Hard Times Deli is slated to open in February. And that means good times for foodies.
“We’re doing an upscale sandwich shop,” says Harrison Downing. “It’s our take on classic deli sandwiches.”
Downing is the executive chef as well as owner/operator of the upcoming restaurant at 6555 Marshall Avenue near Sun Studio in the Edge District. His other owners are his Secret Smash Burger Society pop-up cohorts Cole Jeans, owner of Kinfolk, and Schuyler O’Brien, City Silo food and beverage director.
Their bread will be made at Josh Steiner’s Hive Bagel & Deli. The beef and pork will come from Home Place Pastures in Como, Mississippi.
“We’ll have, of course, an Italian on the menu.” The classic sandwich is made with salami, pepperoni and mortadella. And, Downing says, “We’ll be making our own mortadella using Home Place Pastures pork pepperoni salami.”
They’re still doing their smash burger at pop-ups and special events, but the one at Hard Times Deli will be another version of their standard. It will be a “chopped cheese” burger, which is “a big New York deli thing. Picture a Philly cheese steak. But it’s ground beef instead of steak.” You put the meat on the flat top, cheese on top “and then you chop up the sandwich.”
They will have a smoker in house for their sandwiches, Downing says. “We’ll have four hot sandwiches and four cold sandwiches. And a couple of vegetarian options.”
Downing described the type of bread he wanted to Steiner. “I gave him the bread I really fell in love with — ‘Dutch Crunch’ — in the San Francisco area. Over the past year we’ve been doing some tinkering and working on it.”
“It’s a sweet bread between a brioche and baguette with a slight sweet crust,” Steiner says. “Harry had one bread on his mind when he approached me about helping him with his fresh bread. We worked back and forth for a couple of months and I think we nailed it.”
A native Memphian, Downing says his mother was “a ridiculously good cook.” His first restaurant job was at Jim’s Place Grille in Collierville. “Once I started really getting into it at Jim’s Place, I just never got away from it,” he says.
He also worked at Greys Fine Cheeses & Entertaining and Hog Wild BBQ. But, Downing says, “I’ve always wanted to open a sandwich shop.”
When his sandwiches began getting popular at Greys, Downing pitched the idea to open a sandwich shop to Jeanes and O’Brien. He said if they were going to open one, now was the time. That was more than two years ago. “We’ve been putting our minds together and finding a space and getting it built up.”
Architects John Halford and Patrick Brown of cnct design helped everything come together. “I was looking for a place to do something and I stumbled across this with John.”
Halford told Downing about his building, which once housed the old Escape Alley bar. “The building was abandoned and completely cinder-blocked up.”
Downing, who frequented High Cotton Brewing Company, wanted his own place in the area. “I’ve always loved the Edge District. You’re close to everything. Especially with a sandwich shop and doing what we’re doing, there’s no one in that area doing it. You’re surrounded by hospitals and colleges. People that eat that kind of food.”
There are “four art studios” and “a couple of tattoo shops,” he says. “It’s the next cool, artsy neighborhood.”
They began working with cnct design a year ago. Brown “showed us 3-D floor plans. We just kind of gave him our vision and what we wanted to do and we all worked through it together.”
The new space is “really, really pretty inside,” he says. The interior features cobalt blue and cornsilk yellow tile floors and dark stained woodwork and shelving.
Says Brown: “The last time the building was occupied it was Escape Alley. It was a dive bar. We looked at it for years for possible tenants.”
They wanted it to be “an active space [with] food, drinks. And the tenants [being] active in the community was important for us. We got really lucky when we ran into Harrison, Cole, and Schuyler. They’ve got their hands in a lot of projects.”
He describes them as “a great group of younger, energized people” who “have an eye for what they want.”
And, he adds, “They knew they liked these vintage style diners. That’s where the checkered floors come in. Very mid-century, ’50s, ’60s, and ’70s. Darker stained woods, checkered floors. We brought in some of that lighter yellow. The canary yellow in the tile. So, looking into all those design features and bringing it into an industrial building and trying to modernize it for today’s world was pretty much the main scope.”
Kinfolk went with the “old-school diner” look, Downing says. Hard Times Deli went with the “old-school sandwich shops” look.
The name Hard Times Deli came from the three owners going through hard times, including “trying to run restaurants for other people,” he says, adding, “The industry is rough. Long hours. Not a lot of pay.”
They also have been getting used to becoming “new dads,” Downing says. “All of us are pretty new to the married game and new to the dad game.”
The restaurant, which will feature lunch every day except Sunday, will seat 40 inside. It’s too small to do live music inside, but when the weather gets nicer, outdoor events with music can be held in the spacious parking lot, Downing says. “And if it’s 6 and people are still hanging out, we’ll keep slinging food.”
Helping him in the kitchen will be Bailey Patterson and Cody Boswell. “We’re all sandwich artists here,” says Downing. “All of us have done crazy food.”
Transforming the old building, which previously was “an eyesore,” is helping to improve Memphis. “We want to be a part of making the city better.”
And this won’t be the only Hard Times Deli location, Downing says. “We are looking to grow. I’m kind of building this model. Making it scalable. We’d like to get multiple businesses open. And we have other concepts in the works.”
