Cafe Keough is celebrating its 10th birthday.
And some people still pronounce it “Cafe Cough,” says owner Kevin Keough.
“The ‘g-h’ on the end screws everybody up,” says Keough, 55.
But over the past decade, the breakfast-and-lunch Downtown cafe, which actually is pronounced “KEE-oh,” has been a haven for Downtowners wanting a pick-me-up cappuccino or boozy coffee drink, an in-house baked cookie, or French onion soup.
Keough didn’t set out to open a cafe and then find a location. “I kind of find a spot and wonder what would be a good fit in the area.”
He already appreciated good food. A native of Collierville, Tennessee, Keough says, “Growing up on a small farm gives you a work ethic for sure. And you would eat food that was pretty damn fresh.”
Eating at a fast food restaurant back then was a “treat,” but fast food tasted “wrong” to him.
Keough was a short order cook at the old Lou’s Place on Front Street before going to work for Karen Carrier when she owned Automatic Slim’s. “She hired me as bar manager. And then I went from bar manager to general manager. We became partners and owners of the Beauty Shop Restaurant.”
But Keough was ready for another project. “I always kind of wanted to do a cafe concept. And I wanted to get away from the white tablecloth concept.”
He wanted “a worker-style cafe as opposed to a white tablecloth higher-end space.”
His friend, Henry Grosvenor, who owns the building, showed him the space at 12 South Main Street. “It was a shell. Nothing in there.”
Keough did some of the renovation work for the cafe, which has a 23-foot ceiling and 16-by-4-foot windows. “I painted the whole place. I laid these tiles.”
He knew the type of eating-drinking establishment he wanted to open. “I wanted to do a French cafe, but sometimes when people do French-style restaurants, they make it a little too French. Almost like the concept of what they think it is.”
That would be “lots of brass and tufted brasseries and those kinds of things.”
Keough wanted a “quieter version” of that. “I wanted to balance it out with something that actually made it look like it came from Memphis or the South.”
Customers tell him Cafe Keough feels like a lot of places, ranging from New Orleans to Argentina. “I’ve had tourists come in and say, ‘Oh, this is very similar to something you would see in Vienna or different parts of Europe.’”
And that’s fine with Keough. “It has the feel of an Old World cafe without being an Old World cafe.”
Keough, who didn’t have a lot of money to buy high-end antiques, over time bought things, like the large art nouveau lady statue on the bar, that gave the right feel to the cafe.
The restroom doors came from an old Methodist church in Memphis. The chairs were in the old Spaghetti Warehouse. And he bought the converted gas chandeliers from a former antiques dealer who lived in the building.
The slotted wood banquette benches, which he had made, resemble benches he’d seen in a cafe as well as in Memphis trolleys.
Keough began serving paninis after buying a massive used panini press from the old Deliberate Literate bookstore. He also did crêpes at first. “It was supposed to be like New Orleans food. I wanted to get away from that fried food. Greasy. I wanted to do something a little bit more healthy and not so heavy.”
In 2019, Keough opened Bar Keough at 247 South Cooper. He wants the bar to look like the 1912 building it’s housed in, but with modern elements. It has a turn-of-the-century tin pressed ceiling. “But I’ve got a Formica bar.”
It wasn’t difficult to come up with the name Bar Keough. But Cafe Keough was another matter. Keough considered other names, including Commerce Cafe and Main Street Cafe, but those names were already taken.
Cafe Keough was perfect. “It’s a hard name to pronounce, so it makes you have to question if you’re saying it right. And you have to remember it. Sort of.”
