her catering business there. Eventually, the couple started to look for a place that was better suited for a growing family. In fact, Carrier even tried to sell the main house.

“I knew I wanted to keep Roadside where it was, but nobody wanted to buy just the main house, so I decided to turn it into a restaurant,” Carrier says. She started the rezoning process in 1994 and opened Cielo two years later.

More than 10 years have passed since opening day, and Carrier says it is time for a change.

“We are still going to be very accessible for everybody,” she explains. “We can still accommodate private parties, because we can mold the space according to the event. One of my guys from the Beauty Shop custom-made the bars and put them on casters so they can be rearranged or moved out of the way if needed.”

The Molly Fontaine Lounge will offer a Mediterranean and Middle Eastern-influenced small-plate menu and a happy hour with cool cocktails, as well as live music.

Molly Fontaine Lounge, 679 Adams

(524-1886)

Encore chef/owner Jose Gutierrez will be offering Saturday cooking classes. The summer cooking series starts on July 14th with a class on crepes, followed by a class on brunch, Bloody Marys, and champagne cocktails on July 21st. On July 28th, students will forage for fresh produce at the Memphis Farmers Market to prepare a summer meal.

Classes are held on Saturdays at Encore from 11:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. except for the Farmers Market class, which will meet at the market at 11 a.m. Classes are $50 per person plus tax, and registration is required.

Encore, 150 Peabody Place (528-1415)

Summer cooking classes are also available at Mantia’s in East Memphis. This Saturday, July 7th, learn the differences between pure olive oil and extra virgin olive oil by participating in a blind tasting. On Thursday, July 12th, Marisa Baggett, former sushi chef at DŌ will share the secrets of making classic sushi rolls in your home kitchen. A “Picnic in Provence” is the theme on Thursday, July 19th, and a Spanish garden dinner is on the menu for Monday, July 30th.

The olive-oil tasting, which is $15, begins at 3:30 p.m. All other classes are at 6 p.m. and cost $35 per person.

Mantia’s, 4856 Poplar (762-8560)

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Food & Wine Food & Drink

On the Move

CREDIT: Justin Fox Burks

Café de France, inside Palladio Antiques & Art, will close on Saturday, June 30th. Jeanell and Donnie Morris, the café’s owners, have recently decided to revive the French Bakery, their wholesale operation, which has been dormant for a year.

“It took us a while to decide what we ultimately wanted to do with the French Bakery,” Jeanell Morris says.

One of the problems the couple faced at the French Bakery was the repair of some of their expensive baking equipment.

“Our big French mixer, which holds more than 200 quarts of dough, had broken, and it seemed impossible to find someone locally who could fix it,” Jeanell says. “If you have to fly in a specialist from France every time something breaks, you’ll run out of money very quickly.”

Because the Morrises’ business was almost exclusively wholesale, except for the items they baked for their own café, using an 80-quart mixer that can only hold a 50-pound bag of flour wasn’t an option. Quitting was never really an option, either.

“My heart is in this,” Jeanell says. “And we have a lot of customers who kept asking if we would ever open a retail bakery. Memphis needs a bakery.”

So, even though Café de France is closing, the Morrises have plans to open a retail bakery in East Memphis. The couple hopes to find enough investors to open Café de France Bistro and Bakery in the former Honeysuckle Health Foods space on Mendenhall near Poplar in October.

When the Morrises first took over what’s now the French Bakery in 1998, they had no clue what they were getting themselves into. Neither of them had any experience baking or working in a bakery. But fate put the bakery in their hands.

Guy’s Bakery was owned by Guy Pacaud, a Frenchman who had moved to Memphis in the 1970s and worked at La Baguette before opening his own bakery and later, La Patisserie, a restaurant in the space that is now occupied by Jarrett’s. Jeanell and Donnie were close friends with Pacaud, who died in a car accident in 1998 while delivering bread. In his will, Pacaud wanted Donnie to take over the bakery and buy his wife Libby out.

“This was really hard for my husband because he felt that the bakery killed Guy,” Jeanell explains. Nevertheless, the couple dug in. Donnie went on to learn the ropes of bread baking from master baker Didier Rosada at the American Institute for Bakers, and everything seemed to fall in place. “Donnie always felt like Guy’s spirit was around to help us make this work,” Jeanell says.

The couple focused on the wholesale business until four years ago, when the opportunity for the new venture at Palladio became available. At Café de France, the Morrises served lunch and the occasional dinner when the antique store received shipments from France. The menu was simple: a cheese plate, smoked chicken, tuna, shrimp, and pasta salads, salade Lyonnaise, and an extensive sandwich list that included baked brie, marinated eggplant, and corned beef brisket.

The lunch menu at the new Café de France on Mendenhall will be similar, and they’ll also serve breakfast. Plus, customers will be able to pick up freshly baked croissants in the retail space at 7 a.m.

Red Robin Gourmet Burgers has opened its first location at the Avenue Carriage Crossing in Collierville, with a second location on Germantown Parkway coming soon. A total of five locations in the Memphis area are planned for the Colorado-based burger chain.

Started in the 1940s as Sam’s Tavern in Seattle, Washington, the restaurant then became Sam’s Red Robin before finally transforming from a tavern into the first Red Robin restaurant in 1969. Now the company has 350 restaurants throughout the United States as well as Canada.

Red Robin serves every sort of burger: chicken, “Bleu Ribbon,” guacamole/bacon, sautéed “‘Schroom,” “Honky Tonk BBQ Pork,” etc. — all accompanied by its signature “bottomless” steak fries.Red Robin, 4641 Merchants Park Circle (854-7645)

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News News Feature

Full Steam Ahead

Half-asleep, standing in line at the Starbucks near Poplar Plaza first thing in the morning, you may need a second to register the guy behind the espresso machine. But just a second. The dark, chaotic hair, the outlandish glasses, the arms flailing like he’s waving down an airplane. Good morning! You’ve just met Geoffrey Wood, Starbucks barista of 10 years, former Graceland tour guide, high school English and drama teacher, Shakespearean actor, poetry translator, and, most recently, author.

Wood’ novel Leaper: The Misadventures of a Not-Necessarily-Super Hero hits bookstores on June 19th. It’s the story of a recently divorced, lifelong barista named James, who suddenly discovers that he can leap through space and time. The hero’s life crosses into Wood’s reality occasionally but more as an insight into the soul of the fictional over-caffeinated barista who isn’t sure if he’s tripping on too much espresso or if God is playing a trick on him. In the end, Leaper is about James’ attempt to understand faith.

When Wood isn’t dreaming up stories about the average joe-slinger gone wild — he wrote Leaper in a furious four weeks — he works the morning shift at the Poplar and Prescott Starbucks. His caffeine and energy level make up for what his customers lack before they get their “fix.”

“It’s a little like working as a bartender — only we get people who are a different kind of cranky,” Wood says. “If everything goes well, they are in and out in two minutes or less.”

Wood ought to know, having worked in coffee shops for almost 20 years. It started with a college job at the Coffee Beanery in the Mall of Memphis in the early 1990s and then a stint at Lambert’s Coffee in Germantown.

What Wood was dealing with was nothing fancy — mostly good, brewed coffee. Wood truly lost his coffee virginity with an espresso in a cafe on the Champs-Elysées. In Paris with a theater group from the University of Memphis, Wood followed his teacher into a café and ordered what she ordered. “It was an espresso that changed my life,” he says. When Wood returned from France, he knew what a real espresso was supposed to taste like and that there was no returning to coffee as he had known it.

His Starbucks career began when he and his wife moved to Chicago in 1997. With a degree in theater from the University of Memphis and a short time at Northwestern University, he felt that theater for him was in Chicago. Working in a coffee shop would allow him enough time for both the city and the stage.

Wood started at a Starbucks in Evanston that served a load of commuter-train passengers every 10 minutes. “Learning how to be fast — you have to be fast to survive there,” Wood says of the time. “It’s Chicago. Those guys don’t cut you any slack.”

Because Chicago was a few degrees too cold for his wife, the couple moved to Albuquerque. Wood continued at Starbucks and got an M.A. in theater directing and medieval studies from the University of New Mexico. He also befriended a Methodist minister who shared his ideas for a coffeehouse ministry and rekindled his passion for liturgical theater.

Raised Southern Baptist, Wood is on the verge of converting to Catholicism — a step he spared his superhero James, who is a devout but rebellious Catholic. It seems like the character’s only hope for salvation is Father Chavez. When James needs to talk to someone about his strange superpower, he attempts to confide in Chavez. The problem is how to explain it.

In real life, Wood’s marriage didn’t last, and he followed the minister’s family to Texas, working at Starbucks, recuperating from the divorce, and writing. While it’s not the first book he’s written, Leaper is the first one published.

When Wood returned to Memphis last summer, Starbucks put him at one of its busiest stores, knowing that after 10 years on the espresso machine he was fast. Wood, for his part, can’t stand not to be busy. “My mind is going constantly unless we’re really busy. Then I don’t have time to think. The perfect job,” he says.

Wood talks 100 miles a minute, often about more than one subject. He might not know your name, but he has your drink ready before you barely enter the store. When he works the bar, paper cups and plastic lids are stacked to the ceiling and enough milk and coffee are at the ready so that Wood can “pull shots” even if disaster strikes and, as his colleagues like to joke, “the bar floats out onto Poplar.”

The regular customers, he’s got trained: Place order here, pick up drink there, have money out to pay cashier. And he’s been known to take liberties with his clientele — a spontaneous nickname for a customer, for example, or making a regular’s drink before checking if that is indeed the intended order. Wood is aware of the thin line he is walking and every so often throws up his hands in a “I’m just the coffee boy” gesture and retreats behind the espresso machine.

In Leaper, James gets fired from his coffee-shop job for this sort of behavior, but that seems unlikely for Wood. By this point, he’s got something of a following, with the customers engaged, amused, startled, and sometimes shocked. To take that away from the caffeine-craving crowd could cause a riot.

Geoffrey Wood will read from and sign Leaper at Bookstar in Poplar Plaza on Tuesday, June 19th, at 7 p.m. and at Davis-Kidd Booksellers on Thursday, July 12th, at 6 p.m.

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Food & Wine Food & Drink

On the Go

ForbesTraveler.com has named The Peabody one of the 15 top foodie hotels in the nation. The Peabody shares the honor with New York City’s Four Seasons Hotel, home to L’Atelier de Joël Robuchon; Washington, D.C.’s Latham Hotel, which houses Citronelle; and Wynn Las Vegas, which has 11 restaurants, including Daniel Boulud Brasserie.

The expert panel included Washington Post food critic Phyllis Richman, James Beard Foundation vice president Mitchell Davis, and eGullet founder Steven A. Shaw. And while they expected to find great restaurants in great hotels in sought-after travel destinations, they were surprised to find the same in unexpected places such as Memphis and Laguna Beach, California.

If you want to see for yourself whether the Forbes poll was right, you’ll have plenty of opportunity in June. Chez Philippe will host a “Taste of Greece” dinner on Thursday, June 21st. The five-course menu will feature upscale twists on traditional and well-known Greek dishes such as mousaka, eggplant casserole, and baklava. Price for the dinner, which begins at 6 p.m., is $65 per person plus tax and gratuity. For reservations, call 529-4199.

On Friday, June 22nd, Capriccio Grill will host a Trinchero wine dinner, which will feature six courses that are paired with wines from Trinchero Family Estates. Price for the dinner and tasting, which begins at 6 p.m., is $85 per person plus tax and gratuity. For reservations, call 529-4199.

The Peabody, 149 Union (529-4000)

Mark your calendar for Bravo Caliente, a wine-tasting fund-raiser for the Greater Memphis Arts Council’s Bravo Memphis program, which is designed to introduce a younger crowd to Memphis arts.

The event, scheduled for Thursday, June 21st, from 6 to 8 p.m. on the Pembroke Square rooftop, will feature wines from south of the border. There will also be Latin music and dance as well as food from downtown restaurants.

Tickets for Bravo Caliente are $25 per person or $40 per couple.

www.memphisartscouncil.org

If you want to splurge on a really good bottle of Scotch — the aged-50-years kind of “really good” — head to Busters Liquors and Wines and be ready to spend roughly the cost of a small, used car. A bottle of Balvenie Cask 191 is the only Scotch whisky of its kind in Memphis and one of very few available in the U.S. But it will set you back $7,500. If you want good Scotch but can’t come up with that kind of cash, try the 10- to 30-year-old Balvenie selections available at Busters. They’ll run you about $41 to $500.

Busters Liquors and Wines, 191 S. Highland (458-0929)

Erling Jensen has hired a new chef de cuisine to replace his protégé Justin Young, who has left to take a job as executive chef for Kraft Foods. It’s “one of those 9-to-5 jobs where you make a million dollars a year,” Jensen says. According to Young, he made the move to be able to spend more time with his family.

In Young’s place is Karen Noriega. Noriega worked for Jensen at his current restaurant as well as at the short-lived but fondly remembered EJ’s Brasserie before heading to Koto, Jensen’s joint venture with Jimmy Ishii, which was replaced by Bari. Jensen says that Noriega will certainly put her mark on some of the dishes and that he typically gives his chefs a fairly free hand — one free hand, anyway.

Check out Noriega’s style at the restaurant’s Friday-night dinner series, offering five wines and four courses for $75 plus tax and gratuity.

Erling Jensen, 1044 S. Yates (763-3700)

River Oaks Restaurant has added a chef’s table to its kitchen to give guests the opportunity to dine in close proximity to executive chef Ben Vaughn. Seating at the chef’s table is available Tuesday through Saturday with the option of a six-course tasting menu or a grand menu with 12 courses. Wine pairings are available upon request. Seating is limited and reservations are required.

River Oaks Restaurant, 5871 Poplar (683-9305)

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Food & Wine Food & Drink

Open and Shut Cases

CREDIT: Justin Fox Burks

Pearl’s Oyster House opened about a month ago at 299 S. Main in a space that used to be a tattoo shop.

The idea was to import a bit of coastal Florida to Memphis, according to Pearl’s owner Ray Porter. “A lot of people who live in Memphis frequently travel to the Destin beaches and are familiar with the popular seafood restaurants there,” Porter says. “With Pearl’s, I wanted to bring some of that atmosphere to Memphis.”

On South Main, the coastal atmosphere translates into a laid-back restaurant that offers two bars, a patio in the back, a room for private events, live music on Friday and Saturday nights, and Cajun-influenced fare. However, Porter wants to make sure people don’t mistake his oyster house for a Cajun restaurant. “We don’t want to be a Cajun restaurant,” he says. “But a lot of the dishes from the Florida Panhandle are Cajun-influenced, and we want to re-create that experience in our food.”

Kelly Miller (most recently of PF Chang’s China Bistro) and Steve Hornecker (formerly of Owen Brennan’s) are in charge of Pearl’s kitchen and produce straightforward, popular seafood dishes. Appetizers include boiled Gulf shrimp, Louisiana crab cakes, shrimp and grits, crab claws and crawfish tails. Oysters are prepared eight ways (from raw to Rockefeller) and range in price from $4.95 to $9.50 for a half-dozen. Also on the menu are Louisiana seafood gumbo, shrimp and crawfish étouffée, five different po-boy sandwiches, and seafood entrées featuring trout, salmon, catfish, lobster, and more.

Pearl’s opens at 11 a.m. Monday through Saturday. It is closed on Sundays.

Pearl’s Oyster House, 299 S. Main (522-9070)

Marena’s Gerani on Overton Park Avenue is open for business.

Rumors about the closing of the neighborhood restaurant have been circulating since the beginning of the year, but Mortez Gerani, Marena’s owner, says the restaurant will stay open at least until the end of the year. “Yes, I have heard that people say our restaurant is closed and that’s not very good for business,” Gerani says. “Marena’s is open.”

In early 2000, Gerani took over the restaurant from Rena and Jack Franklin who had operated the eatery for 10 years, serving Mediterranean-influenced cuisine. Gerani maintained that focus and is planning to open another restaurant in East Memphis on Brookhaven Circle (next to the Windjammer Restaurant and Lounge) before the year is over. Gerani isn’t sure what’s going to happen with Marena’s after the new place opens.

The East Memphis restaurant will feature a downstairs bar and casual dining area called Marciano, which will offer small plates of northern Italian and Mediterranean food. An upstairs fine-dining spot called Gerani Restaurant will offer the same fare.

Marena’s Gerani serves dinner Tuesday through Saturday from 5:45 to 9:30 p.m.

Marena’s Gerani, 1545 Overton Park Avenue (278-9774)

Gary Garland’s restaurant Garland’s on Brookhaven Circle closed in early May and is now up for grabs: real estate, equipment, pots and pans — the whole shebang for $500,000.

Garland, whose primary business is real estate, has always been drawn to the downtown area but was coaxed to East Memphis by the late Indian/French chef Raji Jallepalli, who was opening a new restaurant in Midtown. “When Raji offered us her place out east five-and-a-half years ago, we felt it was a great opportunity, and it was,” Garland says. “But now that I’m involved as managing partner at Spindini on South Main, I have the best of both worlds: a great restaurant downtown.”

Garland doesn’t foresee moving Garland’s downtown. Garland’s executive chef Michael Grogan is now the pastry chef at Erling Jensen.

It appears that Interim in East Memphis won’t be as short-lived as owner Fred Carl originally suggested when the restaurant rose out of the former Wally Joe earlier this year. Carl’s intentions have shifted from wanting to sell the restaurant to finding partners for the business.

In fact, Interim, together with Erling Jensen, Lucchesi’s, Busters, and several corporate sponsors, will be part of the “Taste of East,” Blue Streak’s third annual wine tasting and silent auction benefiting the Jubilee Schools of Memphis. Blue Streak is a local nonprofit organization that raises money to send inner-city kids to Catholic schools.

“Taste of East” is Friday, June 9th, at 6 p.m. at Regions Bank (6200 Poplar). Tickets are $50. For more information and to order tickets visit www.bssf.net or call 326-0691.

Brooks Museum members have spoken, and they want more time. Starting June 7th, the museum and the Brushmark will offer extended hours on Thursdays. The restaurant as well as the museum will then be open until 8 p.m. every Thursday.

“We’re really just going with the flow,” says Brushmark’s executive chef Wally Joe. “I don’t think the Brushmark has ever offered dinner [beyond special events], so we’re testing the water.” Because of the rather unusual schedule, Joe plans to have a new menu every week to reflect seasonal foods.

The Brushmark 1934 Poplar (544-6225)

Categories
Food & Wine Food & Drink

That’s Italian

If you’re in the mood for Italian, head to Marquette Park for this weekend’s Memphis Italian Festival. Now in its 18th year, the event is a meatball and gravy (that’s “sauce” to you and me) extravaganza celebrating those of Italian-American heritage.

The festival, a fund-raiser for Holy Rosary Catholic Church, will offer plenty of Italian-inspired foods and activities, but what everybody really wants to know is who makes the best spaghetti gravy in Memphis. The gravy judging is on Saturday at 1 p.m. There will also be olive-oil tastings, a grape-stomping contest, a wine race, and chef demos. New this year is “Luigi’s Little Italy,” which will offer fine dining prepared by Rick Savoiri of Ciao Bella and Jason Sartain of Macaroni Grill. Seating is limited, and reservations can be made at the wine garden.

The festival runs from Thursday, May 31st, through Saturday, June 2nd, and will kick off with a mass said in Italian and led by Father William Parham at 5:30 p.m. on Thursday. Gates open at 11 a.m. Friday and Saturday. Admission is $10; children 12 years and under are free, and admission is free on Friday from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m.

www.memphisitalianfestival.com

For his latest venture, High Point Pizza, Spencer Hays of Movie & Pizza Company in Harbor Town has created a simple Italian getaway in the tiny building that once housed Geeker’s Coffee.

While the pizza offers big taste, High Point Pizza’s interior is quite modest. The ovens and kitchen take up half of the space; the other half is filled with five tables that sport red-and-white checkerboard tablecloths. When the weather is nice, the restaurant’s outdoor seating becomes a hot commodity. Be prepared to invite strangers to sit at your table when space gets limited. It’s okay — just pretend that that’s how they do it in Italy.

The menu is simple: four salads (side, Greek, Italian, chicken), four sandwiches on a white hoagie (ham and cheese, Italian sausage, Italian, meatball), and five pizzas (Margherita, barbecue pork or chicken, Cajun chicken, four-meat, veggie) as well as a “build your own pie” option. Pizza-by-the-slice is available during lunch, and the restaurant offers beer, tea, and sodas. Guests are welcome to bring their own wine.

Patrick Neely, Paula Deen, and Gina Neely

Although barely open a month, the place is packed, particularly at night, and the staff will warn you that it takes at least 30 minutes for your order to be ready. You won’t regret the wait, especially if you have leftovers to enjoy for lunch the next day.

High Point Pizza, at 477 High Point Terrace, is open Tuesday through Sunday, 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. (452-3339)

If you want to re-create Grisanti’s Miss Mary’s salad at home, head to your local grocery store for a bottle of the family’s signature salad dressing. The Italian dressing, named after Frank Grisanti’s grandmother Mary, hit the stores earlier this year. The dressing joins the Grisanti marinara and Italian meat sauces in Kroger stores in West Tennessee, Arkansas, Mississippi, Kentucky, and the Missouri Bootheel, as well as in local Schnucks and Super-Lo stores. Also in the works are two new sauces: Alfredo and Fra Diablo.

www.frankgrisanti.com

Although the Memphis In May World Championship Barbecue Cooking Contest is over, the heat is still on for the Neelys of Neely’s Bar-B-Que.

The local barbecue family was invited to be part of Paula Deen’s Paula’s Party. The Neelys will show off their favorite barbecue recipes in an episode called “Fried vs. BBQ,” which will air on the Food Network on June 1st at 8 p.m. This showdown stems from Deen’s remark that you have to pick a side — fried or barbecued — when it comes to Southern cooking.

For the show, Deen’s sons Jamie and Bobby were joined by Patrick Neely, who was recently voted restaurateur of the year by the Memphis Restaurant Association, his wife Gina, his two brothers Anthony and Mark, and Neely’s mom, Lorine.

The Neely/Deen friendship began when Jamie and Bobby featured Neely’s Bar-B-Que on Road Tasted last summer.

When Paula came to Memphis for her appearance at the Mid-South Fair last September, she didn’t leave town without paying a visit to Neely’s. The two families had a great time when they filmed the show in Savannah, and Paula enjoyed tasting Neely’s barbecue spaghetti and pork ribs.

Neely’s Bar-B-Que: 670 Jefferson (521-9798); 5700 Mt. Moriah (795-4177); 2292 Metro Center, Nashville (615-251-8895)