Rise and shine. Breakfast is almost ready.
Barksdale’s, the iconic eatery at 237 Cooper Street, is about to reopen after a fire in June 2024.
And I can’t wait.
“We’re hoping to open by the end of next month,” Bryant Bain says. “By the end of March.”
Bain, his wife Heather, and Ryan Glosson are the new owners of Barksdale’s. They’re also the owners of Bain Barbecue down the street at 993 Cooper Street in Cooper-Young.
Why did they want to buy Barksdale’s? “We’ve all eaten there,” Bryant says. “And it’s been in the community for so many years.”
When they heard Barksdale’s was going to close, they knew that couldn’t happen. It was, “Hey, if we can do something about it, we’re going to.”
They’re going to retain as much of the look and atmosphere of the old Barksdale’s as possible. “We’re trying to keep it feeling like it used to be.”
But, Heather adds, “They had a terrible fire. Because of grandfather laws and stuff, we had to redo the vast majority of it.”
They had to get “all new electric,” Bryant says. As well as “rebuild the bathrooms. The ceilings are new. All new light fixtures. Everything is new except the walls.”
They did save the bar and tables and chairs. “That kind of thing.”
Plates and cups were also saved, Heather says.
As for the employees, Bryant says, “They’re all invited to come back. Some of them obviously had to get other jobs.”
But, he says, “I know Miss Debbie [Miller] and Bert [McElroy] are coming back, for sure. Some kitchen staff are coming back.”
Asked what they ate when they used to visit Barksdale’s, Heather says, “I would just get eggs and bacon.”
Bryant got the plate lunch. “More of the veggies, to be honest.”
Customers can look for their favorites on the menu. “It’s going to be the same type of menu, but I’ve overhauled it to make it fresher,” Bryant says. “Everything is going to be homemade. A lot of things they were making out of bags. And I just don’t do that.”
Asked if they’re going to sell barbecue at Barksdale’s, Bryant says, “We will not be.”
In April 2024, I did a story about Barksdale’s, then known as Bob’s Barksdale Restaurant, for Memphis Magazine. This was my description of the place after I ate there that morning: “Every table is taken on my visit. Photos of smiling customers on memorabilia-covered walls look down on the smiling faces of customers talking and eating. Servers with coffee pots wind around tables pouring refills and taking orders.”
The original Barksdale Restaurant was at 227 South Barksdale Street, owner Beth Henry told me. The owner’s last name was Stamson, she said. He was from Greece.
The restaurant moved to where it is now around 1968. Stamson gave the restaurant to his son Jerry Stamson, who sold it to Bob Henry in 2000, Beth said. Bob changed the name to Bob’s Barksdale Restaurant.
Beth married Bob, who she got to know after she began visiting the restaurant from her job at an insurance company across the street. She took over the restaurant after Bob died.
“We were just friends for years,” Beth told me in my interview. “I’d come over and have coffee. Then I got to know people. And I got to know some of the servers. And then later on in life it worked out to where we ended up getting together and got married. I just knew that he was a good man.”
Not much was done to the interior after she took over, Beth told me. When she pondered the idea of sprucing the place up a bit after she bought it, she said, “You could hear the Midtown gasps: ‘No, no, no. We like it like that.’”
She said customers told her they began going to the Barksdale with their dad and now they bring their granddaughter.
Beth did say she had interior painting done when they were closed for 82 days during the pandemic. And then she had to repair the foyer after a car crashed into the front of the restaurant on June 26, 2022.
She said half the customers are college students. “We have some customers who have been coming here 30, 40 years. When we don’t see them, we start to worry.”
And she told me over the years, weddings, birthdays, anniversaries, and the filming of at least one short movie took place at the Barksdale.
Now the beloved Barksdale’s is about to return.
