Amelia Gene’s – Memphis Flyer

Executive chef Nate Henssler is keeping Amelia Gene’s restaurant as fresh and innovative as the dishes on his menu.

Take the Derenburger cheeseburger, which Henssler added about a month ago to the menu at the restaurant at 255 South Front Street, adjacent to the Caption by Hyatt Beale Street Memphis hotel. The burger, named after their pastry chef Jessi Derenburger, is available only at the bar after 9 p.m. on Fridays and Saturdays. It fits in perfectly with Henssler’s concept for Amelia Gene’s, which he describes as “a modern American chef-driven restaurant.”

Henssler, who butchers the meat, uses the “chain,” a piece of meat on the side of the tenderloins used for their prime filet mignon. He also uses the trimmings from their short ribs.

Jessica Henssler, Nate’s wife as well as the restaurant’s general manager, suggested they do a bar burger. “Jessica actually had the idea of doing some kind of a secret bar menu item, to try and drive some business toward the end of the night.”

Since by 9 p.m. they “still get a good amount of bar traffic,” they wondered how to get guests “to enjoy some food while they’re here and utilize some product. So, we took the short ribs and this tenderloin and tinkered with it to make a blend.”

They also tinkered with different cheeses on their cheese cart, but decided to use American cheese on the cheeseburger. In addition to caramelized onions, they “dress the bun with a garlic mayonnaise, spicy pickled yellow peppers, and then it’s served with hand-cut fries.”

The fries are made in-house using twice-cooked potatoes.

Derenburger makes the sesame seed brioche hamburger buns for the cheeseburgers, which sell for $25. “It’s a 10-ounce burger, so it’s substantial.”

They’re not on the menu, so it’s up to the server and the bartender — as well as customers who’ve tried them — to spread the word about the hamburgers. “We make 10 on Friday and 10 on Saturday. And we’re selling out.”

Henssler is also changing his Thursday night five-course tasting menu almost weekly. “We started off in the summertime and it was vegetarian. And dishes changed every week. We started adding some proteins to the menu.”

The price for the Thursday night special has gone from $50 to $60, but, Nate says, “It’s still an incredible deal.”

For an additional $30, diners are served wine that pairs with each course.

“Sometimes the last course is a cocktail,” Henssler adds.

This week’s special will include Nate’s 30-layer lasagna, which includes layers of béchamel as well as Bolognese made with scraps from the tenderloins and short ribs. He probably will include monkfish, which recently was added to the menu and has been very popular.

Sea bass and monkfish (right) are among Amelia Gene’s new menu items.

As for the regular menu, Nate says part of it changes monthly. “We change at least one or two items. As you see a new menu go on, another menu item comes off.”

His Rohan duck dish is one item that hasn’t left the menu since Nate added it. “It’s still one of our four top sellers.”

The crispy duck dish, which Henssler calls “a play on duck à l’orange,” takes five days to produce. As he said in a 2023 Memphis Flyer interview, “The legs we cure in a salt and sugar mix with soy spices. And we cure that for a day, cooking it in its own fat. Confit.”

The dish includes butter, garlic, shallots, and Belgian endive. And, he says, “It’s served with the same sauce we make from the duck bones with orange puree and kumquats preserved in honey.”

On a slow night, they might sell four or five Rohan ducks, Nate says. On a Friday and Saturday night, 20. And, he adds, that dish takes about 45 minutes to prepare from when the order comes in until it gets to the table.

Amelia Gene’s closed for two weeks during a traditionally slow period last August to “save labor and give the staff a chance to have some time off. “I’ve been going seven days a week for a year and a half.”

He and his wife spent about two weeks in Chile on a trip that included Santiago and Patagonia. “We visited some wineries and ate some amazing food.”

And “for sure” he added some Chilean items to the Thursday night five-course menu after they returned, Nate says. Since its not king crab season, he’s waiting for his vendor to get some Chilean king crab. “They’re sourcing it for me right now.”

The Hensslers are currently talking about doing a “pastry cart takeover” of their cheese cart for the holiday season. Also, he says, “We’re getting a lot of requests for whole carrot cake and whole chocolate cakes.”

Since his wife came on as general manager last June, private and semi-private events at Amelia Gene’s are picking up, Nate says. “She is very good at what she does.”

As for a husband and wife working together, Nate says that type of relationship “works best when it’s all about communication. Like a marriage.”

And, he adds, “If something goes wrong, it’s usually my fault.”

Henssler, who grew up in New Hampshire, has worked at top restaurants in Las Vegas and Chicago. He moved to Memphis in 2022. He’s also a managing partner in the Carlisle Restaurant Group.

Here’s a way to jazz up your Thursday nights: Amelia Gene’s is offering a five-course tasting menu — for only $50 per person.

It’s the brainchild of Nate Henssler, executive chef at the restaurant at 255 South Front Street.

“I’ve been kind of tinkering with the idea for a couple of months,” Henssler says. “Guests come in and have a five-course dining experience. You can move as quickly or slowly as you want.”

For an additional $30, they’re served wine that pairs with each course.

The vegetarian tasting was designed to be something special. “I don’t want to have it on the menu five nights a week. It’s not that kind of a restaurant.”

And, he says, “Portions are small. I could share more and try to make more money, but I want to get people in the restaurant and get this ritual of going out on Thursdays.”

His tasting menu evolved. “People always ask, ‘Are you going to do a tasting menu?’ Most people don’t want that. But recreational diners, so to speak, ask that all the time.”

When people select the tasting menu, they’re saying, “I’m going to put myself in the chef’s hands.”

Henssler is going to use themes for each tasting menu. “Cheese” is the current theme. “I thought it would be fun to do a menu based on the cheeses we serve on the cart.”

He only serves domestic cheese on the cart. “I want to showcase American creameries, American dairies.”

An eclair with shallot jam and honey from Hive Bagel & Deli is the first course, or “proper bite.” “Just a small eclair. Instead of pastry cream or Bavarian, we take on a cheese called ‘Shabby Shoe.’”

The cheese, made by Blakesville Creamery in Port Washington, Wisconsin, is based on the French cheese chabichou du Poitou. “This is a goat cheese and the flavor is light and citrusy.”

He mixes the mild cheese with a little salt, pepper, and mascarpone and “puts it in an eclair with dark caramelized shallots. And we drizzle it with honey we get from Hive across the street.”

For the salad, Henssler uses milkweed cheese from Tulip Tree Creamery in Indianapolis, Indiana. “That’s cow’s milk. And that one is different. It has a flavor of hay. Slightly like a mild mushroom flavor.”

It’s a “straightforward dish.” “We just take tomatoes and season them with sea salt and black pepper and let the juices come out. All with different herbs — tarragon, mint, chervil, thyme, basil, dill. We get milk bread and slice it up and sauté it in a hot pan with a little olive oil, salt, and pepper.”

He adds thinly-sliced tomatoes and lets everything slightly cool. “And finish it with the cheese and pine cone bud syrup.”

For the tempura zucchini blossom with ratatouille and lemon aioli, Henssler uses a hand-dipped ricotta. “This is sort of a dish that is something like I did back when I was working in San Francisco. My chef used to fill squash blossoms with crab meat or risotto and fry them.” Henssler fills the squash blossom with ricotta and a little bit of salt and pepper. He dips it in tempura and serves it on diced ratatouille flavored with rosemary and pink peppercorn-infused oil with house oven-dried tomato and lemon aioli.

“That ricotta tastes like really good milk. Almost grassy.”

Henssler uses a sheep’s milk cheese called piedras in his Arborio risotto with basil emulsion and sugar snap peas entree. Blakesville Creamery “only made about 15 of these and I have two of them.”

The cheese has “some earthiness. It has a dry rind, so it has a dusty flavor to it.”

To make the basil emulsion, Henssler purees basil, green garlic, lemon zest, and cultured butter. “You puree that together and get this really bright green bright finish on the risotto. It tastes very fresh and has that bright green color.”

The dessert course is “Blue Cheesecake” made with poached Bosc pears, frisée, and port wine. Bosc is a brown pear that’s firmer than other pears. Henssler poached the pears in port wine last fall. They’ve “been sitting in port wine for five months now.”

Along with the frisée, a type of lettuce, Henssler uses bleu cheese from Moo & Blue Firefly Farms in Indian Mound, Tennessee. “This is more of a soft, sweet, tangy bleu cheese. Not super stinky.”

The port wine reduction and pear adds a sweetness to the bleu cheese in the dessert, which is “more like a quiche.”

Henssler is already thinking about future Thursday night tastings. “Into fall I might want to do some different types of game meat — wild rabbit, wild boar, venison. That type of thing. Maybe you could do five different courses incorporating different shellfish. Or when the cod is in season.”

A five-course menu is “a lot of fun. And that’s why the staff really likes it. It gives us a chance to be creative for a little bit.”

The staff gets to “learn and taste different foods and sell different foods.”

And “guests also get something different.”

Speaking of guests, Henssler recently got a call from his boss asking, “Can you take a party of 20 in an hour and a half?”

The group, which arrived at Amelia Gene’s about 9:15 p.m., included Elon Musk, who ordered a steak and salad, Henssler says. “I’ve been told he had a really good dinner. And that the level of civility, hospitality, the sophistication of the restaurant, and how we were able to accommodate them quickly made him feel it was the right decision to come to Memphis.

“Indirectly, we can take credit for xAI coming to Memphis,” Henssler jokes.