Art Bar – Memphis Flyer

Nick Manlavi always felt drawn to bartenders. “Bartenders are rock stars who couldn’t be bothered to learn to play instruments,” he says, paraphrasing a line from a movie.

Manlavi is bar manager at P.O. Press Public House & Provisions, one the area’s hottest new restaurants, located near the town square in Collierville. P.O. Press has gotten raves for its creative and thoughtful treatment of ingredients, which extends to the bar.

Photographs by Justin Fox Burks

Nick Manlavi

One recent meal fully engaged all of Manlavi’s creative muscles. It was a special occasion, an anniversary dinner. It would be nine courses, paired with drinks. But, there was a wrinkle. One of the party did not drink.

P.O. Press usually has two or three “mocktails” — i.e., no alcohol — on its seasonal menu.

Manlavi says his goal to make something that is fun to drink. He’ll ask for preferences. He’ll consider a meal’s dishes and think about flavor profiles. He’ll take advantage of the restaurant’s full arsenal of ingredients and equipment.

For this dinner, he made an Arnold Palmer with pomegranate foam, a beet and carrot old fashioned, a ginger and peppercorn cordial, a coconut pina colada, and a radish and mint mule.

The mule Manlavi made to match the root vegetable sushi roll, one of the dinner’s courses. Manlavi says he had to tread carefully with this drink. “Radish is a weird flavor,” he says. “And they smell like feet.” He ended up using a lot of grapefruit in this one.

Manlavi says he’s particularly proud of the pina colada, even more so because there was no pineapple juice in the house. To approximate pineapple juice, he used lime juice and champagne vinegar.

The old fashioned is particularly clever. The carrot is used to simulate the dense mouthfeel usually associated with the beverage.

Manlavi says such an endeavor is much like pairing wine with a meal, and, ultimately, it boils down to a sort of customer-is-always-right ethos. “Not drinking is an important thing for a lot of people,” he says. “I’m happy to take people on a tour.”

P.O. Press, 148 N Main in Collierville, popress.com

Over at Alchemy in Cooper-Young, bar manager Ben Williams says they serve around 30 to 40 mocktails a week. Much of their mocktail menu, which features seven drinks, is based around their proofier offerings, which makes sense: The cocktails have always been the big draw at Alchemy.

The Oh Clementine is Alchemy’s most ordered mocktail. It’s orange juice, lemon, sugar, and strawberry puree. The KCCO is an Alchemy landmark. KCCO stands for Keep calm, Collins on. It’s a cheeky play on both a mojito and a Tom Collins, which is achieved through the mint and lemon.

The Orange You Glad is another favorite. “It is good,” says Williams. “It’s made for those who remember growing up eating a Dreamsicle from the ice cream guy who drives by the neighborhood.”

Alchemy, 940 S Cooper,
alchemymemphis.com

Bart Mallard says he created the mocktails at Crosstown Art’s Art Bar because, “I’m interested in [the Art Bar] being a place where everybody can come and not feel uncomfortable. And people who are most uncomfortable at bars are people who don’t drink. So I was like, well, let’s change that as fast as we can.”

Mallard usually goes to his favorite markets to scan the produce for inspiration. He also turned to his friend Chris Cosby, who, with his wife Stephanie, is in charge of the plants at Crosstown. Cosby turned Mallard on to herbal tinctures.

There are two mocktails on the menu now at Art Bar. The Plum the Golden Depths (with the exotic golden plum) and the Rise of Spring (with banana pepper and damiana). They are both labor- and ingredient-intensive, Mallard says.

Bart Mallard

“I would prefer the menu to be half and half,” Mallard says of alcoholic and non-alcholic drinks. “But I don’t think we’re quite there yet culturally.”

Art Bar, Crosstown Concourse, 2nd floor

A name has been selected for the cafe at Crosstown Arts. It’s Today and Always. The official explanation is that it is a reflection of the cafe’s menus. There’s the set “always” menu, and the “today” specials menu. Well, sure, but I would posit that the name serves as a signpost to its fun but incongruent approach to design and food and drink.

Let’s start with the menu, which is plant-based. The dishes are named after hit songs from the ’70s and ’80s (mostly ’80s). There’s the “Every Breath You Steak,” which is seitan and cheese; “Everybody Was Tofu Fighting,” a great, hearty dish with chicken fried tofu atop collards and grits; “Going Back to Cauli” is a cauliflower steak. Let’s not forget the “Sweet Dreams Are Made of Greens” salad and the “If I Could Turn Back Thai” curry bowl.

Justin Fox Burks

The design borrows its aesthetic from the ’50s and ’60s — tables topped in boomerang patterns, the dishes dotted in starbursts in complementary colors. That color is a pleasing light aqua.

The coffee bar is back to the present with such standard coffee drinks as Americanos, lattes, mochas, as well as a nice selection of teas and assorted pastries from Ali Rohrbacher formerly of the Liquor Store.

The wait staff all wear denim aprons airbrushed with fake ’80s-era names — Jordan, Destiny, Nikki, for example. Why? Who knows?

You see, time doesn’t really exist in the standard sense, and the cafe doesn’t either. For Crosstown Arts co-founder Chris Miner, the cafe is not actually a cafe. It’s a place where ideas and creativity flow, where Chef Raymond Jackson creates his dishes and artists and guests from all walks gather and share and break bread. All artist residents eat for free. Money from the cafe goes to Crosstown Arts programs.

Jackson is a Memphian who has lived and cooked all over. He ditched his job as an accountant to pursue a gig that intrigued him since he watched Three’s Company and Jack Tripper (a chef) on TV as a kid. He says he doesn’t miss cooking meat — in fact, he says the job “has reinvigorated my interest in cooking.”

The coffee bar is Nicole Dorsey‘s turf. She says she knows Memphians’ taste in coffee, and that leans toward the sweeter drinks. “I wanted to offer things that vegans don’t get a chance to get,” she says.

One dish Jackson recently cracked the code on was the vegan pimento cheese. (Vegan!) It’s creamy with large hunks of pimento, savory with garlic oil. It is absolutely irresistible.

Jackson is confident in his cooking, relying on his training concentrated in French techniques. If it’s something to eat, he says, “You’ll love it.”

Like Jackson, Bart Mallard is a born-and-bred Memphian, who lit out for new adventures but found his way back to town. His interest in filmmaking/acting led him to New York and the usually filmmaking/acting adjacent gigs, including bartending at the prestigious Blue Hill at Stone Barns. Mallard says it was that job that served as a key to a lot of other jobs at high-falutin restaurants. In Memphis, he’s worked at Acre, Catherine & Mary’s, and Andrew Michael Italian Kitchen.

Mallard knew Miner through his acting at Hattiloo. He had also served him cocktails at various restaurants. Miner offered the Art Bar to him. “He let me know it would be my baby,” remembers Mallard. He recalls thinking, “Oh, really?”

Oh, really. Art Bar would be completely his. At his other jobs, at those high-falutin restaurants, he made the restaurant’s cocktails. Rarely, was he let loose to do his own thing, create his own drinks.

The bar itself is set in a small hallway. The bar top is used for a monthly art installation. In the back, there is a small lounge, and to the back and side of that are two larger lounges made for lounging with vintage couches and fixtures. Mallard says he wasn’t convinced at first of the configuration, but now he approves.

Mallard describes himself as a country boy. He lives out near Shelby Forest. He likes to forage for ingredients for drinks out there — like bark for his drink Cherry Bark in the Spice Bush Rye. He likes unusual ingredients, such as vegetables, for his cocktails.

One drink he created is the Caught in a Maize of Silk and Paradise, a beautiful confection that looks, while it’s being made, like a delicate, thready golden haystack made for faeries. And, yes, it’s a cocktail made with corn — one vegetable that Mallard always wanted to incorporate into his menu. It was Chris Cosby, who’s in charge of the plants at Crosstown, who suggested using the corn silk rather than the kernels.

The Meditation of Copulating Lizards is made with cactus pear, Hornitos reposado tequila, damiana, jalapeño honey, and eucalyptus. Damiana is a leaf often used in medicinal teas. It’s believed to increase the blood flow where it counts and to act as an aphrodisiac. The lizards in the name were inspired by the lizards in Mallard’s front yard. “It’s sort of beautiful,” he says of copulating lizards.

Also on the menu is La Vielle Ferme wines, starting at $3 a glass. It’s also known popularly as “chicken wine” for the chicken on the label. It’s well known among the restaurant industry because it’s cheap and good.

Mallard notes that folks can get their $2 beer or their $14 cocktail at Art Bar. “What do you want?” he says. “We’ve got it.”
Crosstown Arts, 1350 Concourse, crosstownarts.org