LYFE Kitchen announced last month that the Chisca location, roughly a year after it opened, “will be undergoing a transformation … that will bring new flavors and a new ambience to the LYFE Kitchen dining experience in downtown Memphis.”
So what does that mean exactly?
In short, that LYFE Chisca will switch from at-counter ordering to full service, that there will be menu changes, and that the inside is being renovated. This will be first LYFE Kitchen in the country that will be full service.
LYFE in transition
“We don’t look at LYFE as a restaurant chain,” says Patrick Noone, who works in branding and marketing at LYFE. According to Noone, each restaurant is treated as its own entity, and as such, the folks at LYFE took note of what was available around the Chisca (certainly Catherine & Mary) and decided “to elevate the menu and the experience.”
Noone says they aren’t ready to go into too many specifics, except that the renovations will be significant, but the restaurant will ultimately uphold the LYFE idea of healthy, good cooking. “It isn’t going to be unrecognizable,” he says.
They are shooting for a late-winter, early-spring re-opening.
• Derese Tabor is Cisco’s kid. Her father drove a truck and Cisco was his handle.
Both Tabor’s parents did catering. Tabor worked for the phone company for 16 years. She wanted to do something different and tested the waters by launching a food truck called Cisco’s Kid. Tabor opened a brick-and-mortar spot, also called Cisco’s Kid, last fall at 7395 Highway 64 (near Appling).
Cisco’s Kid serves pork shoulder sandwiches, BBQ nachos, turkey legs, and burgers, but their main thing is chicken — wings, fried chicken, half a yard bird. The thing that sets them apart is that they smoke the chicken before they fry it.
It’s a “unique niche,” Tabor says. But if you don’t like smoke flavor, they put the chicken straight in the fryer for you.
* Porcellino’s announced last week on Instagram that has stopped serving dinner in favor of private parties and events.
Its first event is the wine dinner “Pinot Noir & Its Terroir” on January 25th.
• Congrats are in order to Ben Smith, who recently bought the building that houses his restaurant Tsunami.