Category: Food Reviews

Justin Fox Burks

When Memphis loosened its legal restrictions on food trucks and began dispensing more licenses a few years ago, Hector Vazquez and partner Rafael Moreno immediately began saving money. Both men are cooks at the Slider Inn and natives of San Miguel el Alto, a town of 40,000 in the hills of Jalisco, Mexico. Eight months of planning and saving later, the pair opened El Alteño in early April.

Much like those from the North are referred to as Yankees, those from the highlands of Jalisco are called alteños.

The region is known for its tacos al pastor and carnitas, or fried pork used for quesadillas, tacos, and tortas. For pastor, instead of dicing the pork and cooking it on a flat stove, they marinate it, often with pineapple, and cook it slowly on a rotisserie called a “trompo,” then shave off pieces of meat, similar to gyros.

Justin Fox Burks

The two cook the carnitas in a large copper kettle and use only salt and pepper, a preparation that gives the meat a more natural flavor. They sometimes use Coca-Cola as a glaze.

El Alteño is open seven days a week, with Vazquez operating it on the corner of East Raines and Getwell Monday through Saturday from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. Moreno cooks Friday through Sunday, 7 p.m. to midnight, at other locations.

Tacos are $2, tortas are $6, and burritos and quesadillas are $7 and are huge, Vazquez says, illustrating a giant gut-buster with his hands.

Justin Fox Burks

Hector Vazquez

Everything comes with chicken, pastor, carnitas, steak, or “lengua” (tongue). The truck also offers a cubana torta (ham, pastor, and chorizo).

The pair source all the meat from local farmers markets and hope to open a taquería by the same name at some point.

“Check it out. Try it. You will like it,” Vazquez says.

@H_Vazquez1111 on Twitter

Twenty-seven years ago, Lisa Paul, a lifelong Memphis resident, and Keith Paul, an immigrant from Trinidad, eloped to New York.

“He let me taste my first chicken roti,” Lisa says of the popular Caribbean dish. “I knew when I bit into that, we’ve got to make this. This is something I’ve got to bring to Memphis one day.”

In December, the husband and wife launched Paul’s Cariflavor, a food truck featuring authentic cuisine from Keith’s childhood.

Roti, an Indian flatbread typically filled with curry, is to Trinidad what jerk chicken is to Jamaica. The curry goat roti ($8) is a big hit.

“I didn’t think a lot of people here would eat curry goat, but that turned out to be our number-one seller,” Keith says. “The day we go out to sell and we don’t have goat, it’s like we’re committing a big sin. And, fortunately, we are able to get good goat in Memphis.”

Cariflavor also offers teas ($3) as well as fried plantains ($2).

They plan to launch a second truck by the fall. Cariflavor often serves lunch at Court Square and Overton Park during the week and at Shelby Farms on Saturdays.

Lisa does most of the cooking, as Keith works for the City of Memphis, but gender roles in the kitchen are often reversed in Trinidad.

“We go down by the river on the weekend, and we cook,” Keith says. “You stay by the river, swim, and have cookouts. The men do a lot of cooking because we do a lot of hanging out. And, of course, men always figure theirs is better than the next.”

cariflavor.com, @paulscariflavor on Twitter

Miss Cordelia’s in Harbor Town has established itself as a sort of testing ground for locally made goods, offering retail space and even a commercial kitchen to a number of start-up food businesses. At their annual holiday open house from 6 to 8 p.m. on Thursday, November 8th, patrons will have a chance to sample around 20 local products. We have our eye on two: Made From Scratch Cookie Company and Sweet Magnolia Ice Cream Company.

Made From Scratch is the work of local baker Armelia Young, who started the business three years ago, but she’s been baking for 12. And if you count the hard work her grandmother put into the family’s baking tradition, Young says they have more than 50 years of baking experience backing up the line of cookies and brownies.

“We’re a dessert company that originated from a desire to bake homemade cookies made from all-natural and organic ingredients,” Young says. “I make all the cookies and brownies myself.”

While the baking falls to Young — with the help of a few of her grandmother’s tried and true recipes — her son Joshua, 13, lends a hand with packaging and labeling. And in addition to stocking the shelves at Miss Cordelia’s and City Market on Main Street, Made From Scratch cookies are available at the Agricenter farmers market from May through October, where you can meet Young and her son in person.

Young says the most popular item is the shortbread cookie made with 100 percent butter.

“It’s very crisp but then it melts in your mouth,” she says. (On the Made From Scratch Facebook page, she compares them to the beloved warm, buttery cookies of Memphis City Schools cafeterias, something many of us remember with fondness as the bright spot in the dark ages of cafeteria food.) Her oatmeal cranberry cookie coated with white chocolate and her spiced ginger cookie are also big sellers, and the list of flavors goes from there. You can try one of her cookies for $1 or select any combination of seven flavors for $6.

Made From Scratch Cookie Company (502-2230),

facebook.com/madefromscratchcookiecompany

Although Sweet Magnolia bills itself as ice cream, it’s technically a gelato, says owner Hugh Balthrop of Clarksdale, Mississippi.

“I didn’t want to broadcast that I’m doing gelato, because I didn’t know how many people were familiar with gelato. But I like it, because it has a lower butter fat content and it’s more dense and has more flavor,” he says. “We do a lot of traditional flavors — pistachio, Nutella, stracciatella — and then put in a Southern twist with muscadine, Delta butter pecan, and banana pudding with roasted bananas.”

Balthrop also prides himself on using simple, easily recognizable ingredients: milk from grass-fed cows at Brown Family Farm outside of Oxford, Mississippi, organic cream, and as many local ingredients from farmers as possible.

Sweet Magnolia began with a couple of Cuisinart ice cream makers and a delighted family of taste testers — including Balthrop’s 3-, 6-, and 9-year-old children. From there, Balthrop began taking classes on the science of ice cream, even traveling to Penn State to take a course at the school’s creamery. Now, he has more sophisticated machinery and works out of a commercial kitchen behind the Clarksdale Chamber of Commerce, a 2,400-square-foot kitchen his family calls the “ice cream factory.”

After incorporating about a year ago, Balthrop began selling to local restaurants, such as Circa and Amerigo, and packaging and selling in retail locations. His production is up from small batches for family and friends to more than 500 pints a week.

“We’ve grown from making ice cream in our kitchen to right now selling in Water Valley, Greenville, Clarksdale, Oxford, Memphis, Jackson, and Cleveland, and we’re growing. I went to the bank today to get a loan for a bigger machine, because I can’t keep up.”

You can check out any of Balthrop’s “Southern twists on gelato” at Miss Cordelia’s on Thursday night, including the popular salty caramel, whisky pecan, and candied Benton’s bacon. Look for the special Sweet Magnolia freezer at Miss Cordelia’s and pick up your pint for $7.99.

Sweet Magnolia Ice Cream Company (662-313-6551), www.sweetmagnoliaicecream.com

If the smell of smoke from a barbecue pit is the best, the smell of smoke from a burning barbecue restaurant is the worst.

Last June, Jon and Seresa Ivory were called to their Humboldt, Tennessee, restaurant, Sam’s Bar-B-Q, at 10 p.m. because of a fire. The fire department extinguished the minor blaze, which had started outside the building. After using heat sensors to ensure the fire was out, the fire department left.

At 2 a.m., the call came again. A fire had started in a different location outside the building, but it was much worse this time. Before being extinguished, it nearly destroyed the restaurant. Overnight, a thriving business with traditions reaching back more than 60 years was brought to a standstill.

Seresa Ivory’s father, Sam Donald, began smoking pork in Gibson County in the 1940s. After working for others for years, Sam and his wife, Mary, opened their own restaurant in 1988. Sam died in 2011, and Jon and Seresa took over the business. Their plan then was to keep the business going and, eventually, pass it on to Seresa’s daughter, Francesca Martin.

Upon hearing of the fire, Tony Kail, Humboldt resident and author of Meat Fire Wood: The Survival of West Tennessee Barbecue, put out a call for help for the sake of the family and of the community, which was on the verge of losing an institution.

“They are historically tied to one of the deepest barbecue lineages in Gibson County. Sam’s is a symbol of an art form that has survived through several generations of family,” Kail says.

John T Edge, director of the Southern Foodways Alliance (SFA) at the University of Mississippi, had just written an essay on West Tennessee barbecue, including Sam’s, for Garden & Gun magazine. Kail had previously talked barbecue with Edge, and he immediately contacted Edge regarding the fire. Edge then reached out to his fellow members of the Fatback Collective, a group of like-minded lovers of all things swine. The collective didn’t hesitate to take on the task of rebuilding Sam’s.

Nick Pihakis of Jim ‘N Nick’s Bar-B-Q brought a crew to Humboldt to survey the site. Although the roof and wood-framed walls had burned, the cinder-block walls still stood. And most important of all, the pit could be saved.

After putting a plan together, Edge went to the SFA, and the food community in general, asking for volunteers. So it was that 20 people found themselves in Humboldt on two hot days in late July. The majority of the work for the volunteers was to load several dumpsters with debris. The restaurant consisted of a room with the pit, an adjoining room where customers placed their orders, and a larger two-story space.

The lower floor had been a storeroom for items unrelated to the restaurant; its contents had been lost in the blaze. The space above was in the process of being converted into an apartment for Francesca and her children. Fortunately, it suffered only minor smoke damage.

Volunteers began clearing the storeroom with the vision of a new dining room. In the pit room and previous service space, cleanup proceeded under open skies even as more skilled workers were beginning to add trusses for the new roof.

Though the walls and chimney of the pit survived, refurbishing it was the biggest challenge. Decades of accumulated grease and ash formed rock-hard layers inside the potentially fragile pit wall. Alternating bouts of vigorous pickax work and gentle scraping restored the walls to usable condition. With guidance from Jon and Francesca, local masons and iron workers were brought in to line the pit with fire bricks and add a new door.

As a lover of barbecue and a champion of Southern food, Edge is thrilled by the progress that has been made to date: “Sam’s is a Tennessee barbecue stalwart with a great back story. It was great to see the town of Humboldt — along with barbecue devotees from around the South — rally to the cause. It was greater still to witness the emergence of next-generation pit master Francesca Martin, known to all who worked the early stages of the rebuild as ‘Pit Baby,'” he says.

Seresa Ivory has soldiered on during the entire ordeal, never letting the setback overwhelm her. What has been overwhelming for her is the outpouring of love and assistance. Thanking volunteers at a lunch provided in a local church by the Old Country Store in Jackson, Tennessee, her eyes filled with tears. Later, back at the jobsite, she took a break from working to look on in near disbelief.

“This was a terrible thing, but it has become such a blessing,” she says.

Two months into the rebuilding process, the roof is up, and the good kind of smoke is once again rising from the pit. Work on the new and enlarged dining space is well under way, but it’s progressing slowly because of typical construction obstacles and because the family is being careful not to overextend themselves. Life continues, however, and the restaurant now serves barbecue from the original small dining room on Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays.

Sam’s Bar-B-Q, 500 W. Main, Humboldt, TN (713-784-9850)

Rizzo’s Diner in the South Main Arts District is taking brunch in a whole new direction. One example: the eggs Benedict, which Rizzo’s gives a very Southern and very Louisiana treatment. The dish is composed of a crispy yet tender English muffin crowned with a perfectly poached egg. Any brunch dish, or any egg dish for that matter, needs to have a gooey, runny, and luxuriously textured yolk. Thankfully, the chef knows how to prepare eggs perfectly. Along with those two components are succulent slices of slow-roasted Newman Farm pork loin that are earthy, sweet, tender, and juicy. The entire dish is anointed with a Cajun hollandaise, which is subtly spiced and creamy and doesn’t in any way overpower or interfere with the other flavors on the plate. It’s a rich plate of food that is an excellent match for a slow Sunday morning. — Michael Hughes

Rizzo’s Diner, 106 G.E. Patterson (523-2033)

Sweetbreads at Restaurant Iris

The sweetbreads appetizer at Restaurant Iris is a playful spin on the classic dish of chicken and dumplings. If you’ve ever wondered what sweetbreads are, they’re the thymus gland of a young cow. But don’t let that scare you off. When prepared correctly, sweetbreads can be exquisite. At Restaurant Iris, Chef Kelly English puts them through multiple treatments, including poaching and brining. This results in something tender and succulent with a slightly sweet yet savory earthiness. They come served over house-made gnocchi that are light as air with a pillowy tenderness. The sauce is deep and rich like a concentrated broth that coats the gnocchi and sweetbreads yet doesn’t weigh them down. The dish accomplishes what so many like it strive for: elegant and elevated comfort food.

— Michael Hughes

Restaurant Iris, 2146 Monroe (590-2828)

restaurantiris.com

The vegetarian cheese and walnut loaf sandwich at Fuel isn’t something that I would normally order. Chef Carrie Mitchum, who is a vegan, definitely has a magic touch. The loaf is basically her mom’s meatloaf recipe, minus the beef, with walnuts substituted. It’s a combination of oats, ground walnuts, cheddar cheese, spices, and onions. It’s bound with egg then glazed with ketchup and brown sugar. You can order it hot or cold, but as good as it is, I can’t imagine eating it cold. The sandwich can be made on white, wheat, or a baguette, and the bread is grilled on the flat top with a little olive oil. It’s dressed with Fuel’s signature burger sauce (ketchup, mayo, Dijon mustard, and horseradish), lettuce, tomato, and a dash of sweet chili sauce. It seems like a lot for one sandwich, but everything fits neatly into place and tastes fantastic. This flavorful sammy costs $10 and comes with your choice of fries (Fuel has great hand-cut fries), salad, or chips. Serious fans of the loaf can get a larger serving for dinner with mashed potatoes, green vegetables, and mushroom gravy for $16. — Stacey Greenberg

Fuel Café, 1761 Madison (725-9025) fuelcafememphis.com