Tag: Chef Shuttle

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Food & Drink Hungry Memphis

Sacred 8 Dinner Series, and more news

• Friends, this may be the only culinary event in Memphis, if not the world, inspired by the movie Point Break — and not the infamous Patrick Swayze/Keanu Reeves vehicle but the remake. 

Chef Phillip Levy has created a series of eight supper club dinners called Sacred 8, which is a nod to a Japanese philosopher character and his eight feats of nature in Point Break, Levy says.

The dinners will be titled — “Master of Eight Lives,” “Emergence of Ice,” “Illuminating Earth,” “Ultimatum,” etc. Each will have a menu reflective of the season. For example, Levy says he’s considering for the first dinner, held on August 13th, serving as one of the courses a quail egg with the yolk representing the sun. 

The dinners are limited to 35 guests. Location and menu will be revealed on the day of the event.

Levy, who is 27, trained under Andreas Kisler at the Peabody before moving to San Diego and then making his way back to Memphis. He now works as a personal chef.  

The tagline for Sacred 8 is “Are you ready for the challenge?” and the last dinner is called the “Ultimatum.”  It’s at the beginning of the summer, and I’m thinking of serving a tricky dish you don’t want to try.” 

• Attention barbecue lovers, Chef Shuttle announced Tuesday that they are now delivering Rendezvous. 

* Boscos Squared will reopen tomorrow after being closed since July 4th for renovations. A rep calls it a freshening up with new paint for the bar and the floors redone. 

• Picked up this big little cake from Bluff City Coffee. I guess it’s about 3 or four slices. They have chocolate, carrot, and strawberry. Cakes are $10. 

• Y’all must not want Mrs. Winner’s, after all. The crowdfunding campaign has raised only $285 out of its $32,000 goal. Nine days are left in the campaign. 

• Sammy Hagar sighting at Sammy Hagar’s Red Rocker Bar & Grill. (Is that bear Sammy Hagar too????) 

Hagar was in town to present checks, totalling $50,000, to the local charities the Mid-South Food Bank, The Boys and Girls Club of Crittenden County, and the Steudlein Learning Center. 

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Food & Drink Hungry Memphis

Chef Shuttle Expands to Midtown, Downtown

A couple of words that make the knees buckle: donut delivery. 

Yes, friends, it’s happening, as Chef Shuttle expands its delivery service to Midtown and downtown. Among the restaurants partnering with the service is Dunkin Donuts. The others are Gigi’s Cupcakes, Hard Rock Cafe, Kooky Canuck, and Pita Pit. 

Chef Shuttle is a meal delivery service. Customers go to the website, peruse menus from area restaurants, and then order. Chef Shuttle then delivers the food, to homes, offices, and hotels, in about an hour. 

Chef Shuttle entered the Memphis market last spring and has been serving East Memphis. It started with about 20 area restaurants and now has about 75 restaurant partners.

The Midtown/downtown service begins on Thursday, February 18th. The zip codes to be included are 38103, 38104, and 38105. 

Chef Shuttle hours are Monday through Saturday, 10:30 a.m. to 10 p.m., and Sunday, 10:30 a.m. to 9:30 p.m.  

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News The Fly-By

Meal Delivery Services Can Soon Deliver Booze

CREDIT: Shawnhemp | Dreamstime.com

Tennesseans will soon be able to have a bottle of wine delivered alongside their Italian takeout, thanks to a new state law.

The bill allowing for alcohol delivery was signed by the governor in April. It allows third-party takeout vendors, that pick up meals from various restaurants and deliver to homes, to also sell alcohol alongside food. At least 50 percent of total sales must be food, so there will not be any alcohol-only delivery services in the state.

The law goes into effect on July 1st, but the process for getting companies on board may not allow companies to start selling alcohol on that date.

Customers can get up to 1 gallon of alcohol — that’s about two 1.75-liter bottles of liquor or five bottles of wine.

Meals in Motion, a Memphis-area food delivery company, will be participating in the newly legalized alcohol delivery. Abby Huffman, the owner of the company, said they’re excited about the new opportunity, especially as Meals in Motion expands into Germantown.

“We’ve been trying to call the [Alcoholic Beverage Commission] dozens of times over the six years we’ve been in business, and we kept getting told ‘no,'” she said. “Apparently, they got the right wheels going and, somehow, it made it through the legislature.”

Huffman has been in contact with the Memphis and Nashville alcohol boards to find out exactly when they’re able to start selling alcohol alongside their food. She has already been in talks with liquor stores as well, determining how they will set up an alcohol menu.

Shawnhemp | Dreamstime.com

“Even though the law goes into effect July 1st, they said it’s going to take a while to get the policies, procedures, and application process finalized,” she said.

In Huffman’s research, she has found that companies in other states that have adopted this policy saw an increase of 50 to 75 percent in business, and she expects the same for Meals in Motion.

“I’ve got some folks who are very excited to order some wine and a prime rib to go with it,” Huffman said.

The buffer period may provide time for companies like Chef Shuttle to figure out the new legislation. Chef Shuttle CEO Ryan Herget said the top priority is making sure the company “follows the law down to a T.”

“With our drivers being out in the field and not being in one central location, we want to make sure we can control the process and do it in a legal way before jumping headfirst,” Herget said. “We do plan to participate, but we want to make sure we’re going to do it in the right way.”

Herget says customers have asked about it after seeing similar ventures from food delivery companies elsewhere. But even when people ask for it, there’s going to be risk, especially when it comes to alcohol, Herget said.

“You’ve got to have systems in place to make sure that the customer is of age to receive that liquor,” he said. “For us, it’s a balance. I think, unfortunately, you’re going to see a couple of companies rushing into it in order to please their customers without fully understanding the law. We want it to work, but we want to do it in a responsible way.”

Chef Shuttle, which has its home office in Little Rock, has also been involved with pushing similar legislation in Arkansas.

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Food & Wine Food & Drink

Now open: Julles Posh Foods and Chef Shuttle.

CREDIT: Photographs by Justin Fox Burks

To walk into Julles Posh Foods is to be pleasantly surprised. Nothing about the address suggests excellence. It’s wedged into a strip mall between a Lenny’s and Walgreens. But the owners, MK and Julliet Bhupesh, are doing something refreshingly different for East Memphis: They’re cooking light.

“There’s a lot you can do with a drop of oil,” muses Julliet. “You don’t have to fry it.”

MK and Julliet both grew up in India, but they didn’t meet until much later, in California. At the time, MK was working as a consultant at Accenture, while Julliet was a pastry chef at the Grand Hyatt in Monterey. Her culinary training is classically European: She has worked at five-star hotels alongside celebrity chefs like Anton Mossiman and Gordon Ramsay. So what drew her to MK?

“He had a sly smile,” recalls Julliet. “He cooked shrimp with coconut for me, and I thought that was very brave.”

At Julles Posh Foods, the menu changes weekly, according to the season and Julliet’s whims. On a recent Monday, the menu featured a Trio of Bean Salad with Lemon Dressing and Grilled Chicken ($14), as well as a Pistachio-Crusted Wild Salmon with Maple Mustard Vinaigrette ($20).

But I was pumped for the Spicy Shrimp ($20). Here, crisp white asparagus and a bean ragout make a zesty bed for some truly peppery crustaceans. For fun, pair it with one of Julliet’s cold-pressed juices. I liked the “Boost n Run” ($9), a gingery potion of beets, carrots, and kale.

Photographs by Justin Fox Burks

Nearly all of these dishes are gluten-free, and several are vegan. That’s a perk, says Julliet, but it isn’t the point. Rather, it flows naturally from her philosophy of cooking light and using predominantly fresh, local ingredients. Recent examples include fingerling potatoes from Woodson Ridge Farms and amaranth microgreens from Rocking Micros.

If you have time, you really ought to dine in. Julles Posh Foods is executed in the sunny style of a Euro café: white and tidy with green and yellow accents. But for busy families who prefer to eat at home, there are actually two more ways to get this food.

First, you can pick up. Julliet prepares and plates each dish, then flash-chills it in an oven-safe container. (An aside: It’s rare to see this level of care taken with prepared foods. Even in black plastic, these dinners look immaculate.) Finally, you can arrange to have your meals delivered. Visit jullesposhfoods.com to order online.

You’ve probably heard about Seamless, the site that lets you order food online. It currently works with 8,000 restaurants in more than 600 cities. Alas, the list does not include Memphis.

But wait! Before you let fly with that familiar, world-weary sigh: Memphis now has its own, homegrown version of Seamless. Back in February, Chef Shuttle started delivering meals to six zip codes in the eastern half of the city. Founder Ryan Herget says he plans to add more neighborhoods in the coming weeks.

Here’s how it works: Go to chefshuttle.com and pick a restaurant (there are currently about 20 to choose from). Order from the menu; the prices are the same as dining in. And that’s it. The food shows up at your door within an hour, and all for a flat delivery fee of $4.95.

I had been meaning to try Chef Shuttle. Also, I had been meaning to check out Game of Thrones. So on a recent Wednesday night, I decided to kill two birds with one stone. At 5:30 p.m., I ordered dinner from 4Dumplings, a Chinese joint in East Memphis. Then I cued up season five, episode one, and pressed play.

5:32 p.m. Opening credits — followed by a dizzying, two-minute montage that attempts to summarize the past 40 episodes. Anyone who hasn’t already seen those episodes will be utterly confused by this. Confused, I open a can of Wiseacre Tiny Bomb pilsner.

6:08 p.m. Food arrives, well ahead of schedule. The friendly delivery driver, Nancy, confesses, “I’m a people person. I love meeting people.” Meanwhile, onscreen, a naked knight cuddles with another knight. I kind of hope Nancy didn’t see that part.

6:11 p.m. Do these characters ever actually meet each other? In a pyramid, a busty woman wearing white says she won’t reopen the fighting pits. I break into the food and am pleased to find that it is piping hot. First up: a bowl of hot & sour soup ($3.50).

6:18 p.m. The woman is in bed now, attended by her lover. They talk a lot, but that’s okay, because they are very attractive and very naked. I open another beer and move on to pork dumplings ($8), which I dip into a delicious, vinegary sauce.

6:26 p.m. A man being burned to death is shot through the heart with an arrow. According to the show’s unusual logic, this is supposed to be merciful. Really? As the closing credits roll, I lay into a bowl of homemade noodles topped with spicy Mongolian beef ($9). The show remains inscrutable, but the food, at least, was good.