Tag: Ambassador Hotel

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Food & Drink Hungry Memphis

SOB Downtown to Open in Mid-April

S.O.B. Downtown

Get ready for the long-awaited SOB Downtown to open its doors. The casual upscale restaurant at 345 South Main next to the now-closed SOB Gastro Pub is slated is slated to open around the middle of April.

“I’m super excited,” says Ed Cabigao, who, along with his wife, Brittany, own the restaurant. “I can’t wait for guests to come check out the new SOB I was really grateful we were were able to pull it off. Even though it’s been delayed, I feel like the timing is perfect. People are starting to get out. I just got my second vaccination today. We closed up the old SOB Monday.”

SOB Downtown is in the building that housed the circa 1910 Ambassador Hotel. “The whole building is 15,000 square feet. Five thousand square feet floors. The restaurant is about 5,000 square feet.”

The striking building is ready for the reveal. “The Ambassador Hotel now is completely renovated. The first floor is now SOB Downtown. It’s more of a modern, but retro-designed restaurant. It’s a full-service restaurant with a private dining room, a state-of-the-art kitchen, and a patio,” Cabigao says.

“The second and third floors are 10 apartments rented to an Airbnb  operation, and they’re going to try to start booking their rooms in May.”

As for the look of SOB Downtown, Cabigao says, “We’ve kept the original plaster walls. We resealed those. That’s almost like an art piece in and of itself. Our bar is a 30-foot bar with a white quartz top and a silver tin face, which is really cool.

“The overall color scheme is a lot of navy with pops of yellow. Our light fixtures are more retro modern, 1950s. We decided to have that look because we wanted to have a fall-back to what the the Ambassador Hotel used to be in the ‘50s and ‘60s as a hotel. We wanted to pull in some retro vibe.”

SOB Downtown

SOB Downtown guests can relax as soon as they walk through the door. “We’ve got a lounge area in the front where people can have room to relax and get on their computers and do some work if they want, or just hang out with friends.”

The furniture in the lounge area, which features a dark blue, black, and yellow color scheme, is “more modern, more contemporary. Basically, two sets of couches and four lounge chairs with a couple of drinking tables in between.”

The dining room, which will seat 60 people, features wood tables with a slate gray finish and black chairs with copper legs.

Jill Hertz of Jill Hertz Interior Design “helped us with the interior design and space,” Cabigao says.

The private dining room can seat up to 50 people. “We’ve already booked it out five or six times for rehearsal dinners and bridal showers and stuff like that.”

The bar, for now, will seat 10 people and the patio will seat 32 people.

SOB Downtown will feature local art on its walls. “We’ve actually brought in the same artist that did the original SOB and SOB East. We’ve already hung up some of his art at the restaurant. Daniel Tacker. We just love his style, a lot of vibrant colors. And his paintings just really pop, give off a nice trendy feel.”

Food-wise at SOB Downtown, Cabigao says, “The new menu is going to mimic the SOB East menu, but it’s a lot bigger. A lot more variety. We’ll have more sections to the menu: salads and bowls, a sandwich section, an entree section, and an appetizer section.”

Jess Hewlette is executive chef at the new SOB “She’s been with us for about a year now. She was previously at The Liquor Store.”

Anthony Fenech is SOB corporate chef.

As for the drinks, Cabigao says, “We’re actually building a more robust wine program as well as craft cocktails and local drafts.”

The entire renovation project to the building cost an estimated $3 million, Cabigao says.

The old SOB Gastro Pub will become Good Fortune, which Cabigao describes as “a trendy local Asian restaurant” owned by “two young local people who we are really excited about. They kind of remind me of me and Brittany when we were younger.”

SOB Downtown
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Former Memphian Adds Ambassador Hotel/SOB Mural to South Main Art Scene

CREDIT: Whitney Williams

Whitney Williams

Erin Miller Wray working on her mural on the side of the Ambassador Hotel, which is the future home of South of Beale gastropub.





The south side of 345 South Main is coming to life.

Erin Miller Wray, a former Memphian now living in Los Angeles, created an 85-foot-long-by-10-foot-high mural on the side of the old Ambassador Hotel, which is the future home of South of Beale gastropub.

“We’re still working on it and we will be out here probably through the weekend,” Wray says. “We have pretty much the first layer done. We’ll go in today and do details and touch up. And, also, we’re painting the stairwell. We’ve got another two days ahead of us.”

Ed Cabigao, who owns SOB with his wife, Brittany, brought her to Memphis to do the mural, Wray says. “They wanted to bring some color and energy. Something to beautify the street. I had talked to Ed. We kind of brainstormed. I wanted to do something really special for him.”

Wray wanted the mural to feel like Memphis, but “not in the literal sense. We wanted it to feel authentic to Memphis, but we didn’t want it to be a literal interpretation of Memphis in the sense of we didn’t want to do a skyline or the bridge or a picture of Elvis. So, I kind of took that idea and did a spin on it.”

She was inspired by some “retro postcards” of Memphis. “There was one of the Levitt Shell, the Memphis bridge, the Lorraine Motel, an old Holiday Inn sign that was here. And in those I loved the Mid-Century modern feel of the shapes, the lines paired with these soft rounded edges.

“I took that design element and then I mapped it out to somewhat feel like a city skyline. So, all of the shapes are placed next to each other to sort of mimic this feel as if you’re looking at a skyline, but in a very interpretive sense. Very geometric. Soft edges. I played with negative space within the design. So, it feels like the art work is sitting off of the building, to mimic that skyline. Like it’s in front of it.”

She is working with a team on the mural. Wray is head of all the design and production. Also working on the mural are her assistants Christina Bagladi – who Wray flew in from Los Angeles – and Whitney Williams, and local artist Stacy Kiehl.

Whitney Williams

Erin Miller Wray in front of her Memphis mural.

Wray, who grew up in Germantown, studied interior design with a minor in theater at the University of Tennessee at Knoxville. She moved away from Memphis 12 years ago. “I moved out to Los Angeles to pursue acting. I did comedy six years, which brought me into the production side. Ultimately, art was pulling me more than acting was. I cut acting cold turkey and I started creating custom artwork and I opened my own design company, which specializes in murals for branded artwork design.”

Wray is a fan of her recent canvas — a building that dates to 1915. “The Ambassador Hotel has so much history and so many people love this building. So, I wanted to give Memphis and SOB something that was timeless. Something approachable to everyone. And that would just leave a mark down here, but maybe feel like this piece has always been here.”



“I instantly knew the design and the kind of art she does was exactly what I wanted for this building,” says Ed Cabigao. “You don’t see a lot of this kind of mural in Memphis. So, that’s why I really wanted someone to do something different and kind of have that help the South Main art scene.”

And, he says, “I’m excited for people to experience it, walk by it. It makes the building pop. And it just gives it a different element instead of just a dark, gray building.”

SOB is slated to open in late February or early March in the Ambassador Hotel, Ed says.

NLA Projects

Erin Miller Wray works on her Memphis mural on the side of the old Ambassador Hotel, which is the future home of South of Beale gastropub.

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Food & Drink Hungry Memphis

S.O.B. Will Open its Dining Room June 15th



South of Beale a.k.a. S.O.B. will open its dining room June 15th. 

“We’ve been open for delivery and takeout ever since this whole thing happened, and both have been doing really, really well,” says owner Ed Cabigao. “It took us a few weeks to decide how to open back up fully and make sure we’re following all the guidelines — and how that affects our operations and how we serve people. That’s why we took the past month to sit back and figure everything out, operations-wise, on our end.”

The most popular S.O.B. takeout/delivery items were duck fried rice, General Tso’s cauliflower, and “probably our grilled salmon with Brussels sprouts,” Cabigao says.

S.O.B.’s capacity will be 50 percent until Phase III begins. Tables will be six feet apart. Employees will wear masks, and hand sanitizers will be available. The restaurant will use paper menus, as well as feature a QR code on each table so customers can see the menu on their phones.

The restaurant will be open from 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. daily. Brunch will be served until 3 p.m. on Sundays.

S.O.B. had planned to move next door to the old Ambassador Hotel at 345 South Main, “right across our parking lot,” but plans have changed a bit, Cabigao says. 

Michael Donahue

Ed Cabigao last year in the old Ambassador Hotel

“We were looking to open in August, but ever since all this happened, our permit got delayed for a month. So, we’re looking to opening — hopefully — in early October.

The new S.O.B. will have 5,000 square feet and three private dining rooms. Cabigao believes private dining rooms “will be even more in demand with this whole COVID thing, and people want to have their own private room with family and friends. We’re thinking when we open up in October we’ll be able to generate more revenue that way as well.”

P/K/M Architects

Rendering of the proposed new South of Beale

As for the current S.O.B. location, Cabigao says, “We own that building, so we plan on renting it out to another restaurant concept that complements the neighborhood.”

S.O.B. is at 361 South Main Street; (901) 526 0388