Tag: Chez Philippe

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Food & Wine Food & Drink

Over the River and Through the Drive-Through

Turkey breast at Tops Bar-B-Q & Burgers (Photo: Courtesy Tops Bar-B-Q & Burgers)

Maybe you don’t want to pull out grandma’s tarnished silver turkey tray and gravy boat this year.

Maybe you don’t want to hold a big frozen turkey under a sink faucet for an hour because you forgot to thaw the bird.

Maybe you really just want a “happy” Thanksgiving this time.

So, here are a few places that can redress Turkey Day stress.

Tops Bar-B-Q & Burgers is offering its Pit-Smoked Turkey Club. (Photo: Karen Pulfer Focht)

Tops Bar-B-Q & Burgers

Just in time for the holidays, Tops is offering its Pit-Smoked Turkey Club as well as whole turkey breasts. 

The sandwich comes with pit-smoked turkey breast slices, “barbecue mayonnaise,” applewood bacon, American cheese, lettuce, and tomato.

That barbecue mayonnaise — Tops’ original sweet barbecue sauce blended together with some spices — is a special component, says Tops CEO Randy Hough.

“Guests have been asking us for years — around the holidays, especially — ‘What do you have in terms of a turkey for the holidays?’” says Tops exec Hunter Brown.

They ask, “Are you going to have anything like a seasonal ham or turkey this year?” Hough adds.

This year, the restaurant chain has obliged. The five-pound breasts, which serve up to 10 or 12 people, are “100 percent usable,” Brown says. “You don’t have to carve around any bones.”

Tops will be closed on Thanksgiving, but customers can preorder the turkeys or just pick them up at a Tops location. “It’s already ready. We’re serving it as a sandwich and are able to get them one.”

And, Brown says, “Where else can you roll through a drive-through on your way home and say, ‘I want to get one of those pit-smoked turkeys,’ and several minutes later have it in your car on your way home as if you’re getting a cheeseburger combo? And we will hand it to you out the window.”

“We’ve got you covered until 9 at night,” Hough adds. “I could have used this a couple of times in my lifetime.”

Another Tops Thanksgiving option? Their turkey burger, which they offer all year round. “What’s cool about turkey burgers is turkey burger eaters love it, but cheeseburger eaters also love it,” Brown says.

Chef Keith Clinton’s sweet potato and chèvre with sauce poivrade (Photo: Courtesy Chez Philippe)

Chez Philippe 

This might not be the year you want to whip up truffle-stuffed squab and Chateaubriand for your Thanksgiving feast. So, let Keith Clinton make it for you from 5:30 to 10 p.m. Thanksgiving night at Chez Philippe at The Peabody.

Clinton, the restaurant’s chef de cuisine, and Konrad Spitzbart, the hotel’s executive pastry chef, created an elegant four-course prix fixe Thanksgiving dinner.

“At Chez, we are detail-oriented,” Clinton says. “We want to emulate the nostalgia and memory of a family meal by way of taste and service. We have familiar staples of holiday tradition. We just tweak the approach and keep it interesting.

“I’m going to use cranberries, turkey, and sweet potato. But I’m also going to use truffle, squab, and edible gold.”

Clinton also is also paying tribute to his own Thanksgivings past. “My grandmother has a patch of persimmon trees on her land. I’m going to use them in our opening canapé sequence as kind of a memory of those family gatherings of my own.”

That will be his persimmon and merengue, which he is featuring with pear and port gelée.

There will be sweet potatoes: Clinton’s “sweet potato and chèvre with sauce poivrade,” which he will serve with Heritage Farms turkey. “I have a distinct memory of watching the marshmallow bubble on top of the sweet potato casserole when I was a kid. I’m leaning on that memory to cook a course for our guests this holiday season.”

Spitzbart is offering pumpkin bavarois along with chocolate brûlée with brown butter and micro sponge crisp honeycomb for the dessert course.

Turkeys ready to go at Neil’s Music Room (Photo: Courtesy Neil’s Music Room)

Neil’s Music Room

If you want a more laid-back Thanksgiving dinner, but still desire traditional turkey and all the trimmings, head over to Neil’s Music Room at 5725 Quince Road. Owner Neil Heins is continuing his more than 30-year tradition of offering Thanksgiving dinner on Thanksgiving day.

Heins began doing the dinners when his club was on Madison Avenue. “I started doing them ’cause I was broke,” he says. “Everything was closed on Thanksgiving. I said, ‘Shit. I’ll open up.’”

His menu includes smoked turkey, homemade dressing, “real mashed potatoes,” cranberry sauce, green beans, corn, English peas, and rolls. “And then we give them a dessert. And most of the time it’s pumpkin pie.”

Dinner is served until they run out. “We start at 11 in the morning. And we normally close at 1 in the morning. It usually dies down at about 4 or 5. We’ll serve all day as long as we have it.”

John Williams and the A440 Band will perform.

Neil’s also is selling its Thanksgiving meal to-go.

Chicken and dressing at Dale’s (Photo: Courtesy Dale’s)

Dale’s

Dale’s is continuing its 20-year-tradition of serving dinner on Thanksgiving. It’s featured from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. at the restaurant at 1226 Main Street in Southaven, Mississippi.

Customers get a choice of chicken and dressing or baked ham along with three vegetables, homemade rolls, and cornbread. “And it comes with a piece of sweet potato pie,” says owner Larita Mathis.

They normally serve the same items on their regular Thursday and Sunday menus. “So, we thought, ‘Why don’t we open on Thanksgiving?’” Mathis says. 

Customers include “regulars that come every year and new people that just heard about it — or that we do everything from scratch.”

Dale’s also offers to-go orders to feed approximately 10 or 20 people. “All our vegetables and pies are available. So, that’s a big part of our business. People can place orders a few days before Thanksgiving.”

The dressing is made from her grandmother’s recipe, Mathis says. They boil the chickens to make the broth. And they make the cornbread that goes in it. 

“We don’t use turkey because the turkey broth has a wilder flavor. If you try to make dressing with that, your dressing has a totally different taste. We tried that one year and it’s just not the same.”

Mathis and her family may grab something to eat that day. But, she says, “By the time we feed everybody, we just want to eat a hot dog or something. We don’t want to look at chicken and dressing.” 

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Food & Wine Food & Drink

Keith Clinton and Chez Philippe Make a Great Pair

Keith Clinton (Photo: Michael Donahue)

It says something when a restaurant is named “Best Hotel Restaurant” twice.

It also says something when that restaurant’s chef held that title during both wins.

Chez Philippe at The Peabody was named “Best Hotel Restaurant” last September in USA Today’s annual 10 Best Travel Awards. And Keith Clinton was chef de cuisine both times the restaurant received the honor.

“This is the second year we’ve won in a row,” says Clinton, 36.

Asked how he felt when he heard the news, Clinton says, “It felt good and made me proud of my team and made me proud of our local growers we source from. We rely on that a lot to drive the script of our menus.”

And, he adds, “It’s kind of like music. They’re filling in all the chords and we are just playing them.”

According to the news release, “Chez Philippe is known for its modern American cuisine with classical French presentation and as one of the most romantic dining experiences in Memphis.”

It also points out Clinton’s “passion for incorporating local and seasonal ingredients into his culinary masterpieces.”

In a 2023 Memphis Flyer interview, Clinton told how he goes the extra mile for his diners — and not just with the food. Chez Philippe patrons are researched after they make their reservations. Using information from LinkedIn and other sources, Clinton likes to surprise his diners with information about themselves. Like telling them where they’re from, where they work, where they went to school. It’s a great way to personalize someone’s dining experience.

Recently, a woman dining at Chez Philippe told Clinton, “I’ve done my research on you.”

“And I said, ‘I’ve done my research on you, too,’” Clinton says. He already knew she was in the fashion and clothing business.

Clinton also uses information he gathers from servers, who overhear conversations during dinner. “Like they came here in 2019 or they were married at The Peabody 20 years ago. We know it’s their anniversary because they put that in their guest notes. Who they are and where they’re from.”

And servers are good about picking up bits and pieces of information. One server overheard a couple talking about how they got married at the old location of Felicia Suzanne’s Restaurant. Clinton asked them how long it’s been since they were at the restaurant. They said they hadn’t been since they were married. So Clinton hired a carriage ride for them to take after dinner. They got to drive past the venue where they were married. “People are just so blasé about what they are saying and don’t think people are listening.”

But last January Clinton added another twist to the Chez Philippe dining experience. He calls it the “Kitchen Course.”

About halfway or more through their meal, diners are invited to the kitchen. Their server says, “The chef has invited you to the kitchen to do a quick course with him.”

Opening snacks from a month ago — fig, apple, almond (Photo: Justin Fox Burks)

People think what goes on in a kitchen is a “magical process,” Clinton says. So when it’s time for the meal’s intermezzo, the diners, if they choose to, are escorted by the maître d’ to the kitchen where they eat the intermezzo, which might just be a one-or-two bite granita, and “hang out and chat for five or ten minutes.”

The maître d’ then escorts them back to their table. “It’s kind of a hybrid of a ‘chef’s table,’ where the guest is eating in there the whole time.”

Clinton’s kitchen course “makes it so exclusive” to one table. “They feel special because they were invited.”

As for his food, Clinton says, “I’m always pushing myself.”

Currently, Clinton offers a 14-course menu, which incudes “surprise canapés.”

And, he says, “We change one thing a week instead of doing a seasonal menu.”

Instead of changing all 14 items, the one item he does change usually depends on what is in season at the farms he uses for a particular food. Clinton is loyal to the growers. So whenever his grower runs out of the blackberries or whatever he buys from that particular producer, Clinton doesn’t try to find blackberries from somebody else. “When he’s done, I’m always done,” he says. “I’m exclusive to them.”

The only menu item that has not changed since Clinton began is tuna, pomelo, and avocado. “My favorite of all time.”

Wilson Farms Blueberry Semifreddo (Photo: Chris Coles)

If any of his diners want to turn the tables and do some research on Clinton, they might discover he’s from Memphis, went to Bartlett High School, and, when he was in his 20s, played drums in an indie band, The Incredible Hook.

“It was music first and then it became both and then it became all cooking.”

Clinton still has a piano at his house. “It’s a very old, but very nice, extremely heavy piano. We just moved and it was so heavy it broke their dolly.”

But he only plays it now “in a passing manner.”

His wife Meredith, who was the sous-chef for almost a year at Bog & Barley, now works at Ben E. Keith Foods, a food purveyor.

They both cook at home. “It’s kind of like whoever is off that day. I’m off; I will cook. She’s off; she will cook. And if we’re both off, we go out.”

He also takes off his chef’s hat — figuratively speaking — to make time for their son Carter, 8. It’s “difficult to turn it off,” but Clinton knows he “has to be a good father.”

They do everything from picking strawberries together to playing video games together. “So that helps motivate me to turn it off and on.” 

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Food & Wine Food & Drink

The Extra Mile

Keith Clinton (Photo: Michael Donahue)

Keith Clinton puts the “experience” in “dining experience” at Chez Philippe.

In addition to what they find on their plates, diners also are surprised by the extras Clinton provides.

Clinton, 35, immediately put his footprint down earlier this year when he became chef de cuisine at the elegant restaurant at The Peabody. “I move so fast,” he says. “And I change the menu constantly. We’re so hyper-focused on seasoning and sourcing of ingredients. We must move. And I am constantly pushing and constantly recreating and developing. And they give me the space to do that.”

Also, he adds, “I’m just fascinated with food. Fascinated with nature. The process of it all.”

Clinton, who was chef de cuisine for five years at Erling Jensen: The Restaurant, was a private chef when he heard about The Peabody opening. “I was looking to have a little more fun. I missed service. I missed going fast.”

Clinton is now having fun. He searches for unusual ingredients, as well as the best familiar ingredients, for his cuisine. He and his kitchen staff are constantly making trips to Jones Orchard in Millington, Tennessee. “I really like taking my guys out there. And just spending an afternoon before service picking produce we’re going to use that weekend.”

Like the strawberries they bought last spring. “We would pick the green ones. Just a little ripe. A little not ready. And ferment them for a dish on the menu.”

He made a green strawberry sorbet with the fermented strawberries. They topped that off with some buttermilk ice. “So, it’s like a buttermilk granita.”

Clinton also regularly visits Viet Hoa Market — “an amazing resource on Cleveland” — to find unusual ingredients.

But he also educates diners. “I’ll take all the ingredients in raw format — ramps and raw mushrooms — out to the table and say, ‘This is what’s in this dish.’”

He pinpoints certain times during his seven-course menu to go into the dining room. He’ll show up with shoyu, a liquid made from cherry blossoms, for his tuna fish, grapefruit, and avocado dish. He’ll “pour the shoyu over the dish at the table and talk to guests. Explain it to them.”

Clinton also researches guests who’ve made reservations. “Gathering as much information about them so we can tailor the experience.”

He’ll look them up on LinkedIn and Whitepages. “I know I have two hours to figure out something about this person with the information I received. And I translate that into an experience that is customized to that person. Which is a challenge to me.”

For instance, Clinton discovered a particular couple once celebrated a wedding anniversary at Earnestine & Hazel’s. He assumed they had Soul Burgers, so he created mini smash burgers, which he surprised them with halfway through their meal. “Nobody else got a Soul Burger that night but them.”

His menus are “more seasonal than just the four main seasons. Especially when things are only around a couple of weeks or only once a month.”

His seven-course menu includes a snack course that can be eaten by hand. These include items like a fig and almond butter tart and a mushroom and truffle tuile. “I put in a hot towel service. When they’re done eating with their hands, I present them with a hot towel that’s steamed in essential oils.”

Diners even get “playful mignardise,” little snacks, maybe like a Windsor cookie, they can “eat in the car on the ride home or the next morning.”

He wants his diners to know, “We’re still thinking of you. And hope you’re still thinking of us.”

Clinton knows when to visit a table. “Some people seem open to it, some are more reserved. I play it by ear.”

He will “catch the vibe.” That’s when he might think, “I’ve been out there too much. I’ve been to their table five times. Let them eat.”

But, Clinton says, “Building that relationship with the guests, going the extra mile, is necessary.”

Chez Philippe is at The Peabody at 149 Union Avenue.

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Food & Drink Food Reviews

Peabody’s 145th Birthday Dinner, plus Oysters and more at Local

CREDIT: Justin Fox Burks

This year the Peabody turns 145, and to celebrate, they’re throwing themselves a party on Thursday, September 4th. It starts with a reception in the lobby, from 4:30 to 6 p.m. Anybody can come to that. But the main event is a seated, five-course dinner at Chez Philippe. The dinner is $85 per person (an additional $35 for wine pairing), and reservations are required.

For each course, the Peabody has recruited a different chef from the history of Chez Philippe. Jason Dallas — currently executive chef at Interim — opens the evening with leek-wrapped scallops. Then it’s Andreas Kistler‘s turn. The current chef at Chez Philippe will prepare pan-roasted pheasant with dried berries and Peruvian potato-truffle puree.

Did the Peabody’s 145-year history affect Kistler’s choice of menu? Well — not exactly.

Justin Fox Burks

The Peabody’s Andreas Kistler and Konrad Spitzbart

“I was going through some of the old menus,” says Kistler. “They’re fun to look at, but I don’t think I could spell most of that stuff, let alone make money with it. Back then they ate kidneys and livers. I don’t want to eat that!”

The evening closes with a strawberry shortcake by chef Konrad Spitzbart, served with mascarpone, basil gel, and a crisp pepper meringue. It’s certainly a change from 1869, the year the Peabody opened. Back then you could get a room and two meals for $4. But then, you might have had trouble finding any basil gel or Peruvian potato-truffle puree.

Jeff Johnson recently finished installing a 48-tap draft beer system — the largest in town — at Local in Overton Square. It’s a veritable bowling alley of shiny chrome and colorful tap handles, boasting craft beers from around the United States.

“Our goal is simple,” confesses Johnson. “We wanna be the place people come to get beer.”

The new tap system means that kegs won’t have to be stored behind the bar; chilled pipes allow them to be tapped remotely. The move has freed up space for a raw bar. On a recent Wednesday, oysters from the Gulf Coast and James River were offered.

And really, what goes better with craft beer than oysters? Start with the fried gulf oysters in wing sauce ($12 for a half dozen). They’re lightly breaded, so you can still taste the oyster, and the sauce is lusciously garlicky. Pair them with a pint of Goose Island Lolita, a tart Belgian-style beer aged in wine barrels with fresh raspberries.

Justin Fox Burks

Oysters from Local’s new raw bar

Interested in a classier bivalve? Try chef Russell Casey‘s grilled oysters with bacon, leek butter, and parmesan ($12 for a half dozen). Pairing bacon with oysters is almost always a good idea — the hearty crunch adds so much — and in this case, the leek butter seals the deal. Pair them with a Dogfish Head Sixty-One, a complex IPA finished with the juice of Syrah grapes.

Or you know what? Just eat ’em raw. Now that it’s September, the oysters have stopped spawning, the red tides have subsided, and this gastronome is eager for slimy delights.

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We Recommend We Recommend

Julia Child Birthday Tribute Dinner at River Oaks

In 1992, Julia Child visited the Peabody Hotel’s flagship restaurant Chez Philippe, for a meal prepared by master chef José Gutierrez, now of the French-American bistro River Oaks in East Memphis.

“She did more for French cuisine than all other chefs combined,” Gutierrez says, recalling his time with the larger-than-life chef, author, and TV personality who singlehandedly launched an American food revolution. “French cooking had been considered too complicated. Too difficult. But she made it accessible to everyone,” Gutierrez says.

The Peabody menu included a warm and cold salad with basil dressing, brandade of smoked trout with grilled polenta, and heart of beef tenderloin with a Madeira- and black truffle-laden sauce perigeux, a pairing Child prized. For dessert Gutierrez served chocolate Napoleon with raspberries and crème fraiche.

“She adored the food,” Gutierrez recalls, and even though each course was paired with wine, the eccentric bon vivant kept asking for martinis. “She was one of the most spectacular, kind, giving people I ever met,” he says.  

When Child celebrated her 82nd birthday in Los Angeles in 1994, Gutierrez was one of several chefs invited to cook for the doyenne of French-American cuisine. On Friday, August 15th, to celebrate the 20th anniversary of that birthday meal, River Oaks will offer a special three-course menu centered around one of Child’s favorite dishes, Boeuf Bourguignon, which will be accompanied by Salade Lyonnaise and Reine de Saba cake.

“This is not food for the intellect,” Gutierrez says, sounding very much like the chef he’s honoring, “it is food for the soul.”

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La Fête

CREDIT: Dreamstime

With the Fourth of July over and done and all those hot dogs and hamburgers consumed, it’s time to move on to Bastille Day (La Fête Nationale) and its more sophisticated fare. This national holiday in France marks the beginning of the French Revolution and is observed annually on July 14th. Memphians with a Francophile streak can get in on the action at two local restaurants.

The Bastille Day dinner on Saturday at Chez Philippe is part of the Peabody hotel’s Historic Dinners series. The five-course prix fixe menu, created by Chef Ryan Spruhan, features very French dishes, including vichyssoise, ratatouille, bouillabaisse, and coq au vin. For dessert, there will be a selection of cakes.

The Bastille Day dinner at Cafe 1912 is a decades-long tradition that began at the old La Tourelle. The dinner is so popular that this year Cafe 1912 is making a weekend of it, with seatings Friday, Saturday, and Sunday starting at 5 p.m. According to Martha Hays, who owns Cafe 1912 with her husband Glenn, the cuisine at this French restaurant has gotten more eclectic over the years, and so the Bastille Day dishes — it’s à la carte and the regular menu is also being offered — will be a bit more traditional. Think Julia Child, says Hays. Among the dishes are a pâté of foie gras, duck breast with orange sauce, and strawberries soaked in Grand Marnier served on puff pastry and topped with Chantilly cream. Hays says they’ll put up some decorations and play Maurice Chevalier and then let the evening take its course. “The party is up to people who come,” she says.

Finally, for the kids who won’t go anywhere near bouillabaisse, there’s Bastille Day crafts at the Children’s Museum of Memphis on Saturday, starting at 11 a.m. Participants will learn about French history and make French flags using collage materials. There will be no pretend-time prison-storming or beheadings. We checked.

BASTILLE DAY DINNER AT CHEZ PHILIPPE, SATURDAY, JULY 14TH, 7 P.M. $85 PER PERSON, PLUS $30 FOR WINE PAIRING. RESERVATIONS: 529-4188.

Bastille Day Dinner at Cafe 1912, Friday-Sunday, July 13th-15th. Seatings start at 5 p.m. Reservations: 722-2700.

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Food & Wine Food & Drink

No Fear

Halloween is upon us and, though it may sound blasphemous to some, there is more to look forward to than candy corn and caramel apples.

For one thing, local brewery Ghost River is releasing its third annual batch of Black Magic, a black beer perfect for Halloween.

“Breweries have always had seasonal beers,” Chuck Skypeck of Ghost River says. “People love to change with the seasons, because you want fuller-bodied, more flavorful beers typically in the cooler months and lighter-bodied beers in the summer.”

Even though it’s a fall beer, Skypeck wants to clear up any misconceptions about Black Magic. “Black beers tend to scare people to a certain extent, and they’re probably misunderstood. A lot of people don’t realize that Guinness, even though it has very full, intense flavors, has less alcohol than Bud Light. In general, color has nothing to do with the alcoholic strength of the beer. You can have strong dark beers, but you can also have strong light beers.”

So what can you expect? “The point of Black Magic is it’s not a stout. Stouts get a whole lot of flavor from roasted barleys,” Skypeck says. “And it’s not a porter. Porters get their flavor from chocolate malt. We use black malt to give black beer its color, but we use toasted malt to give the beer a nice sweet, malty flavor. We make it relatively light-bodied. It doesn’t drink like your typical black beer with a lot of the more acrid, acidic flavors.”

In other words, Black Magic is not the bitter, brooding beer you might expect. Go ahead and taste for yourself at the local pubs where it is sold, including South of Beale, King’s Palace, and Lynchburg Legends Bar and Grill.

ghostriverbrewing.com

All during the month of October, the Peabody is offering special pre-show menus for fans of the Broadway show Wicked. Both the Capriccio Grill and Chez Philippe will have prix fixe menus for theatergoers through October 31st.

Chez Philippe’s menu features three courses with choices such as Calabaza squash bisque, shrimp and salmon terrine, and a Wild King Salmon with fried leeks and coriander-walnut vinaigrette. Their Newman Farm pork chop is served with sweet-potato flan, turnips, and turnip greens. For dessert, they are offering crème brûlée with caramelized apples or a lemon tart with homemade mascarpone cheese. The menu is available from 5 to 6:30 p.m., Tuesday through Saturday, for $65.

The Capriccio Grill also has a special pre-show menu for $45, which is available every evening from 4 to 6:30 p.m. Vegetable stew with seasonal vegetables, pumpkin ravioli with sage brown butter and toasted hazelnuts, and filet mignon with wild-mushroom ragout make for some hearty autumn dishes, and you can polish them off with Jack Daniel’s golden-raisin-bread pudding with buttermilk butterscotch sauce and vanilla ice cream.

“The menu is based around seasonal things, and also Wicked, like the witch’s vegetable stew,” says Daniel Bamrick, food and beverage director at the Peabody.

And since nothing works up an appetite quite like a few hours of witchcraft, the Peabody Lobby Bar is also serving special Wicked green-apple martinis and desserts after the show. Choose from green cupcakes, Oreo mint cheesecake, or lime tarts.

An added bonus? The price of dinners at Chez Philippe and Capriccio Grill includes complementary valet parking, so getting from dinner to the show is a cinch.

For more information, visit the Peabody website, peabodymemphis.com, or call the hotel.

The Peabody, 149 Union (529-4000)

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Food & Wine Food & Drink

A Taste of Cuba

CREDIT: Justin Fox Burks

Los Compadres has long been a hot spot for Mexican food in Memphis. What patrons might not know is that owners Pablo Lara and Karen Otero are native Cubans and have recently added a separate Cuban menu. After a trial run of “Cuban Sundays,” Lara and Otero decided to offer the menu, in addition to the Mexican menu, seven days a week.

Cuban food differs from Mexican as it isn’t spicy or cheese-laden. Highlights from the new menu include fried plantains, tamales Cubanos (slightly sweet Cuban pork tamales), and the chicharron de pollo (seasoned and fried chicken). There are familiar Cuban foods such as beans and rice and also some traditional foods you might not recognize, like boiled yuca, a root vegetable that tastes very similar to a potato.

It all feels like what you might be served at someone’s home. The portions are big, which makes for a great family-style meal.

Los Compadres, 3295 Poplar

(458-5731)

Chef Reinaldo Alfonso of the Peabody’s Chez Philippe has recently begun transforming the French-cuisine-based menu into a fusion of Southern cooking and Latino traditions. Born in Costa Rica and raised in Miami by his Cuban parents, Alfonso first learned to cook from his mother and grandmother. Now, crafting the “Nuevo Southern” cuisine — a term he uses to describe this eclectic mix — Alfonso calls on his Cuban heritage to bring a new flare to old favorites.

“We went from being a French restaurant with Jose Gutierrez to French-Asian with Reny,” says Kelly Earnest of the Peabody. “We’ve done that for a few years. I think Reny’s been slowly sneaking stuff in under the radar, but now is the first time we’ve officially embraced the Cuban influences that he’s bringing to the table.”

Those influences come through in dishes like the shrimp and grits, made with camarones enchilados (chili shrimp) and a swiss chard Cuban tamale. “It’s familiar to the Southern palate,” Alfonso says, “but it’s using Latin ingredients.” He has also replaced many of the standard ingredients, like potatoes, with malanga, yuca, and other Caribbean root vegetables.

A Cuban-style braised Neola Farms beef forms the basis for the Cuban favorite ropas viejas or “old clothes” and is served with fried plantains and malanga puree. Papas rellenas (potatoes with crawfish stuffing) is topped with an andouille-crawfish cream and sour orange and onion relish.

There is still a French streak to the menu, but the Cuban mixes in well, much like French-Creole cuisine. “Cuban food is very similar to Creole cuisine down South,” Alfonso says. “It’s not as spicy, but it’s a lot of the same ingredients: peppers, onion, garlic, paprika. Cuban food is called cocina criolla, which translates to ‘Creole,’ but it’s not the same type of Creole. It’s a mixture of Spanish, Indian, and African influences.”

Chez Philippe, The Peabody, 149 Union (529-4188)

R.I.P. Jay Uiberall

Memphis mourns the loss of restaurant great Jay Uiberall, after an accident at Pickwick last Saturday. Uiberall was partner and manager of a number of popular Memphis eateries: Alfred’s, Automatic Slim’s, Ubee’s, and Catering for You. A longtime member of the Memphis Restaurant Association, Uiberall leaves a legacy of favorite local restaurants and hangouts.

At press time, plans were being made for a memorial on Beale Street. Details to come.

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Food & Drink Hungry Memphis

Feastival: A Review

5ed4/1247517602-sign.jpgI probably should not be overly effusive, but what the heck, I can’t help myself: The shindig Sunday afternoon at Whitton Farms in Tyronza, Arkansas, was a blast, or as my husband Tony said, “This is one of the coolest things I’ve done in years.”

Despite the heat and drive, more than 300 people (families, kids, hipsters, locavores of all types) showed up at the first annual “Whitton Farms Feastival,” an event dreamed up by Jill and Keith Forrester to promote locally-grown food and raise a little extra cash for farm equipment and the Memphis Farmer’s Market.

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Food & Wine Food & Drink

Mr. Everything Sweet

CREDIT: Justin Fox Burks

On a recent Saturday, I found myself downtown at 5:30 a.m. It wasn’t a long night of bar-hopping that had me out at that hour. Instead, I was in a kitchen at The Peabody hotel to shadow executive pastry chef Konrad Spitzbart who starts his day at the crack of dawn.

The Peabody hired Spitzbart last July. Originally from Austria, Spitzbart most recently worked at the Beverly Hilton in Los Angeles — Hollywood, to be more specific — before coming to replace The Peabody’s Erika Davis, who was the pastry supervisor under former longtime executive pastry chef Alain Gallian.

In Hollywood, Spitzbart commuted 70 miles one way just to get to work every day. He created desserts for many high-profile events — the Oscars, the Grammys — and for many high-profile, highly demanding guests. One day, after he and his wife decided that it was time for a change, he saw the position at The Peabody posted on the Internet.

“It was early one Saturday morning,” Spitzbart recalls. “I remember telling my wife, and she said why not apply. So I sent the application electronically and received a call pretty much right away.”

Then everything went really fast. Within a matter of days, Spitzbart arrived in the Bluff City for an interview, and within a matter of weeks he was back to take over the hotel’s pastry kitchen. Now he has a 20-minute commute from Millington — a piece of cake.

He offers me coffee. I decline. No coffee for me, and no coffee for the chef who looks as fresh as a daisy, even though he didn’t leave the hotel until 9:30 p.m. the night before.

“Rinnie [Chef Reinaldo Alfonso] is out of town, and they were pretty busy at Chez Philippe last night, so I stayed and helped,” Spitzbart explains.

Sixteen-hour days aren’t unusual in the hotel business. When Spitzbart prepared for large events at The Beverly Hilton, he slept at the hotel, if he slept at all.

The Peabody’s pastry kitchen takes up most of the hotel’s third floor. In the main room, mixing bowls are as big as bathtubs and their paddles look like replacement parts for a ship. Some of the ovens fit six-foot-tall speed racks, flash freezers line the back wall, and a walk-in fridge and freezer line the aisle. The fridge is filled with the essentials for a pastry kitchen — rows of milk cartons, cream, eggs, butter, and fruit. There is one room just for chocolate and another for the ice cream maker and for cake decorating. With the oven cranking, the mixer turning, and water running in the sink, the kitchen is like a workshop. It’s probably no coincidence that Spitzbart keeps his utensils in a tool cabinet.

Justin Fox Burks

Konrad Spitzbart at The Peabody Deli & Desserts

It’s not even 6 a.m. yet and I’m practically panting trying to keep up with Spitzbart. “Today is a very slow day. We only have to take care of about 200 people,” Spitzbart says. Still, it seems like the only way Spitzbart knows how to work, walk, and think is fast, even if everyone around him is slow and barely awake. And yet, he seems very calm and laid-back.

We start our day with key-lime boats — little boat-shaped tart shells filled with key-lime cream, baked, and then garnished. While we wait for the boats to bake, we’re off to other projects — one project for me, multiple projects for Spitzbart. Occasionally he stops to reposition his eyeglasses, which tend to slide down his nose ever so slightly.

The kitchen’s shift arrives at 6 a.m. Spitzbart is always there before them to catch the night shift, which bakes all the breakfast pastries, bagels, and breads. The next shift arrives around noon and his assistant around 2 p.m.

“The pastry shop never sleeps and never shuts down,” Spitzbart explains. “Everything sweet that comes out of The Peabody comes out of this pastry kitchen, ice cream included. We are responsible for banquets, weddings, the restaurants, room service, afternoon tea, and the deli. The guys from the banquet kitchen could take off if there aren’t any banquets. We can’t.”

I roll miniature cheesecakes in toasted nuts and decorate them with a dot of whipped cream and a raspberry. A little garnish and the pale-yellow mound looks like a pastry lover’s dream come true. Kiwi, blueberries, strawberries, and raspberries are placed on the miniature fruit tarts, a little chocolate is put here, a little glaze there, and with some piping and dipping, several trays of pastries are ready to go.

Spitzbart’s chef in Los Angeles would always say “less sugar, less sweet.” That’s not really the way to go for a pastry chef in the South, but Spitzbart’s goal is to make the pastries sold in the hotel’s deli lighter. “We want to get away from large cakes that are sold by the slice,” Spitzbart says. “We are looking more at European-style pastries — individual servings or smaller, six-inch cakes to take home whole. We work more with fruit, and we want to lighten up our selection while keeping some of the Southern staples like apple, pecan, and key-lime pie.”

We are in the chocolate room now. Small amounts of white, dark, and milk chocolate are kept in tempering machines at all times so that fluid chocolate is on hand for emergency projects. Spitzbart is big on being prepared for “emergencies.”

“Customers and hotel guests expect a certain standard, and we can really never say no,” Spitzbart explains. “There are times when we have to say we can’t do it in five minutes, but we’ll have it ready in an hour.”

The chef makes almost all the chocolate decorations himself.

“You have to develop a feel for it — it’s intuitive, but it’s also very much a science.”

And that’s why Spitzbart, when he came to the United States in 1991, focused solely on pastries. He had apprenticed in restaurants throughout Austria, working in different positions, but found pastry work the most interesting and creative.

“There are so many variables that determine if the cake, custard, or sorbet will turn out right,” he says. “It’s like chemistry. If you forget one little element, it might not turn out. But then again, there’s lots of room to tweak, discover, and be creative because you can combine common ingredients in a totally new way and maybe come up with something extraordinary.”

The Peabody, 149 Union (529-4188)