Tag: Downtown

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Food & Drink

The Return of Front St. Deli

Front St. Deli Chef Ken Hooper (Photo: Michael Donahue)

Front St. Deli will reopen at its old 77 South Front address by the end of January.

“We are doing the final touches with Ken [Hooper], the culinary brains, over there this week,” says Tony Westmoreland, who runs Tandem Restaurant Group with his wife Stephanie. The group operates other restaurants, including Carolina Watershed, Sidecar Cafe Memphis, and Ben Yay’s.

In addition to being the “culinary brains,” chef Hooper also is a managing partner at Front St. Deli. “If all goes well, he might be the new owner,” Westmoreland says.

The delicatessen, which originally opened in 1976, closed in 2020.

The building, which dates to 1853, “looks a little bit different,” he says. “We did facade renovation. Took off the whole front of the building. It’s an all-glass front now.”

The Deli exterior at the corner of Front and Union. (Photo: Michael Donahue)

They’re considering adding two garage doors to the front so they can roll them up and people can eat outside in the warmer months.

“We had to make some changes,” Westmoreland adds. “The inside has changed up a little. Mostly cosmetic.”

Changes were made to the “footprint layout,” he says. “We wanted to put in some more equipment for the variety of food we want to prepare.”

The restaurant will be “grab and go,” says Westmoreland. “With the limitations on the space, it’s a pretty much similar menu. But I think he [Hooper] wants to keep a few things from the previous menu for historic value.”

Emphasis won’t be placed on Tom Cruise and the 1993 movie, The Firm, part of which was filmed at Front St. Deli. “We’re not going to play The Firm movie over and over again, and have all the pictures of Tom Cruise.”

They’re going to play up the historic value of the building and make it “more Memphis than ‘Tom Cruise filmed a movie there.’ And that building is really old.”

The color scheme will be red, black, and white. Most of the equipment has been replaced. “We did put in a new countertop and a wall to block off the kitchen part. It’s still a half wall.”

They don’t want to make too many changes because, like their other properties, including the legendary Zinnie’s, they want to play into the “nostalgia” of “the past historical influence of some of these places.”

As for the food, expect a mix of some of the old with the new. “For instance, in the previous incarnation they had a pimento cheese and bacon sandwich,” Hooper says. “We want to bring that over. That was really iconic. The counterpoint is Cubano Memphis. It’s honey ham and pickles and Swiss cheese and — it’s supposed to be Cuban roast pork — but pulled pork on top. Just to make it fit in.We’re going to make it a Memphis thing.”

Hooper also will feature “cast iron pizzas,” including one consisting of smoked turkey, smoked pork, and smoked sausage. “Memphis is just a smoked-up town.”

Other items include the Jack & Lui — a sandwich made of house-smoked turkey and paprika mayonnaise on tomato bread.

Josh Steiner of Hive Bagel & Deli is “going to be making most of our breads, which I’m really excited about.  A white baguette. A caraway dark rye, which I don’t know if you can get it anywhere else. Just gorgeous bread.”

The menu item names won’t refer to The Firm, Hooper says. The restaurant previously was “a shrine to Tom Cruise. People can like what they like, but we’re not going to emphasize that.”

Instead, they’re going to emphasize Memphis. “The sandwiches are going to be named for famous riverboats: Memphis Queen, Julia Belle Swain, and Belle of Louisville.”

Born in Spokane, Washington, Hooper moved to Memphis in 1976 — the same year Front St. Deli opened. He owned food trucks, ran food service at Levitt Shell (now the Overton Park Shell) for two years, and he was the executive chef at Growlers.

He’s excited to work at Front St. Deli, a place that has “very deep name recognition in Memphis.”

“You couldn’t spend that much money to get that hype with that name recognition. And we get to just walk right in.”

Hooper believes Front St. Deli has “got name recognition almost with Pete & Sam’s and Arcade and the Rendezvous. It’s got that deep history.”

And, Hooper says, “It’s a grande dame. A Memphis institution. We understand that. And we’re going to take good care of it.”

In addition to re-opening Front St. Deli, Tandem Restaurant Group also is in the process of opening two Uncle Red’s restaurant locations —  2583 Broad Avenue and 786 Echles Street, Westmoreland says. The restaurants will feature Christopher “FreeSol” Anderson’s turkey legs. “We shut Watershed down for the winter and we’re going to focus on getting Broad Avenue open directly after Front St. Deli,” Westmoreland says. “We hope to have that one open in February and Echles, hopefully, in March.” 

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Food & Drink Hungry Memphis

Old Dominick Distillery Teams Up With Bain BBQ

(Credit: Bain BBQ)

Starting Friday, your glass of Old Dominick Distillery bourbon may come with a side of barbecue.

That’s Bain BBQ, to be specific, as Old Dominick announced that it would introduce a food offering from the Cooper-Young restaurant beginning October 27th at its Downtown distillery at 305 South Front Street.

“Our partnership with Bain BBQ creates a delightful food offering for our guests,” Ben Brown, director of guest experiences at Old Dominick Distillery, said in a statement. “Starting October 27th, you can savor the best of both worlds, with their culinary offerings paired with our premium spirits.”

The Distillery had been without a food component since Andrew Ticer and Michael Hudman’s Gray Canary, which opened in 2018 inside the Old Dominick building, closed in January this year.

Bain BBQ’s menu at Old Dominick will include a range of sandwiches, including turkey breast, pulled pork, and brisket, and available sides like coleslaw or chips. And save some room for the Texas Twinkies (basically poppers), a combo of bacon, jalapeños, and cream cheese.

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Food & Wine Food & Drink

Cafe Keough Turns 10

Kevin Keough (Photo: Michael Donahue)

Cafe Keough is celebrating its 10th birthday.

And some people still pronounce it “Cafe Cough,” says owner Kevin Keough.

“The ‘g-h’ on the end screws everybody up,” says Keough, 55.

But over the past decade, the breakfast-and-lunch Downtown cafe, which actually is pronounced “KEE-oh,” has been a haven for Downtowners wanting a pick-me-up cappuccino or boozy coffee drink, an in-house baked cookie, or French onion soup.

Keough didn’t set out to open a cafe and then find a location. “I kind of find a spot and wonder what would be a good fit in the area.”

He already appreciated good food. A native of Collierville, Tennessee, Keough says, “Growing up on a small farm gives you a work ethic for sure. And you would eat food that was pretty damn fresh.”

Eating at a fast food restaurant back then was a “treat,” but fast food tasted “wrong” to him.

Keough was a short order cook at the old Lou’s Place on Front Street before going to work for Karen Carrier when she owned Automatic Slim’s. “She hired me as bar manager. And then I went from bar manager to general manager. We became partners and owners of the Beauty Shop Restaurant.”

But Keough was ready for another project. “I always kind of wanted to do a cafe concept. And I wanted to get away from the white tablecloth concept.”

He wanted “a worker-style cafe as opposed to a white tablecloth higher-end space.”

His friend, Henry Grosvenor, who owns the building, showed him the space at 12 South Main Street. “It was a shell. Nothing in there.”

Keough did some of the renovation work for the cafe, which has a 23-foot ceiling and 16-by-4-foot windows. “I painted the whole place. I laid these tiles.”

He knew the type of eating-drinking establishment he wanted to open. “I wanted to do a French cafe, but sometimes when people do French-style restaurants, they make it a little too French. Almost like the concept of what they think it is.”

That would be “lots of brass and tufted brasseries and those kinds of things.”

Keough wanted a “quieter version” of that. “I wanted to balance it out with something that actually made it look like it came from Memphis or the South.”

Customers tell him Cafe Keough feels like a lot of places, ranging from New Orleans to Argentina. “I’ve had tourists come in and say, ‘Oh, this is very similar to something you would see in Vienna or different parts of Europe.’”

And that’s fine with Keough. “It has the feel of an Old World cafe without being an Old World cafe.”

Keough, who didn’t have a lot of money to buy high-end antiques, over time bought things, like the large art nouveau lady statue on the bar, that gave the right feel to the cafe.

The restroom doors came from an old Methodist church in Memphis. The chairs were in the old Spaghetti Warehouse. And he bought the converted gas chandeliers from a former antiques dealer who lived in the building.

The slotted wood banquette benches, which he had made, resemble benches he’d seen in a cafe as well as in Memphis trolleys.

Keough began serving paninis after buying a massive used panini press from the old Deliberate Literate bookstore. He also did crêpes at first. “It was supposed to be like New Orleans food. I wanted to get away from that fried food. Greasy. I wanted to do something a little bit more healthy and not so heavy.”

In 2019, Keough opened Bar Keough at 247 South Cooper. He wants the bar to look like the 1912 building it’s housed in, but with modern elements. It has a turn-of-the-century tin pressed ceiling. “But I’ve got a Formica bar.”

It wasn’t difficult to come up with the name Bar Keough. But Cafe Keough was another matter. Keough considered other names, including Commerce Cafe and Main Street Cafe, but those names were already taken.

Cafe Keough was perfect. “It’s a hard name to pronounce, so it makes you have to question if you’re saying it right. And you have to remember it. Sort of.”

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At Large Opinion

Who’s Zooming Who?

Empire State Building (Photo: Nbogdev | Dreamstime.com)

“25 Empire State Buildings Could Fit Into New York’s Empty Office Space.” Now that’s a headline. The article, in the May 10th New York Times, was equally compelling, citing the high office-vacancy rates in the nation’s major cities and suggesting some creative possible solutions.

As many sociologists have pointed out, the physical layout of most large American cities is not set up to handle the work-from-home economy that was spurred by the pandemic. After the onset of the high-rise office building, circa 1920s, American cities became increasingly segmented into geographic spaces for home, work, and play.

That 100-year-old urban game plan is no longer working. The national office-vacancy rate as of April 5th, according to an FDIntelligence report, was 18.5 percent. The rate in Memphis for the first quarter, according to Cushman-Wakefield, was 16.2 percent. From Cushman-Wakefield: “The [Memphis] office market continues with lower than typical leasing activity though absorption remains positive. … Tenants continue to downsize into smaller spaces.”

The company I work for, Contemporary Media, Inc., is doing just that, moving from a lovely old Downtown building with brass elevators to a space that makes more sense economically. We learned during the pandemic that we are capable of putting out the Flyer and Memphis magazine and our other publications with our writers, editors, art staff, and sales staff working from home.

I’m writing this column from my couch (along with my dog, Olive), and have the Flyer’s Slack app open on my laptop so as to be able monitor communication between my co-workers and chip in with editing help when needed — or when I feel like joining in the genial smack talk. It’s like a free-flowing group text, only much more useful. We do have weekly in-person staff meetings, as well, so we can put on grown-up clothes, brainstorm, gossip, and remember what we look like. But it’s a far cry from the 40-hour-a-week office-and-cubicle farms we occupied for the first 40 years of the company’s existence.

Back to the Times: “To create a city vibrant enough to compete with the convenience of the internet, [cities] need to create mixed-use, mixed-income neighborhoods that bring libraries, offices, movie theaters, grocery stores, schools, parks, restaurants, and bars closer together. We must reconfigure the city into an experience worth leaving the house for.”

Is Downtown Memphis worth leaving the house for? Well, I can look out my soon-to-be-former office window and see the nascent construction of a new Memphis Brooks Museum, one that will cascade down the bluff to the river. There, it will overlook the spectacularly reimagined Tom Lee Park. A Downtown grocery store has sprung up on the south side, not far from a snazzy movie theater, which is adjacent to the city’s largest farmers market and the thriving South Main district. The Cossitt Library has just been beautifully redone. New restaurants are coming on, and long-time favorites are still thriving. Old buildings are getting new life. FedExForum, home of the Grizzlies and Tigers and big-ticket touring concert acts, is getting a multi-million-dollar facelift, as is AutoZone Park, home to the AAA Redbirds and the 901 FC soccer team. And I can think of at least five standalone breweries in the 38103. So yeah, I’d leave the house for some of that action — and do.

“We are witnessing the dawn of a new kind of urban area,” the Times concludes: “the Playground City.” That sounds nice, but it can go wrong. Consider, for example, how Downtown Nashville’s party wagons, mobile hot tubs, and cheesy honky-tonks are choking the city’s urban center at night — and demonstrating how a “playground city” can chase locals away rather than attract them.

Memphis needs to be smarter. If we want more people to live Downtown, we need to keep the noise down after a reasonable hour and restrict the more boisterous action to Beale Street and other designated areas. (Talkin’ to you, party wagons.) And Downtown needs to be closely monitored by police, with a presence that protects citizens and visitors without stifling the Memphis vibe.

The truth is, our Downtown probably doesn’t even have one Empire State Building’s worth of vacant office. We’re fortunate that mid-size cities like Memphis are poised to recover and adapt to a post-pandemic economy much more quickly than mega-cities. Let’s not screw it up, Memphis.

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News News Blog

Sterick Building Sold, New Developments Planned

The Sterick Building (Credit: CBRE, reprinted with permission)

There are changes in store for one of Downtown’s most notable buildings. Stuart Harris, principal of Constellation Properties, announced that his team have closed on the purchase of the historic Sterick Building.

The 340,000-square-foot, 29-story skyscraper was built in 1929, and was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1978. However, the building has stood vacant since 1986. Previously, the idea of a purchase had been complicated, owing to a ground lease that had considered the building separate from the land it sits on. But the new agreement resolves that issue, allowing for future plans of a full redevelopment to begin taking shape.

“This deal would not have been possible without a number of local and national investors who share our commitment to making sure this historic building sees a bright new future,” said Harris. “I also want to thank Equitable, CBRE, Henry Grosvenor on behalf of the sellers’ families, and the Downtown Memphis Commission for their steadfast partnership and belief in our vision.”

Harris has previously overseen redevelopment of the Commonwealth building at 240 Madison Ave. Constellation Properties also purchased parcels at 220 and 224 Madison Avenue, with an eye on further developing the corridor from the Commonwealth down to the Sterick at the corner of North B.B King Boulevard and Madison.

A full redevelopment plan and uses for the Sterick Building are still under consideration. When that is finalized, Constellation plans to seek additional resources and public incentives to help with the project.

The Sterick Building towers (right) above AutoZone Park. (Credit: CBRE, reprinted with permission).
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News News Blog News Feature

“Justice For Tyre” Protest Planned for Friday Evening

Credit: Hunter Demster/Facebook

A “Justice for Tyre” protest is planned Friday evening at Martyrs Park Downtown. 

Footage of the incident that led to Tyre Nichols’ death is scheduled to be made public today. Officials said the video would be released sometime after 6 p.m. but did not give more specifics. 

Many expect unrest after the footage is seen by the public. Many schools, businesses, and government offices announced they are closing early Friday in anticipation of possible civil unrest. 

The Justice For Tyre protest is slated to start at 5:30 p.m. It’s the first organized gathering made public for this evening. On Facebook, the event is tagged #blacklivesmatter but it was not immediate clear who organized the event. However, the organizing group offers a toolkit for activism and gives a list of demands on the invitation. Here’s what it says: 

Demands of the Family

1. Release the body cam footage

2. Charge the officers

3. Name all officers and public personnel Memphis, Tennessee that were on scene

4. Release the officers’ files

Community Demands

1. Pass the Data Transparency ordinance

2. End the use of pre-textual traffic stops

3. End the use of unmarked cars and plainclothes officers

4. Dissolve the [Street Crimes Operation to Restore Peace in Our Neighborhoods – SCORPION], [Organized Crime Unit – OCU], and [Multi-Agency Gang Unit- MGU]. End the use of tasks forces

5. Remove police from traffic enforcement entirely

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News News Blog News Feature

State of Downtown: People Return Post-Pandemic, Population Increases

Credit: Downtown Memphis Commission

Downtown Memphis bounced back and expanded last year, according to the Downtown Memphis Commission’s (DMC) 2022 State of Downtown report. 

Restaurants and nightlife returned. The Grizzlies had a hot run. Live music played every day of the year. With all of this, “Downtown Memphis saw tourism rebound and pedestrian counts return to pre-pandemic levels.”

Credit: Majestic Grille

Downtown’s population got a boost, too. The DMC said those living Downtown rose by 6 percent in 2022, up to 26,086 residents. 

Credit: DMC

One of the DMC’s jobs is to attract and retain development Downtown. This is largely done through tax abatements. 

Last year, the DMC gave tax breaks to 38 projects that it says will bring 1,165 apartment units, 310 hotel rooms, 85,000 square feet of retail space, 5,500 square feet of office space, and 1,000 parking spaces. 

”Our stewardship of Downtown is critical to our entire community,” said DMC president and CEO Paul Young. “Downtown is the Memphis the world recognizes: We are Beale Street, the Grizzlies, Sun Studio, and the National Civil Rights Museum.

Wiseacre’s Downtown taproom. (Photo: DCA)

“We are also the neighborhood of choice for Autozone, St. Jude, and FedExLogistics, as well as six breweries, one world-class distillery, and countless innovators in the arts, music-tech, med-tech, and ag-tech space.”

Credit: DMC

The DMC also expanded the reach of its Groove On Demand ride service from and eight-mile area to 12. About 50,000 Grove On Demand rides were taken last year, the DMC said. 

Groove On-Demand

The DMC also won an award from the International Downtown Association for its work on diversity, equity, and inclusion. On that front, the DMC took over the region’s Emerging Developer curriculum, which encourages a developer community that looks more like the Memphis community.

The DMC is also focusing on safety. It recently won a county grant  to work with the University of Memphis to develop new safety strategies. It also plans to expand the Blue Suede Brigade to include overnight shifts.

“’Downtown for everyone’ is more than a slogan,” Young said. “It is the fight song for our entire community. We take it seriously. We are Downtown Memphis.”

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Food & Wine Food & Drink

IBIS Chef Jake Behnke Loves the Eclectic

Jake Behnke (Photo: Ryan Johnson)

Becoming executive chef of IBIS restaurant is the peak of Jake Behnke’s career.

It’s sort of like reaching the peak of Mt. Kilimanjaro.

Behnke did that, too.

His culinary climb began when he was 16. “Basically, I was fucking up real bad in high school,” says Behnke, 30. “My dad told me, ‘You’re going to learn to study, or you’re going to go to work.’”

Behnke chose work. He walked to the old The Grove Grill, where he met then-sous chef Ryan Trimm. “I told him I’d work for free and I’d learn the job.”

He dressed for success that day. “I was wearing khakis and a sweater. Loafers.”

Behnke got the job. The next week, he showed up to work wearing “ripped up shorts” and purple Converse high-tops. Trimm asked him, “What happened to the kid I hired?”

He began as a dishwasher, but he loved everything about the kitchen. “It was art and it was math and it was chemistry. It was all my favorite subjects rolled into one career.”

So, Behnke enrolled in the cooking course under Betty Hall at Kingsbury Career & Technology Center. The two-year course was part of the Future Business Leaders of America program. “I graduated at the top of my class.”

As a result of taking the course, Behnke got on the line at The Grove Grill and began his cooking career.

Behnke later worked at other restaurants, including Interim and the old Sweet Grass and Southward Fare & Libations, before leaving Memphis to study at Chef Academy in Terni, Italy. He discovered it “was cheaper to move to Italy and go to school” than to attend a culinary school in Memphis.

The course was in Italian, so Behnke took notes phonetically. He’d then “go home and type it into Google Translate.”

Italy was heaven. “I fell in love 10 times a day. With women, art, food. With the culture. Really and truly, Italy is a chef’s paradise. They source most things from the region they live in.”

Also, he learned, “In order to cook good food, don’t complicate it. You want to taste each ingredient in a dish. It just proved that good food is simple and it’s local.”

Returning to Memphis, Behnke worked at Acre, Restaurant Iris, and was the catering chef for Iris owner Kelly English. Behnke also was one of the chefs at an assisted living center. “We took the menu from frozen and canned to fresh.”

Behnke, who learned about IBIS from the restaurant’s operations manger Patrick Gilbert, describes the restaurant as “eclectic.” Which he likes. “It kind of gives me free rein to do whatever I want in the kitchen. And it definitely suits my personality type. I’m an eclectic person.”

His current menu includes Greek lamb meatballs and spicy chorizo stew. Future items could be “anything from a crawfish tartlet to ugali chicha — an African spinach, basically — and curry.”

Ugali chicha comes from his travels in Africa. “The church I go to does mission trips to Africa every other year.”

He was 22 when he first climbed Mt. Kilimanjaro. “When I reached the top of ‘Kily’ I was so emotionally destroyed already from just mustering up all I could to get to the top.”

Behnke continues to march to his own drum as far as kitchen attire. “I wear Dickies 874 pants. I wear New Balance black tube socks. And then I wear SAS Guardians, an orthopedic shoe.” But no chef jacket. “I prefer a black button-down prep shirt.”

And he sports a perfectly-curled handlebar mustache. “All my life I’ve been a baby face. Clean cut. Shaven. I kind of went mountain man. Part of it was when I was going to climb Mt. Kilimanjaro in Africa last year. It’s really fucking cold on that mountain. So, I thought, ‘I’ll put a little extra hair on my body.’”

IBIS is at 314 South Main St.

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Food & Drink Hungry Memphis

Chef Jimmy Gentry Returns with The Lobbyist Restaurant

Chef Jimmy Gentry (Credit: Jimmy Gentry)

Fans of P.O. Press Public House & Provisions, take note: Chef Jimmy Gentry is about to be back in the kitchen.

Gentry announced Wednesday that he’ll be returning to the restaurant scene in early January with The Lobbyist, a new upscale restaurant on the first floor of the Chisca building Downtown at 272 South Main. The menu will showcase his specialty of globally inspired dishes, a few returning P.O. Press favorites, and an elevated wine list.

“We have put a lot of hard work into this concept and are looking forward to sharing The Lobbyist with everyone in 2023,” said Gentry, owner and executive chef at The Lobbyist and Paradox Catering and Consulting. “We will offer similar cuisine to that of P.O. Press including some old favorites, however I would say the whole menu is a bit more elevated. Stay tuned to the website and other media for the announcements of the staff.”

Inside, there are plans for an eight-person chef’s table that overlooks an open kitchen, while a private dining room can seat up to 20. The bar can accommodate 20 additional guests, and will serve a selection of craft cocktails with early and late-night happy hours.

The menu is still under wraps, but visit The Lobbyist website for updates over the next month.

Categories
Food & Drink Hungry Memphis

Pontotoc Lounge’s Second Floor to Open

The second floor of Pontotoc Lounge has a planned March 17th opening. (Credit: Elly Hazelrig)

Onwards and upwards for the Pontotoc Lounge.

Literally.

The second floor dining area of the cocktail lounge at 314 South Main is slated to open March 17th, says owner Daniel Masters.

The new space is “an extension of Pontotoc,” he says. “We opened the stairway. So, when you walk in you can access it from downstairs.”

The upstairs area features tables and booths, and will feature the same menu as Pontotoc’s downstairs section. “So the seating will be comfortable for eating. We’ll have a nice, diverse amount of small plates to choose from.”

Pontotoc is “a creative cocktail lounge. We focus our kitchen on smaller plates to share.”

Describing the upstairs space, Masters says it’s “an intimate setting.” The concept features “more of an antique nature museum feel to it. We’ve put in a lot of small fun little touches. Art work, books.”

Pontotoc Lounge’s second floor. (Credit: Elly Hazelrig)

And, he says, “all nature based. And in the bathroom, there’s a TV playing old nature documentaries from the ‘70s.”

The “fun touches” include a lot of artwork featuring birds and two different nature murals.

Items upstairs are “things that I’ve gotten at at antique shops and on Etsy,” Masters says.

“The carpenters built custom booths. The color scheme is pretty diverse. It moves around.”

The building housing the Pontotoc Lounge was built in 1933. “It’s two floors with a basement. The upstairs dining area is approximately 1,700 square feet and can seat up to 40 guests.”

Masters doesn’t want to give too much away about the new upstairs space. “I want to leave a lot to the experience. I don’t want to put too much ahead of it so people are somewhat surprised. I want them to go in with a blank canvas, in a way.”

Pontotoc Lounge’s new second floor area provides an intimate space for dining and drinking. (Credit: Elly Hazelrig)