Tag: Beauty Shop Restaurant

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Food & Wine Food & Drink

Dessert, Anyone?

Ghost meringues coming to Fino’s From the Hill (Photo: Caleb Sigler)

For those who eat too much at restaurants and, heaven forbid, are too stuffed to look at the dessert menu, here are some that restaurants offer, along with fall specials.

Dory: “The desserts at Dory are in the spirit of our childhoods,” says executive chef/co-owner Dave Krog. “Our current six-course dessert is aerated peanut butter mousse, chocolate sponge, salted caramel, blackberry, and peanut dust.”

Andrew Michael Italian Kitchen: “The fall pot de crème will be killer,” says general manager/beverage director Nick Talarico. “Spiced apples with an oat and walnut crumble. It’s like a crème brûlée and vanilla pudding.”

Kinfolk restaurant: “Bourbon pecan crème brûlée,” says chef/owner Cole Jeanes. “We toast the pecans before soaking them in heavy cream with a little orange zest. They steep overnight and, instead of granulated sugar, I use brown sugar. It’s rich, nutty, and super smooth. With a crunchy brûlée topped with candied pecans, there’s a great contrast in textures. Add a little smoked salt for another layer of flavor.”

Las Tortugas: “We do a piña colada flan, a traditional caramel flan that cooks in a water bath in the oven,” says chef/manager Jonathan Magallanes. “We then add roasted and fresh pineapple along with coconut shavings and crushed cashews, Mexican fresh cream, and powdered sugar.”

Acre: “I had an apple custard cake on the menu years ago,” says executive chef Andrew Adams. “The center was soft and custardy with bits of apples, and the top was a little crunchy and caramelized. This fall, I switched out the all-purpose flour with buckwheat. I steam the cake for the first 30 minutes and then put it in a high oven. I made the apples smaller, added cinnamon and cardamom and an oat top. The buckwheat adds a nutty flavor.”

The Beauty Shop Restaurant: Chef/owner Karen Carrier features an array of fall desserts — apple-caramel-almond babka from Love Bread Co., pistachio and fig babka, chocolate meringue pie, pecan pie with scoop of sweet potato gelato, lemon zest-sugar-butter crepe with a scoop of cinnamon Mexican chocolate chili gelato, and a dark chocolate crepe with pumpkin pie gelato.

Salt|Soy: “Chocolate miso chess pie with a sesame crust, Suntory Toki whipped cream, and sesame brittle,” says chef/owner Nick Scott. “It’s our East-meets-West take on chess pie. We started running it last fall and it became our house dessert.”

River Oaks Restaurant: “A lemon mousse with raspberries and caramelized whipped cream,” says general manager Colleen DePete. Another dessert: Chef/owner José Gutierrez will add “a poached pear with homemade vanilla ice cream, whipped cream, and dark chocolate ganache garnished with thin cookies tuile.”

Southern Social: “Praline hazelnut cheesecake with caramelized hazelnuts and a warm chocolate sauce,” says pastry chef Franck Oysel.

117 Prime: “Pumpkin Delight Ooey Gooey Bars,” says chef/owner Ryan Trimm. “A rich, buttery cake bottom with a pumpkin spice cream cheese marbled custard baked to perfection.”

Kelly English restaurants: “At Pantà, we’re offering a decadent chocolate hazelnut cup topped with raspberry Chantilly,” says pastry chef Inga Theeke. “Look for that to change to a pumpkin and chai combination later this month. We’ve also played with the presentation of our Mel i Mató and now offer Mel i Cannoli. Mel i Mató is a traditional Catalan dessert that features a loose cheese similar to ricotta covered in honey. We top our house-made ricotta with Bee 901 honey and toasted pistachios. All tucked inside a Neules cone, a Catalan cookie.”

Fino’s From the Hill: “Apple spice bars will be in the case later this week, and ghost meringues will make their appearance later this month.”

The Second Line: “Seasonal desserts are changing to a chocolate pecan pie and caramel apple cheesecake.”

Restaurant Iris: “Desserts here are definitely influenced by the season. Look for a pear tarte Tatin and a pumpkin cheesecake over gluten-free spice cake, among others.”

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Food & Wine Food & Drink

Take a Seat at the Beauty Shop

The Beauty Shop Restaurant/Facebook

Seeing the doors open at the Beauty Shop restaurant is a beautiful sight for hungry patrons of the Cooper-Young restaurant.

“We’re ready,” says chef/owner Karen Carrier. “We opened up Sunday. It was wild. Monday night we had a great night. A lot of reservations tonight. I’m shocked.”

Some of the staff “are just coming back. They haven’t been in the kitchen for three months. They’re acclimating. They’re doing great.”

Carrier closed the dining room, but she never closed her business when the pandemic hit. She’s been doing takeout and delivery.

When Mayor Jim Strickland announced businesses had to close, Carrier went to work. “I started a GoFundMe page for all my employees. That was the night I started it because I knew what was coming down the pike. That night I also called a meeting for Friday.”

Sixty-five employees — from all Carrier’s restaurants and Another Roadside Attraction catering company — came in, she says. “I had two computers set up at the bar. We basically made sure everybody applied for unemployment first right then and there. At that time, there was no stimulus. I wanted to make sure everybody was going to get unemployment. Some people didn’t have computers.”

She and chef Shay Widmer then were “the only ones cooking in the restaurant.”

And, she says, “We didn’t let anybody in.”

Shea Grauer and Scott Taylor did the curbside and deliveries. Dana Baldwin eventually went to work in the kitchen.

Those were the only staff members allowed in the restaurant for three months, Carrier says.

She didn’t rush into opening the dining room. “I didn’t want to open for the first phase ‘cause I didn’t think the city was ready. I wanted to wait for the second phase.”

They opened with Sunday brunch on June 7th. “The last week we decided not to do any to-go orders so we could get the restaurant open Sunday.”

Being closed “was insane is what it was,” Carrier says. “We did everything. We cleaned. We washed. I had a company come in and completely tear that kitchen apart. When we came back, it was like we had a new kitchen.”

Karen Carrier

They now are open for dinner Monday through Saturday with brunch on Saturday and Sunday.

Carrier isn’t ready to serve lunch. “I’ll open for lunch whenever I feel that everybody is back to some sort of normal. I don’t know what that means.”

She’s utilizing all of her space. She’s serving the Beauty Shop menu at the Beauty Shop as well as Bar DKDC, the Back Do at Mi Yard patio behind the Beauty Shop, and on the front patio. “That way, we can spread out and seat approximately what we could basically seat in the Beauty Shop if we didn’t have social distancing. It works out really well.”

They have a stand outside with an umbrella over it. “I have a thermal thermometer. I take everybody’s temperature. And we have X’s all the way down the sidewalk in yellow day-glow tape showing where everyone should stand apart.”

The dining rooms have been adapted. “We have on masks and gloves. We bring everything on trays. We don’t put anything on the table with our hands. All our silverware is in paper containers. They’re taped.”

Customers pick up their own plates from the trays. And they have “yellow tape on the communal table that shows six feet, yellow tape on the bar. People sit on the two ends of the bar.”

As to what it’s like to be a restaurateur during a pandemic, Carrier, who has been in the restaurant business since 1980 in New York, says, “I think you have to be resilient. And I think you have no other choice but to roll with the punches, unless you choose to say, ‘I don’t want to do this anymore.’ My thing was I could have closed down and not dealt with anything, but I wanted to, first of all, keep cooking so people could come and get the Beauty Shop food. And I thought it also kept the Beauty Shop alive. I wanted to save my business the best I could.”

It was mandatory that all employees had to be tested before they came back to work, Carrier says, “I feel like if I wear my mask and my gloves and change them and be diligent, I’m doing the best I can.”

And, she says, “I respect everybody’s wishes. Everybody has to live their life the way they want to live it. I had to keep working ’cause I have to keep [the restaurant] for my staff. That’s all I know. That’s what I do. So they’d have a job to come back to.”

She eventually will open Mollie Fontaine Lounge, but for now she’s concentrating on the Beauty Shop. “I’m trying to get back on our feet.”

People will know where to find her, Carrier says. “I’m here every night. I’m not leaving. And we’re just going to make it work.”

The Beauty Shop is at 966 Cooper Street, (901) 272-7111.

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Food & Wine Food & Drink

Jeff Lewis Is Cooking up Something Special at Beauty Shop

Jeff Lewis can whip up a mean plum coconut curry soup.

But that’s when he’s at work as a cook at The Beauty Shop Restaurant.

A native Memphian, Lewis, 37, has worked in restaurants from Manhattan to St. Simons, Georgia, where he appeared on The Food Channel and Food Network. But it all began when he got a job at a Jersey Mike’s Subs during his junior year at Houston High School.

Michael Donahue

Jeff Lewis

“I played lacrosse in high school, and I had broken my wrist. I had a cast on when I applied,” he says. “I lied to them and said, ‘Oh, I get it off tomorrow.’ I had it for three more weeks. They put me in the back working on the flat-top grill, and it was fun.”

His goal was to own a Jersey Mike’s, but, he says, “I thought the most important thing in the world was to go see Phish concerts. And halfway through my senior year, I missed a certain amount of days and was told not to come back.”

He enrolled at Johnson & Wales University in Charleston, South Carolina. “At the time, all you needed was a checkbook and a pulse to get in,” Lewis says. “And a GED.”

After he graduated, Lewis worked at Interim after telling then-executive chef Jackson Kramer he could bake when he couldn’t. “This is when iPhones came out. So I could Google a recipe.”

Kramer was a big influence. “Jackson challenged me to learn savory and sweet and seasonal, high-quality ingredients,” he says.

Lewis began creating his own pastries. “I remember the first dessert I did on my own there was a coconut panna cotta with shortbreads and a pineapple sorbet,” he says.

Through a friend, Lewis got a job in the pastry kitchen at Per Se, a Thomas Keller restaurant in Manhattan. He quit after a month. “I guess I wasn’t a risk-taker at the time,” he says, but “I learned more in a month there than I learned anywhere else — modern technique, the basics behind being a chocolatier, just bells and whistles.”

In 2014, he worked in Nashville at Etch restaurant, owned by chef Deb Paquette. “She would make you cry,” he says. “She put me in tears one day. It was over a soup — a butternut squash pear soup that I made too sweet. But that’s when I learned how to make a butternut squash pear soup.”

Nashville was too expensive, so he moved to St. Simons, where his family resides. He was executive chef at The Georgia Sea Grill. “That’s where I was starting to show my creativity,” he says, “doing my fish specials because we had the best seafood.”

His creations included banana-crusted grouper with Charleston hot pepper cream sauce and banana chips. “I would go to Jacksonville, Florida, and cook food on the news,” Lewis says. “And show them how to tell if your seafood is fresh or not, how to cook it properly, the whole nine yards.”

That led to appearances on Food Network, The Food Channel, and the Cooking Channel, as well as being in magazine and newspaper articles.

But, he says, “I was miserable. My backyard was black sand. My dogs were miserable.”

Lewis loves working at The Beauty Shop. “I’ve got to do six specials a day,” he says. “I make them really good soups. The last one was a coconut plum curry. And I did a sweet potato plantain. Soups you’re not going to get anywhere else, I promise you.”

Music lovers probably will recognize Lewis, who’s played bass in bands, including Early Maxwell, Willie and the Herentons, Hillkrunk, and MLGW.

His ultimate goal is to open a bake shop and make high-end donuts, cupcakes, and desserts, including watermelon lemonade cake.

Lewis has no idea what he’d name his bake shop. “Probably be cliché and name it after the address,” he says.

Like Early Maxwell? “Yeah. I’m really bad at naming stuff,” Lewis says. “When I was growing up, I had a Pound Puppy, the doll. I named him ‘Pound Puppy.’ Blanket’s name was ‘Blanket.'”

The Beauty Shop is at 966 Cooper Street.