Author: Sonia Alexander Hill

The new open-air malls — the Avenue at Carriage Crossing in Collierville and the Southaven Towne Center in Southaven, Mississippi — are not open-air malls. They are, in developer lingo, “Lifestyle Centers.” And, as in life, not everything always goes as planned.

On October 19th, the Avenue at Carriage Crossing opened with 25 specialty shops, but most of the Carriage Crossing’s restaurants were not ready. Some set up lunch trucks or tents and tables to serve patrons during the Carriage Crossing’s opening-week festivities.

Carrabba’s Fine Italian Grill was the first to open on November 7th. Carrab-ba’s is part of the Outback Steakhouse Company’s group of restaurants and serves steaks and specialty pasta dishes. The first Carrabba’s in the area opened in East Memphis in June. For now, the Carriage Crossing Carrabba’s will only serve dinner. Hours will expand to include lunch sometime around Thanksgiving.

Another Outback Company restaurant, Bonefish Grill, is set to open on December 5th. The restaurant, which specializes in fresh-grilled fish, is hosting a charity dinner to benefit St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital on Saturday, December 3rd.

Cheeburger Cheeburger is a ’50s-style, rock-and-roll-themed soda shop with a menu that includes the “Famous Pounder,” a whopping 20-ounce burger. According to general manager Richard Ernst, Cheeburger Cheeburger’s original opening date was the same as the Carriage Crossing’s, October 19th, but due to construction delays is now slated for late November to mid-December.

Chris Sumner, franchisee of the Memphis-area Blue Coast Burrito, was serving burritos through the window of a rented sandwich truck on Carriage Crossing’s opening day. Just across the parking lot, painted sheets of plywood covered the windows of his newest location, which he expects to have open by December 1st.

Sumner says that Blue Coast isn’t really behind schedule; they simply made a commitment to lease the space later than other restaurants. Blue Coast Burrito’s other Memphis location is on Walker across from Tiger Bookstore.

At the Southaven Towne Center, Logan’s Steakhouse is the only restaurant to have opened its doors after the shopping center’s debut on October 9th.

“It’s standard in the retail-development industry for the major thrust to be opening the retail stores first, then the restaurants and peripheral businesses come later,” says Deborah Cary Gibb, marketing director for CBL Properties of Chattanooga, the developer of Southaven Towne Center.

Smokey Bones BBQ and Grill, Red Lobster, and the Olive Garden are scheduled to be in business at the Towne Center before the holidays. The Olive Garden is opening first on November 21st.

Although dates have not been confirmed, Towne Center will also feature a Lone Star Steakhouse and a Fox & Hound English Tavern, which will be its first Mississippi location.

On Sunday, November 13th, from 1 to 4:30 p.m., the Memphis chapter of the American Culinary Federation is hosting the Great Chef’s Tasting Party, a benefit for United Cerebral Palsy of the Mid-South. Just a few of the more than 25 participating venues include Grill 83, Paulette’s, Three Oaks Grill, LoLo’s Table, and Cafe 61.

The event is being held at the Memphis Marriott East, located at 2625 Thousand Oaks Boulevard. Tickets for the Great Chef’s Tasting Party are $25 (children under 6 free) and can be bought at the door or by calling 761-4277.

Capriccio Grill at The Peabody hotel unveiled a new menu in October.

In addition to increasing portion sizes of some of the most popular dishes, Chef de Cuisine Jeffrey Quasha created a few new menu items, such as the Insalata Mista and a dish of sautéed mussels in tomato broth. There are two new pizzas, a Venetian seafood stew, and the Veal Chop Milanese, plus an updated pasta menu with made-to-order lasagna and a Cappellini D’Angelo, seared shrimp served with angel-hair pasta and a light wine-based garlic sauce.

Capriccio Grill, 149 Union (529-4199)

salexanderhill@gmail.com

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For the Sawars, the restaurant business is a family affair. Mom, Dad, and sons are all involved in the Sawars’ four area La Hacienda restaurants, Soprano’s Italian Restaurant in Southaven, and the newest restaurant, Fino Villa, which opened in Collierville on September 23rd.

“What we did in Southaven, we did 10 times better in Collierville,” says Tony Sawar. “Over the year, we looked at the things that worked and everything that didn’t. We embraced all of the flaws and fixed them.”

Beginning October 23rd, Fino Villa will begin serving Sunday brunch that will include complimentary mimosas, a carving station, and an omelet station. Tony also plans to launch monthly cooking demonstrations.

Both Fino Villa and Soprano’s are traditional Italian restaurants with decors that mix modern (black leather and chrome) with Old World (hand-painted murals and canvases). They bring to mind Chicago eateries from the Al Capone era, which is no surprise because the Sawar family worked in the Chicago restaurant business before Tony and his brother Dino were born.

“My dad attended two presidents [Ford and Carter] in their private suites while he was the maitre d’ at the Hyatt in Chicago,” Tony says.

Since moving to the area, the family has opened seven restaurants in as many years. Mother Maria Guzman Sawar applies her Mexican heritage to making the La Hacienda restaurants a success, while the brothers focus on upscale dining at the Italian restaurants. When planning Fino Villa, Tony and Dino wanted to design a bar area where guests could relax after a meal and enjoy a cigar with a fine cognac, such as the Remy Martin Louis XIII (at $225 an ounce). The bar selection also includes fine wines and aged ports and whiskey.

“Anyone who has a discriminating palate will find something that suits them,” Tony says. “That also applies to our food. We try to be innovative in our high-quality cuisine. I wouldn’t want to serve anything that I wouldn’t eat, so we buy the best meats and bake our own bread from scratch every morning.”

Fino Villa’s general manager is Michele D’Oto, a native of Modena, Italy, and an experienced restaurateur. He evacuated from the Gulf Coast before Hurricane Katrina to stay with his brother-in-law in Collierville.

“I was the chef/owner of Pasta Italia [in D’Iberville, Mississippi, outside of Biloxi] until about four weeks ago, when the hurricane destroyed everything — the restaurant, our home, everything,” D’Oto says.

D’Oto got the job at Fino Villa the first time he visited the restaurant. “I was at the Baskin-Robbins getting ice cream when I saw Fino Villa, and I just walked right in.”

Fino Villa, 875 W. Poplar Avenue in Collierville (861-2626), is open 11 a.m. to 10 p.m. on weekdays, until 11 p.m. Friday and Saturday, and from 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. on Sunday.

Café de France will participate in the “Miracles Begin with Awareness” Show House, a home tour to benefit the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation, being held on Friday and Saturday, October 7th and 8th, at 1219 Cherbourg in the Normandy Park area.

The restaurant will offer lunch from 11:30 a.m. to 2 p.m. in a tented pavilion next to the house. Memphis singer Di Anne Price will perform.

Admission to the house is $15 per person, and 100 percent of the proceeds will go to the charity. A portion of the luncheon sales also will be donated.

For information, call 901-226-CURE.

Some may remember Helario Reyna — aka “Greek Harry” — from the Kwik-Chek on Madison, where he was well-known for his falafel and muffalettas as well as more imaginative sandwiches, such as the “Pecos Bill,” a club sandwich with habanero sauce and guacamole. Before Kwik-Chek, Reyna had a Greek deli in Overton Square called the Athena Café.

Two years ago, Reyna purchased Elliott’s, the downtown restaurant that has been around for 25 years and is known chiefly for its hamburgers. Reyna decided to stick with what works, keeping Elliott’s menu pretty much the same. (He also intended to preserve Elliott’s appearance, but many of the caricatures that once adorned the walls were damaged when the basement, where Reyna was storing the drawings, was flooded.)

“I wanted to keep the lunch the way it is, because that’s what people expect when they come here,” Reyna says. “And I didn’t want to go back to doing what I was doing. There’s just not enough time to make sandwiches like I used to because we have about 200 people through here every day at lunch, and they expect us to be fast. I mean, we’re faster than McDonald’s.”

But for someone who expressed his creativity through something as mundane as the Kwik-Chek deli counter, the menu was limiting. So a few months ago, Reyna expanded the restaurant’s hours to serve breakfast.

No ordinary breakfast, however, would suit Reyna, who says, “I’ve always been known for making weird things.” While he serves all the regular breakfast sandwiches for on-the-go professionals, for those looking for a heartier meal, Reyna’s also crafted some unusual items with unusual names.

For instance, there’s the “Manic Eggsessive,” a breakfast burrito with scrambled eggs, steak fritters, dirty rice, chedder cheese, and sausage gravy. The “Down N Out” is an omelet with chedder cheese, onions, fried potatoes, steak fritters, and sausage gravy. Either of these can be served in the “AI-1” (all-in-one) bowls, which are edible and shaped from a potato souffle.

“My creativity is in food,” Reyna says. “I never went to school to learn to cook. It’s just something you learn to do to make your life better. For others, it might be writing or pottery — there are various forms of art and art is everything. Everything you create, everything around you is a form of art. A ketchup packet or a simple glass you hold in your hand somebody had to create, so it’s art. Sometimes people lose sight of that.”

Each item on the menu speaks to Reyna’s personality and aspects of his life. He used to serve a frittata called “DrAma” that featured a blend of cheeses and fresh vegetables with rosemary. “I named it DrAma because there’s drama everywhere in life,” he says. Another frittata, “Green Acres Is the Place to Be” — spinach, mushrooms, dillweed, onions, and feta cheese — referred to his desire to return home to New Mexico. (Reyna’s frittatas are written of in the past tense because he no longer serves them. Not enough of his customers were familiar with frittatas. For the same reason, the “breakfast rice” he once served is now called “dirty rice.”)

What keeps Reyna in Memphis is his devotion to his 11-year-old daughter, Alex, who lives with her mother. Alex was the “Baby” of Reyna’s “Baby Bonsai” sandwich that he made when he was still at Kwik-Chek.

“She’s very important to me,” he says. “I try to get her involved over here and teach her things. She helps me with the menu boards and little things. I try to teach her about responsibility.”

Reyna is presently experimenting with a new breakfast pizza that he expects will take the place of the frittatas. The crust is a flattened biscuit smothered with sausage gravy instead of tomato sauce. One variety will have eggs, sausage, and provolone and cheddar cheese. Another will feature bacon, eggs, onion, bell pepper, hash browns, and cheddar and provolone cheese.

“It’s stifling to do the same thing day after day, but it’s hard to make too many changes,” Reyna says. “There’s hardly any parking downtown, so most of my customers work in offices down here, and they’ve come to expect certain things from Elliott’s. Breakfast is my way of changing things up.”

Esfandiar Mirghahari, or S.C. as he is called, has opened Caspian, the first Persian restaurant in Memphis. Caspian offers foods from Mirghahari’s birthplace of Iran, which was the center of power for the Persian Empire dating back to the sixth century B.C. At 31, he’s too young to remember his country before it became officially known as the Islamic Republic of Iran in 1979, but Mirghahari still identifies with his Persian ancestors. This restaurant is a symbol of that heritage.

When his family moved to Memphis in 1991, the Persian community was small. But now, according to Mirghahari, there are about 2,500 people of Iranian descent living in Memphis. The idea for Caspian came to him when he was attending a gathering of Persian men with his father.

“We were talking about how there’s no place to get Persian food here,” he says. “It’s difficult to prepare Persian food at home, so most people would have to drive to Atlanta or St. Louis to go to a Persian restaurant.”

Mirghahari modeled Caspian after restaurants he had known growing up in California and New Jersey. He traveled home to Iran in April to bring back items to transform the space, a former printing shop on Brookhaven Circle. He bought crystal chandeliers to compliment the elegant dining room, and he decorated the walls with photos and prints from Iran.

“I got the name from a friend who owns a restaurant in California named Caspian,” he says. “I wanted something unique and even planned to name it Persepolis [after the ancient city which is featured on the cover of the menu]. But my friend suggested Caspian because anything else would be hard to pronounce.”

The menu features stews and skewered cuts of chicken and filets. Many items are served with basmati rice, which is prepared using cilantro, mint, dill, and other herbs. Though all of the items are traditional Persian dishes, Mirghahari did have to make some substitutions.

“With the exception of the lamb shank, I use beef instead of lamb,” he says. “In my country, they use lamb because beef is very hard to find. And here lamb is hard to come by, and a lot of people don’t like the taste because it’s so different.”

Persian food features ingredients from the ancient empire that once spread from Greece to Pakistan. It incorporates a number of fresh ingredients and herbs such as grape leaves, pomegranates, mint, basil, and saffron.

“It’s difficult to describe Persian food to someone who hasn’t tried it before,” Mirghahari says. “You have to try it to understand.”

The restaurant’s hours are 11 a.m. to 10 p.m. Sunday through Thursday and until 11 p.m. Friday and Saturday.

Caspian, 715 Brookhaven Circle (767-3134)

Bluefin will host a Spanish-wine dinner at 7 p.m. Thursday, September 29th. The six-course menu will feature tomato gazpacho with lobster avocado salsa, Spanish-inspired sushi, chorizo, ancho coffee-dusted beef tenderloin, and stuffed pork chops. The dishes will be paired with Spanish wines. The cost is $60 per person. Call 528-1010 for reservations.

Bluefin, 135 S. Main

Folk’s Folly Prime Steakhouse will host a dinner featuring the wines of Peju Province Winery, located in Napa Valley on Monday, October 3rd. Peju’s sales manager, Gary Vierra, will be on-hand to discuss the wines.

The dinner, prepared by Chef Javier Lopez, will include barbecue shrimp, rosemary biscuits, a mixed-green salad with fruit and sweet peppers served with a rosemary vinaigrette, a Tuscan-style Kansas City strip, roasted-garlic potato casserole, and a warm lemon rice custard. A Peju wine will accompany each dish.

Cost for the dinner is $75, and seating will be limited to 50. For reservations, call 762-8200.

Folk’s Folly, 551 S. Mendenhall

salexanderhill@aol.com

Lori and Kenneth Whittington aren’t thinking about the past, only the present and their presence on the Memphis restaurant scene. The couple, who were part-owners of Buntyn Cafe on Park Avenue, have opened Whittington’s Café in Bartlett.

“We’re proud of the fact that we had the Buntyn,” says Lori. “It was a part of our lives, but we do things differently. We’re trying to make a name for ourselves. We want to be known for Whittington’s. We want people to say, ‘They have great food, great service, and they make you feel at home,’ not ‘They used to own Buntyn’s.'”

Although the Whittingtons are making a fresh start, Buntyn’s customers may recognize the same down-home cooking, staff, photos, and even the coffee counter from the old restaurant, which closed in February after losing its lease.

“Some people come in and see we have the same cooks, the same waitresses, but there are people from out here [in Bartlett] who’ve never heard of Buntyn,” Lori says. “With them, we’ll start a new legacy, but Buntyn will always be a part of us. Kenneth and I met there. Our children grew up there.”

Kenneth was the manager of Buntyn Cafe when Lori began working there in 1999. Lori knew the owner at the time, Mike Wiggins, who baptized her at the Fairview Baptist Church in Indianola, Mississippi, when she was 13 years old.

Buntyn Cafe was originally opened in 1927 on Southern Avenue by the Tull family. Then Wiggins’ parents, Betty and Milton, purchased the restaurant and ran it for many years. Kenneth joined the family when his sister Debbie married Mike Wiggins.

In 1999, Buntyn Cafe was forced to move from its location on Southern after the Memphis Country Club purchased the property. But the restaurant never regained its steady clientele after it relocated to Park Avenue, and the owners faced higher overhead costs. During the same period, three more Buntyn locations — in Collierville, Cordova, and Millington — opened and closed.

For the Whittingtons, the Park Avenue location was the beginning of their lives together. They married in 2001 and now have three children: Lanie, 5; Whitt, 4; and Braxton, 11 months.

“We’re not looking just 10 years down the road. We’re hoping to be here a long time,” Lori says. “Maybe one of our children will have a passion for the restaurant like we do. You have to have a passion for the restaurant business to succeed.”

Initially, the Whittingtons weren’t sure they even wanted to continue in the restaurant business after the Buntyn Cafe on Park Avenue closed, even though they had been looking at a location in the Chiles Shopping Center at Appling and Stage roads. The space had been home to Anna’s Steak House and later Dauphine’s. When Dauphine’s closed, the Whittingtons took it as a sign to jump back into business.

The couple opened Whittington’s Cafe in May. The restaurant seats about 100 people and has warm, green and red booths and an open, inviting atmosphere. The menu still reflects a home-style approach, which is easy with Whittington’s dedicated staff.

“Erma Daniels makes the pies. Diane Evans and Joe Jackson are awesome cooks, and Joe still makes the dressing,” Lori says. “A lot of people recognize [waitress] Barbara Grisham — she was with Buntyn for almost 30 years. We wouldn’t be alive if it weren’t for them. They know how to make dressing; I don’t.”

Turkey and dressing still appears on the lunch menu Tuesday and Friday as it did at the Buntyn Cafe, though that restaurant’s famous yeast rolls do not. The Whittingtons, however, are putting more emphasis on fresh ingredients.

“We hand-patty our hamburger steaks, hamburgers, and cheeseburgers,” she says. “That’s one of the things that we wanted to be different,” Lori says. “We use real mashed potatoes and fresh vegetables.”

Lori recounts an exchange she had with one of the original owners of Buntyn, Mildred Tull: “[I told her], ‘We make our mashed potatoes from scratch now just like you used to,’ and Miss Mildred said, ‘Honey, our mashed potatoes were never real.'”

So many restaurants throughout the community are stepping up to offer support for victims of Hurricane Katrina that it is impossible to recognize them all. Some are offering free or discounted meals to evacuees or donating food to church and civic organizations. Other restaurants are offering employment to colleagues from New Orleans.

Restaurants that want to continue support can sign up for Dine for America, a nationwide event slated for October 5th to benefit the American Red Cross Disaster Relief Fund. The National Restaurant Association held a similar event after 9/11 and raised $22 million. Participating restaurants will donate a percentage of sales from that day to the relief fund and accept monetary donations from customers. Bol a Pasta owner Frank Grisanti, who is also a board member of the NRA, was the first in Memphis to sign up his restaurant for the event. In addition, Bol a Pasta customers are being offered free soft drinks if they donate $1 to the Red Cross.

Visit DineforAmerica.org.

The Southern Foodways Alliance is asking the restaurant community nationwide to promote fund-raising events and to help displaced restaurant employees find work. The organization, a nonprofit alliance of chefs, authors, and educators dedicated to preserving and cultivating the food cultures of the South, has partnered with the Council of Independent Restaurants and the James Beard Foundation to build a job bank for displaced restaurant workers.

Approximately 40 people from the Southern Foodways Alliance are asking each Beard Foundation member restaurant to offer at least one job to displaced workers. Job offers must also include temporary housing along with relocation funds.

Visit SouthernFoodways.com.

One week, three festivals: On Saturday, September 17th, Greekfest will be held from 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. at St. George Greek Orthodox Church, located at 6984 Highway 70 in Bartlett. Traditional Greek meals, served until 7 p.m., will be $12 per plate for adults and $6 for children 10 and younger. The 44th annual event also features live music, dancing, and a sanctuary tour.

For more information, call 388-5910.

The 18th annual Cooper-Young Festival kicks off Thursday, September 15th, and culminates Saturday, September 17th, with music performances and more than 300 food and merchandise vendors.

Visit CooperYoungFestival.com or call 276-7222.

And in Collierville, more than 20 area restaurants will participate in the 13th Annual Partners in Preservation Party & Taste of the Town on Collierville’s Town Square from 7 to 10 p.m. Tickets are $40 per person or $375 for a table of 10 and are available at the Main Street Collierville office located at 125 N. Rowlett Street in the Historic Train Depot.

Contact Main Street Collierville at 853-1666 or visit www.collierville.com/mainstreet.

In other food news, Brontë Bistro, the restaurant located inside Davis-Kidd Booksellers, 387 Perkins Extended, will host “Girls’ Night Out with Chanel” on Tuesday, September 20th. In addition to wine, appetizers, and desserts, guest will be able to preview Chanel’s new fragrance, Allure Sensuelle, compliments of Macy’s. The cost is $30 per person.

Call 683-9801.

Whitman Cellars and the Madison Hotel will team up to host a wine dinner Wednesday, September 21st at 7 p.m. at Grill 83 in the hotel, which is located at 79 Madison Avenue. The five-course, prix fixe menu will be paired with an array of Walla Walla Valley wines. The cost is $80 per person plus tax and gratuities.

Call 333-1354 for reservations.

In 1998, Memphis native Ben Smith and his wife, Colleen, opened Tsunami, specializing in Asian cuisine from the Pacific Rim. The dishes were a hit, and the restaurant is consistently packed. Now, Smith has written his first cookbook, Tsunami Restaurant Cookbook: A Wave of Flavors Inspired by the Pacific Rim, which features many of the most popular dishes from Tsunami’s menu as well as Smith’s insight into Asian ingredients and cooking techniques.

The book is scheduled to be released September 15th by Pelican Publishing Company and will be available for purchase at the restaurant, area bookstores, and through Amazon.com. A preview party and book signing is being held at Tsunami, located in Cooper-Young, Sunday, September 11th, from 4 to 6 p.m.

“The cookbook is a greatest-hits collection,” Smith says. “Our menu changes often, and it includes the items that have had the greatest success.”

Much of the inspiration for the restaurant and the book came from Smith’s experience traveling and cooking in the South Pacific region. Although Smith was educated in traditional French cooking methods at the Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, New York, he was attracted to Asian cuisine.

“I left the CIA with a growing interest in Asian food, and I went out and experienced it more and gained a lot of respect for the Asian style of cooking, ingredients, and health aspects,” Smith says.

Following graduation, he moved to San Francisco, where he worked for about three years for Jeremiah Tower at Stars restaurant. In 1989, he embarked on a self-guided tour of the South Pacific, working and living in Australia, New Zealand, and other islands in the region. He returned to the United States to work with a friend in Hawaii.

In the early ’90s, Smith returned home to Memphis, with the idea to open a restaurant and eventually write a cookbook. A few years ago, a friend asked if he’d like to co-write a book. Although Smith declined, it wasn’t long before he was writing his own.

“It was important to establish credibility and name recognition for the restaurant first,” Smith says. “Once I took the leap to open my own restaurant, it was an opportunity to create the environment I wanted to be in and cook the food I like to cook. Rather than create a restaurant that appealed to Memphians, I took a chance and created something that appealed to me. Luckily, Memphians took to it and have been supporting it for seven years.”

Tsunami, 928 South Cooper (274-2556)

The Dixon is celebrating its 10th annual Art on Tap beer-tasting Friday, September 9th, from 6 to 9 p.m. Boscos Squared has created a special Hefeweizen beer for this year’s fund-raiser.

Art on Tap will also feature a variety of domestic and import beers, including batches created by the Bluff City Brewers and Connoisseurs. Central BBQ, Holiday Deli and Ham, and Blue Coast Burrito will provide food. Venus Mission will be performing on the lawn of the museum. The festival is the largest beer tasting in Memphis. Last year’s event drew 1,000 people and tickets sold out. Advance tickets for Art on Tap (purchased by 5 p.m. Thursday, September 8th) are $15 for Dixon members and $20 for nonmembers. All gate tickets are $25.

The Dixon is also gearing up to reopen the Terrace Café, which is an opportunity to enjoy lunch while enjoying the view of the museum’s 17-acre grounds and gardens. September 27th through 30th and October 4th through 7th, lunch will be served inside the European-style Hughes Pavilion. The meal, prepared by Just Catering, will be accompanied by a table-side fashion show from Laurelwood Shopping Center. Cost is $20 per person and includes admission to the exhibit “Mary McFadden: High Priestess of High Fashion.” To reserve a seat, call Juliana Bjorklund at 761-5250, ext. 121.

The Vegan Sisters, a nonprofit group that provides education and support for people interested in living a vegan lifestyle, has created a festival exclusively for the herbivores in the community. The Vegan & Raw Food Serve will be held 11:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Saturday, September 10th, at the Cultural Connection, 2288 Dunn Ave. Lion’s Bread International will serve vegan and raw meals and play roots-reggae and dance-hall music. For more information, call 744-7313.

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This Labor Day weekend, the Center for Southern Folklore will host its annual signature event, the Memphis Music & Heritage Festival. Five stages will be set up along Main Street, from Gayoso to Peabody Place Avenue. Musical performances will be held in the center’s main hall in Peabody Place, while the stage at the Peabody Place trolley stop will be the site of storytelling and spoken-word performances. Artisans will also be on hand to demonstrate traditional Southern crafts, such as quilt-making.

The focus of the Center for Southern Folklore is to preserve and present the history of Southern culture, but center director Judy Peiser recognizes the impact of global influences on the South, especially when it comes to cuisine.

“Food is that part of the culture that’s retained when everything else is lost. It evolves as new influences are presented,” Peiser says. “We don’t want to hit people over the head that Memphis is changing, but by presenting different foods or dance and music at the festival, we’re able to describe the expanding culture of Memphis by showing people parts of the community that they may not see every day.”

The center will team up with Viking, an event sponsor, to offer two days of free cooking demonstrations in the culinary school’s kitchen. Ella Kizzie, a chef at the center’s café, will prepare traditional Southern dishes, such as greens, hot-water cornbread, and peach cobbler. Another center employee, graphic designer Chang Zhi Yu, will give a tofu-cooking demonstration. Members of the Choctaw tribe will make fried bread, employees from Café Samovar will present Russian cuisine, and there will be traditional Puerto Rican dishes as well as Jewish challah bread. Each of the programs will last about two hours and samples of the foods will be available.

Viking will also host two classes on the art of grilling with “The Great American Cookout.” A portion of the $79 course fee will be donated to the Tragedy Assistance Program for Survivors (TAPS), which helps support families that have been affected by the death of family members serving in the armed forces. For more information on this or other courses, call 578-5822.

The Center for Southern Folklore is located at 119 S. Main St. The festival will run from 11 a.m. to 11 p.m. Saturday and Sunday, September 3rd and 4th. While the event is free, festival-goers are encouraged to donate to the center. For more information on the festival and cooking demonstrations, call 525-3655 or visit their Web site, SouthernFolklore.com.

While you’re downtown, you can also check out the new Healthy Lifestyle Bistro, located at 45 S. Main.

Janet “J.P.” Austin opened the market and restaurant last month because she wanted to share the value of holistic living through food, herbs, and oils, something she’s practiced for more than 15 years.

“We fill a niche that was missing from downtown,” Austin says. “Most of our healthy places to eat and shop are in Midtown, but we have a growing health-conscience community downtown.”

Customers can browse Healthy Living’s selection of herbal remedies and organic products or sit at one of the colorful tables and enjoy organic coffee or eat breakfast or lunch.

Austin is also a singer and her husband, James, tours with Sonny Turner’s Platters — currently one of several versions of the 1950s band that sang “The Great Pretender.” When James is not on tour, he’s in the kitchen at Healthy Lifestyle, along with his son Patrick and daughter Kym, preparing sandwiches, wraps, and salads.

“They have their own secret recipes, and they don’t even share them with me,” says Austin.

Austin is planning to offer live music and hopes to remodel the upstairs space to create a balcony. In addition to more seating, Healthy Lifestyle could also become a venue for yoga or Pilates classes on Saturday mornings.

Healthy Lifestyle Bistro is open Monday through Friday 8 to 10 a.m. for breakfast and 11 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. for lunch. On Saturdays, the hours are 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.