Bar Hustle – Memphis Flyer

I’m a total baby about cold weather. If it dips below 50 degrees, I’ll easily opt for Uber Eats over a trip into the cold to get food. This is one reason I think places like the Arrive Hotel are so cool: Once you’re there, everything you need is in one place.

Arrive is home to Longshot restaurant, bakery Hustle & Dough, coffeeshop Vice & Virtue, and the lobby bar, Bar Hustle. Each has its own look, feel, and menu, so you can spend the afternoon wandering from one to the other without ever really leaving the building.

Ali Rohrbacher, formerly the head baker at the cafe at Crosstown Arts and at The Liquor Store, runs the boutique bakery Hustle & Dough and shares the lobby with Tim and Teri Perkins of Vice & Virtue.

Photos by Lorna Field

Pablo Mata, lead bartender at Arrive’s Bar Hustle

The bakery serves up homemade breads like sourdoughs and baguettes, as well as special pastries and treats. Snacks for Bar Hustle are also cooked up in the Hustle & Dough kitchen, like the mushroom toast on porridge sourdough with basil pesto, wild mushrooms, ricotta, and parmesan; or Grandma Alice’s Pecan Pie, served with an all-butter pie crust and dark chocolate ganache “black bottom” — the Rohrbacher family recipe.

Erik Hmiel, beverage director for the hotel, says that fermentation is one thing the drinks and food have in common.

“One of the parallels that Ali [Rohrbacher], as a chef and baker, and I share is a mutual interest and appreciation for fermentation,” Hmiel says. “Obviously, that’s a big part of bread-making. She’s really obsessed in a great way with fermentation, and I’ve sort of jumped on that bandwagon and learned a lot from her.”

For example, Bar Hustle serves a cocktail with fermented blueberries, as well as a seasonal kombucha.

Like fermentation, a focus on flavor is another commonality between the food and drink menus at Arrive. Bar Hustle offers a selection of specialty cocktails dreamt up by Hmiel, each with their own unique ingredients and presentation. The Bird Graveyard is prepared with aquavit, Scotch, banana, carrot verjus, and marjoram and served in a tumbler glass with one large ice cube. It tastes slightly sweet and earthy. The deep purple Fabio’s Roller Coaster is made with rye, lemon, fermented blueberry, pastis, dry vermouth, and black sesame and served in a delicate coupe glass.

The cocktail menu is just as whimsical as the decor. The lobby is filled with velvet couches, plants, and oriental rugs. It’s easy to feel like you’re in a speakeasy or in Europe or in an eccentric aristocrat’s penthouse. It certainly doesn’t feel like a hotel lobby.

And that’s, in part, because Bar Hustle is for locals as much as it is for hotel guests.

“We put a lot of time, effort, and thought into what we’re putting out there,” Hmiel says. “We also have a service industry night on Sunday. At the end of the day, we just wanted to be a fun and inviting space for everyone.

“One of the things we might do in the future is a series of pop-ups every month, or every two months. That’s something we’re thinking about right now, going into the new year,” Hmiel continues. Bar Hustle also hosts musicians on Friday nights and is looking to expand their entertainment offerings in the coming year.

So if, like me, you hate going out into the cold, but you also don’t want to feel too stir-crazy at home all winter, take a trip to Arrive. You can start your day with coffee at Vice & Virtue, have lunch at Hustle & Dough, then grab a cocktail and a show at Bar Hustle — all without leaving the hotel. And, hey, if it’s too cold to go home, you can always rent a room for the night.

The Arrive Hotel is located at 477 S. Main.

This was the year of seafood, South Main, and comeback stories, with old favorites like Fino’s and Zinnie’s making triumphant returns. Here are a few items of note from 2019.

RIP

Mary Burns, longtime owner of Java Cabana, died on October 4th after a nearly three-year battle with lung cancer. Burns purchased Java Cabana in 1998 and had become a fixture of Cooper-Young, serving as a member of the Cooper-Young Business Association and the Cooper-Young Garden Club. Burns is largely remembered for making Java Cabana what it is today, a welcoming safe haven for artists and poets alike.

City of Sole

Several seafood restaurants — particularly those specializing in crab dishes — have opened or opened new locations, including Crab’N’Go, Crab Island, DeeO’s Seafood, Red Hook Cajun Seafood & Bar, Saltwater Crab, and others.

Saltwater Crab opened its doors over the summer with an expansive menu including sushi, sandwiches, and crab options such as crab cakes, king crab, snow crab, and a saltwater crab roll. Atlanta-based restaurateur Gary Lin opened Saltwater Crab in early July, but the kitchen is managed by Memphis chefs. The menu is entirely “coastal,” so you won’t find any catfish here.

The Juicy Crab, a Georgia-based seafood chain, opened its first Memphis location on Winchester earlier this year, and The Coastal Fish Company opened in Shelby Farms in October. Mardi Gras Memphis, which specializes in Louisiana-style seafood boils, recently reopened their restaurant across from the Crosstown Concourse. And Picasso’s — a seafood and pasta place — opened in August at 6110 Macon, making it the newest seafood addition to East Memphis. The Cousins Maine Lobster food truck also opened in March.

Downtown Dining

South Main is now home to quite a few new dining and drinking destinations, including the restaurants (Hustle & Dough, Longshot), coffeeshop (Vice & Virtue), and bar (Bar Hustle) inside the Arrive Hotel, as well as those inside Puck Food Hall, Memphis’ first and only food hall, which had its grand opening in May.

The Central Station Hotel also opened on South Main in October, and with it came a new bar, Eight & Sand, and restaurant, Bishop — Andy Ticer and Michael Hudman’s newest project.

Justin Fox Burks

BarWare

BarWare, a neighborhood bar that features craft cocktails and elevated bar food, opened on Front this year, too. And several other notable establishments opened their doors Downtown, including Comeback Coffee, Hu. Diner, 3rd & Court, and more.

Old Favorites Return

This was also the year we saw many old favorites come back to life. Fino’s, the beloved Midtown deli, reopened on June 6th, bringing their classic gourmet sandwiches back after closing in late 2018.

Old Zinnie’s — the “best little neighborhood bar in the universe” — first opened in 1973 but closed abruptly in 2018, leaving many Memphis barflies feeling abandoned. They reopened on Halloween, the perfect night to welcome the regulars back to their local haunt. As if it never closed, Zinnie’s feels very much the same, and they’re even serving popcorn again like in the old days.

The infamous and inimitable Hernando’s Hide-A-Way also celebrated its reopening near the end of 2019. The spot, famous for hosting music legends like Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash, and Jerry Lee Lewis, closed in 2007 but was recently purchased and reopened by partners Dale Watson and Celine Lee along with co-owner Patrick Trovato of Long Island, New York. The owners plan to maintain the integrity of the original, offering plenty of local music and color, and, supposedly, the “best hamburger in Tennessee.”