Seasonal and regional is in the spotlight at Limelight, thanks to the restaurant’s executive chef DJ Pitts.
“We’re just doing something that is seasonal, regional, prepared well, seasoned well,” says Pitts, 52.
With his background in French, Italian, and Mediterranean cooking, Pitts is also “pulling in different techniques, influences.”
“We have a corn soup on the menu right now. Very simply made. It’s corn purée. We serve that with fermented corn and a little bit of garlic oil. A very simple and straightforward example of what we do with a seasonal ingredient at the height of its freshness.”
Also on his summer menu is a steamed littleneck clams dish. “This dates back to where I come from on the East Coast.
“We’re doing a steamed clams with a mojo verde [sauce]. It’s very bright, punchy. The basis of it is cilantro, jalapeño, and garlic. And it’s got vinegar in there that kind of gives it that punch. I think that, for me, is a personal kind of seasonal item from growing up in Connecticut and having clams in the summertime.”
His grandmother, who was from Russia, was a cooking influence when Pitts was growing up in Waterbury, Connecticut. “She was always cooking three meals a day.”
Watching her cook was “something that held some fascination for me at that point in my life.”
His first “hands-on thing” was making pierogi when he was 10.
“Not only did we have a garden, but my grandmother would go foraging for mushrooms. And, being on the coast, I had the opportunity to go clamming. All these experiences led me to have an interest in a culinary career.”
Pitts often cooked for himself and his brother while his mother, who was a nurse, was at work.
He continued to cook after he moved to Memphis — where his father is from — to major in psychology at University of Memphis. Pitts cooked at functions for his fraternity, Delta Chi. Fried chicken was his specialty — thanks to his other grandmother, who was from Memphis. She cooked “more Southern staples: fried chicken, greens, spaghetti.”
Pitts changed his career path after his brother died. “I wanted to find something that not only could I make a career out of, but also felt passionately about.”
He enrolled at New York City’s Institute of Culinary Education. “When I got there I started to excel at it pretty quickly. And that pretty much reinforced that I made the right decision.”
Pitts went on to work in New York for 10 years. Chef Michael Romano at Union Square Cafe was one of his biggest influences.
In 2005, Pitts opened his own restaurant, 626 Douglas, in Wichita, Kansas, where he served “new American regional farm-to-table” cuisine.
He worked for nine years in Nashville before returning to Memphis, and worked at Catherine & Mary’s and Andrew Michael Italian Kitchen.
In January, Pitts became executive chef at the locally-owned Limelight, where he created the spring and summer menus. “They have a seasonal tree in the middle of the dining room. And when that tree changes, that menu changes. Right now, I think the theme of it is an olive tree.”
Pitts loves cooking seasonally, especially in the summertime. “I think this menu is very reflective of that. We have this crostini with spicy eggplant with fresh minced green onion over the top and some saba. Our market salad changes. Right now, it’s heirloom tomato with burrata cheese, compressed celery, and some nice bottarga for a little savory note.
“I try to bring in more things and feature different things. We do have a small footprint, so our menu has to be tighter and more well thought out.”
Pitts takes advantage of the little herb garden in front of Limelight. When they conceptualized the Germantown restaurant, the owners wanted Limelight to have “that farmhouse feel. It’s easy to take that vibe and make it reflective of the menu.”
For someone who once hated to cook, Tuyen (pronounced “Twin”) Le is doing an awfully good job at her restaurant, Tuyen’s Asian Bistro.
The Vietnamese restaurant at 288 North Cleveland was packed on a recent Wednesday evening. People were ordering items, including her popular egg rolls and tofu lemongrass, from her extensive menu.
These were two of the popular items at her family’s old restaurant, Saigon Le, which closed eight years ago. Le, who does the cooking at Tuyen’s Asian Bistro, was a server, not a cook, at Saigon Le, which was at 51 North Cleveland.
And Le was a notorious server. “I used to be the mean one,” she says. “I’m the nice one now.”
Her mother did all the cooking when Le was growing up in Vietnam. “Just home-cooking meals. Vietnamese traditional food like hot-and-sour catfish soup. Homemade stuff.”
But when her family moved to Memphis, both of her parents had to go to work. And Le, who was about 15 at the time, had to do the cooking for the family because her mother told her to. “She said, ‘You need to cook this. You need to cook that.’ She just bossed me around. But I never liked it. She just forced me to do it.”
Le got a cosmetology license and was working at Regis Salon when her mother opened Saigon Le in 1992. Her sister, who also is named Tuyen (pronounced “Ting”) Le, and their sister-in-law worked with their mom at the restaurant. “They used to fight. Mama called me back. ‘Can you help?’”
Le thought she was only going to be there one day. “I stuck with her for 30-something years. We all worked together until later when the restaurant went down eight years ago.”
Notable Saigon Le customers included Woody Harrelson, Cybill Shepherd, and Jeff Buckley from MTV. “Nobody else in town had the little-bitty egg roll wrapped in lettuce and the sauce like Saigon Le.”
About four years ago, Le opened another restaurant, “New Orleans Seafood,” at the Tuyen’s Asian Bistro address. She served crab legs, lobster, and other items. “No Asian food.”
The ingredients she needed to make the type food at Saigon Le make became more expensive, she says. “After Covid, everything went up. I don’t have the money like I used to.”
People wanted Saigon Le back, so about a year ago, Le opened Tuyen’s Asian Bistro. “I spent $50,000. I bought a new air conditioner. I have to fix the floor. Get the gas stove.”
She narrowed her menu to just Vietnamese food instead of the additional Chinese cuisine she served at Saigon Le. The new restaurant is “very tiny. Only 10 tables.”
But the Saigon Le favorites are making customers happy. Tofu lemongrass is “lemongrass and the seasoning, garlic.” The noodle bowl is “house noodle bowl with egg roll, real pork.” Yellow egg noodles with wonton soup is another popular item. “I’ve got the full menu. I’ve got fried kimchi, shrimp on a stick. I’ve got lotus salad and seaweed salad.”
Le uses “fresh ingredients. I cook with fresh garlic, fresh sesame oil. I don’t use anything frozen or canned food.”
And, she adds, “I got all the customers back.”
She admits she had a gambling addiction when she was at Saigon Le. And that was evident when she was at the restaurant. She didn’t like being a server, but her mother forced her to be one, she says. “You can’t say no to Mama. Just do what you have to do.”
Le wasn’t “mean, mean, mean” to customers. “I didn’t throw the food at them. You give the customers food, but you don’t care how they eat, how they feel.”
She changed after she substituted cooking for gambling 10 years ago. “I didn’t know I was good at it until everything I cooked turned out to be good.”
Instead of playing blackjack, Le is now cooking, serving, or greeting people at the door at Tuyen’s Asian Bistro. Her attitude toward her customers is a lot different than what it was at Saigon Le, she says. “Just love them and treat them nice like family. All the customers are family.”
Francisco Rivera and
Martha Resendiz (Photo: Michael Donahue)
Picosos means spicy in Spanish, says Francisco Rivera.
But his restaurant, which goes by that name, could easily be called pollo al carbon because smoked grilled chicken is the signature item.
“They’re marinated whole chickens,” says Rivera, 24, who owns Picosos with his mother, Martha Resendiz. “We slice them down the middle and we marinate them in guajillo sauce. It’s a dry chili. And we rehydrate it in water and blend it and strain it. So, it gives it a really red, vibrant color. We marinate them a few hours before we cook them.
“We just salt them as they’re cooking. We have a big smoker. So, we probably do about 20 chickens at a time in the smoker. And they’re in there for about two hours.”
Actually, charcoal-grilled chicken would be the exact translation of pollo al carbon, Rivera says. “We actually bring our charcoal from Mexico. That kind of changes things a little bit.”
They get the charcoal, or carbón, from a small distributor in Monterrey. “They bring us whole charcoal — like lump charcoal — in big pieces. It’s very nice. It burns for a long time and gives the food a nice taste. I want to say they bring it to us every three weeks. And they bring us probably about 400 pounds.”
Grilled chickens are available on Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays. “They go from 10:30 until probably about 4. They run out about 4 or 5. It’s actually better if you call [901-323-7003] and say you want one. And give us time for you to pick it up. We’ll set it aside for you. That’s what most people do.”
The good news for grilled chicken lovers is Rivera is planning to open a daily buffet bar in the next two to three months. “The smoked chickens will be part of the buffet and probably will come with chorizo, rice, beans. And then an open salad bar.”
His dad, the late Oscar Rivera, began doing smoked chickens in his hometown of Querétaro, Mexico, Rivera says. “He’d probably been doing it for about 15 years before we got here.”
Oscar continued to do the chickens after they moved to Memphis, and he opened his first restaurant, Chilitos, in Mike’s Express, a gas station on Macon Road, in 2006. “We got to Memphis in 2005. And it was just my parents looking for us to have a better life.”
When he was about 7 years old, Francisco began helping after his family opened its next restaurant, called Los Picosos, at another address on Summer Avenue. By the time he was 13, he was helping prep and manage the grill, which included smoking chickens. And when he was 17, Francisco was helping his dad run the kitchen in their current location at 3937 Summer.
“I love being in the kitchen. I don’t know if it’s because I’ve been around it so long, but it’s something I really enjoy.”
Francisco never went to culinary school. “I just kind of learned while I worked. Since I really enjoyed it, I’d always be watching videos on cooking and things like that. Just kind of learning as I went.”
Picosos sells a lot more than grilled chicken. “We sell a lot of carnitas. That’s fried pork. Like pulled pork. And we make those every day.
“Another thing we sell are these big trays of meat. They’re called parrilladas. They’re enough to feed 10 people. This comes with all five of the meats we sell: carnitas, barbacoa, chicken, steak, and marinated pork.”
The type of food they sell is not “from a certain region.” But, he says, “We’ve tried to keep it as authentic as possible. It’s more like what you would find in small stands in Mexico. I wouldn’t necessarily say it’s street food, but it’s closer to street food than what other places would be. We sell things called sopes, gorditas, tacos.”
Picosos also does a lot of catering, Francisco says. “Just last week we did a catering job for 600 people.”
Serving cold gazpacho soup on a hot afternoon at the recent Loving Local fundraiser was inspired.
So, it’s no surprise the chef who created it was Terrance Whitley, executive chef/co-founder of Inspire Community Café.
“I knew it was going to be hot,” says Whitley, 37. And he knew he had to make enough to serve 250 people.
Whitley was aware Central BBQ was going to serve meat. So, he thought, “I won’t feel bad about bringing something cold. Give everybody a little refreshing moment from being in the sun.”
Taking part in the Project Green Fork fundraiser was a given. Whitley, who is “always looking to help out,” began doing volunteer work at St. Patrick Catholic Church when he was 10 years old. “St. Patrick’s had an after-school program. We used to do little stuff like rake leaves and community clean-up projects.”
Terrance Whitley (Photo: Michael Donahue)
A native Memphian, Whitley grew up nearby in Foote Homes and Cleaborn Homes. “I needed help when I was a kid. My family was poverty-stricken. So, I just wanted to help people the way I wanted somebody to help me.”
As a child, Whitley was able to get something to eat, thanks to St. Patrick’s, which passed out food to the homeless. “I knew St. Patrick’s had peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. And I knew when I went in church they were passing out doughnuts and stuff like that. I was just trying to look for sustainable food ’cause we didn’t have much at home.”
Some days when he was young, Whitley went without food. “We were down bad.”
On those days, he would “just go to sleep, man. And, hopefully, the days are brighter tomorrow. Some days we just didn’t have it.”
Whitley began cooking when he was in his mid-20s. “I ended up realizing one day that I was a bum and that I needed a job. But I didn’t want to flip burgers. I didn’t want to do any warehouse things.”
He focused on getting a restaurant job. “I just knew I wanted to be in a position to move up and acquire a skill.”
Whitley became a dishwasher at South of Beale on South Main. “The one dude who is really responsible for my cooking career was my head chef, Carl White, but everybody calls him ‘C.J.’ I was washing dishes one day and he just says, ‘Hey, man. You want to learn how to cook?’
“The first thing he told me was, ‘You see this steak? Pick it up. Put a little oil on it. And salt and pepper the shit out of it. Throw it on the grill.’ Once he threw it on the grill, it inspired me. The first time I stepped on that line, it just became natural.”
Whitley eventually moved to other restaurants until he and his “mentor/tutor,” Kristin Fox-Trautman, came up with the idea of Inspire Community Café. Fox-Trautman wanted them to create “something cool to give back to the community.”
They opened Inspire Community Café at 510 Tillman Street, Suite 110, in January 2019.
As for the name, Whitley says, “We wanted to inspire change.” The focus was on healthy food, so Whitley looked for “creative ways” to use healthier ingredients. “We don’t have a fryer and we don’t have a soda machine. And we use olive oil and vegetable stock in all our stuff.
“The menu came from Kristin just traveling around. She’d come back with all these ideas and I just went on and executed them. Like they went to Costa Rica and found out the way they do black beans.”
Popular Inspire items include the Costa Rican black bean, roasted sweet potato, and quinoa bowl; barbecue chicken quesadillas; and the Strawberry Field Salad with strawberries, candied pecans, feta cheese, and red onions. And everything is under $10.
For now, Whitley is just watching the restaurant grow. “I want it to be profitable. And I want it to be more of a staple in the Memphis community. I want to make sure when it’s all said and done, Inspire Community Café is a household name to the people of Memphis.”
Fino’s will open a second location — Fino’s Corner Market — hopefully later this month in Germantown in what was formerly Happy Glaze Donuts at 7781 Farmington Boulevard Suite 101.
Fino’s will continue to operate at 1853 Madison Avenue.
The restaurant group that owns Fino’s, as well as Restaurant Iris, Second Line, and Panta, already purchased the Happy Glaze brand. They will continue to sell doughnuts out of Fino’s Corner Market. And they will expand into opening a doughnut food truck.
Fino’s Corner Market will sell the majority of Fino’s menu. It will also sell grab-and-go items created both by the team and other local vendors.
Owner Kelly English says, “We are thrilled to start strategically looking at what the Fino’s brand can be, starting in Germantown. Sandwiches are one of my favorite food groups. Look for a robust grab-and-go offering as well as pizza and pasta. With the purchase of Happy Glaze, and the Fino’s expansion, our team is now able to offer a much wider range of options to better fit the needs of our ever-growing and changing city. Covid and online ordering changed dining forever. And we are thrilled to be more laser focused on meeting those changes with great options in all of our dining locations.”
Michael Donahue chows down on caviar at Tiger and Peacock. (Photo: Samuel X. Cicci)
Breakfast might be the most important meal of the day, but there’s just something special about the midnight snack. It could be a scarfed-down handful of Goldfish or a drunkenly crafted peanut butter sandwich, but sometimes that late-night munchie hits just right. Of course, there’s no need to restrict yourself to chips or microwavable meals. Memphis restaurants are here to pick up the slack with some inspired menus. It’s not just bacon and eggs or greasy burgers (although we love those, too). Last year’s late-night dining adventure included visits to old favorites like Alex’s Tavern and RP Tracks, and relative newcomer Pantà. This time around, we found that Memphis’ nocturnal kitchens continue to whip out a wide variety of after-dark cuisine, from tater tot nachos to caviar, with a little bit of traditional Irish cooking in between. This year, our Flyer food writers had themselves another late night to check out three restaurants that cater to the hungry insomniacs and night owls among us.
Matt Martin, Zach Miller, and Chad Allen Barton in the Black Lodge kitchen. (Photo: Michael Donahue)
EAT at Black Lodge
There’s a lot of things you can do at Black Lodge. You can watch or rent movies, of course. You can play a wide assortment of board games. You can participate in a medieval combat tournament or hop on to an arcade machine. Or you can just hang out with your friends.
But something else that you can do at Black Lodge is EAT. And there are plenty of fun snacks to be had from the menu the longtime video rental store launched last year. And with a midnight closing during the week and a 3 a.m. cutoff on Friday and Saturday, it might be a Midtowner’s best bet for a late food run.
Zach Miller, kitchen manager and chef at Black Lodge, began working at EAT a year ago. As for creating dishes, he says, “I was going off what was created by our guest chef and co-owner James Blair. He’s like our special guest chef. He comes in for dinner and movies and for special things. Or catering, as well, for parties as such.”
Blair and Chad Allen Barton, a Black Lodge owner, came up with the basic menu, Miller says. “And I kind of went off of that and I created my own things.”
Miller has a philosophy about what kind of dishes he creates for Black Lodge. “I don’t want to create something that looks complex on the plate. Something that is complex, for sure, but it looks simple. I don’t want people paying attention to their plate. I want them paying attention to the screen.”
Blair came up with the name EAT for the restaurant, Black Lodge owner Matt Martin previously told the Flyer. He described it as “one part kind of a throwback name” to those “little diners that say things like Eats or Joe’s Eats on Times Square, mostly in older movies.”
The name also was inspired by John Carpenter’s 1988 movie, They Live. “In that movie, subliminal messages are hidden behind everything.” Roddy Piper, who plays the main character, uses special glasses to see through everything, Martin says. “When he looks at a menu he sees the word ‘food.’”
When we looked at the Black Lodge menu, we saw a variety of tasty treats just waiting to be ordered. Breakfast is served all day, including the delectable chicken and waffles. The breakfast sandwiches, in a fun twist, use waffles instead of bread or biscuits to make for some sweet snacks. The waffle grilled cheese, for example, combines melted Brie with chopped nuts, tamarind sauce, and a drizzle of honey. But the more savory option tosses bacon, ham, or tofu with cheesy scrambled eggs and house sauce.
Tot-chos at Black Lodge accompanied by a Ron Swanson cocktail (Photo: Samuel X. Cicci)
The most exciting item, perhaps the crown jewel of Black Lodge’s menu, is the tot-cho bowl. Think nachos, but with … tater tots? The salty, crispy tots provided the perfect bedrock for helpings of nacho-ey goodness, with slices of bacon and jalapeños decorating our bowl, along with a healthy portion of avocado and sour cream. Our forks flew wildly through the bowl, and we found that we’d demolished the dish before the Lodge’s featured movie, Studio Ghibli’s Ponyo, even made it through the intro.
Black Lodge is located at 405 N. Cleveland.
Let’s Get Layed caviar and chips at Tiger and Peacock (Photo: Samuel X. Cicci)
Tiger and Peacock
Ride the elevator to the top of The Memphian hotel, and prepare to set foot in a bar that our colleague Bruce VanWygarden once described as looking “as if Alice in Wonderland fell down the rabbit hole, met Jerry Garcia at the bottom, and they decided to form an interior design team.” There’s a full assortment of funky decorations at Tiger and Peacock, from Debra the zebra standing behind the bar to oodles of anthropomorphic portraiture and bright, snazzy colors. It’s the perfect place to throw back a cocktail.
But people do eat, as well as drink, at Tiger and Peacock. Manager Harvey Grillo describes it as “a relaxing and upscale lounge. Almost like a speakeasy.”
“The tables are smaller,” he continues. “It doesn’t really warrant a full dinner atmosphere. It’s light bite snacking. The plates aren’t full entrees and things like that.”
It’s not a restaurant like the hotel’s Complicated Pilgrim downstairs. “It takes a little bit of trying to get full upstairs since they are small bites,” says fellow Tiger and Peacock manager Cat Turowski.
And, she adds, “Because the table space is pretty small, usually they’ll get a plate or two. And they’ll get another plate or two. And then get another plate or two.”
But, Turowski says, “Primarily everybody comes up there to enjoy the atmosphere, enjoy the decor, and have a good time.”
Not all Tiger and Peacock dishes are small, though, Grillo says. “There are dishes that push more toward the dinner option.”
The sake marinated short rib is one of them, he says. “It’s my personal favorite and it’s everyone else’s personal favorite,” Turowski adds. “The sake glaze gives it a little bit of a sweet taste and the sriracha aioli gives it a little bit of zing. And it’s very tender and moist. It kind of checks all the boxes.”
Scott Donnelly, executive chef of Complicated Pilgrim at The Memphian, also makes the cuisine for Tiger and Peacock. Asked his inspiration for the Tiger and Peacock dishes, Donnelly says he didn’t want the “usual rigmarole of sliders” and other typical items on the menu. He wanted “something different and somewhat quirky. Like the tiger and peacock.”
The blueberry grilled cheese is a good example. “When I got there, they had a patty melt, which I wasn’t too fond of.” He wanted an “elevated version” of a grilled cheese sandwich. “I’m like a grilled cheese junkie.” So, he added the blueberry ginger jam, which they make in house, to green apples and Brie cheese. That jam really “sets it off.”
For a fancier midnight feast, look no further than Let’s Get Layed, Tiger and Peacock’s classy solution to the late-night munchies. The dish matches premium caviar with a bag of good ol’ salty Lay’s potato chips. That might seem like a weird pairing, but the odd couple has long made for a formidable duo in caviar circles, with the salty, almost buttery crunchiness of the chips balancing out caviar’s brinier tendencies. For a couple of sweet hours, it felt as if we occupied a higher tax bracket. While caviar might not be our go-to snack every night, Tiger and Peacock embraces a creative, refined approach to late-night dining that offers something unique to Memphis.
The kitchen is open until midnight at Tiger and Peacock. “I’ve seen folks order food at 11:45 on weekends,” Grillo says. But, he adds, Tiger and Peacock closes at midnight in consideration of the hotel guests beneath them. “We allow folks to wrap up what they’re doing while we start the closing process.”
They have a grace period of about 30 minutes while he starts making his rounds, Grillo says. “Thanking everybody who’s been there. And if they are hotel guests, they’re welcome to take drinks and things back up to their room.”
Non-guests can take their food and drinks to the lobby. “Food is a little bit more messy to transport down the elevator, but I’m here for it. I’m able to help.”
Usually, he says, “They end up taking a cocktail or a bottle of wine downstairs. Especially old friends who haven’t seen each other for a while.” They also can relocate to “late late late bars near us like Zebra Lounge.”
Tiger and Peacock is located at 21 Cooper St.
Fish and chips at Bog & Barley (Photo: Bog & Barley)
Bog & Barley
If you need a bit more Ireland in your snacks, you’re in luck. D.J. Naylor, co-owner of Celtic Crossing with his wife Jamie, cut the ribbon on his East Memphis venture Bog & Barley several months ago. And the new building is spectacular, an upscale Irish pub that has soaring wooden ceilings, plenty of Irish art and knickknacks, and a 24-foot-long bar on the ground floor. Everything in the space was sourced from Ireland, with Naylor looking to his roots when creating his new Irish pub.
“It’s an Irish restaurant, but we wanted it to be totally different from Celtic Crossing,” says Naylor. “It’s more upscale, we’ve focused on providing a high-quality experience, but it’s also a really approachable spot to either grab a drink or celebrate a special occasion.”
Open until 11 p.m. during the week and midnight on Friday and Saturday, Bog & Barley provides an Irish alternative to late-night diners. Reny Alfonso created the menu and looks to mix traditional Irish staples with his own personal flair. “You’ve got the typical dishes that people might think of: shepherd’s pie, bangers and mash, fish and chips,” says Alfonso. “So I left those alone. So we’ve got those Irish ingredients, but we’ve got a lot of global influences too, harkening back to a kind of bistro mentality. I use a lot of French techniques here.” Alfonso’s style can be seen in many of the restaurant’s entrees, from jumbo lump crab cakes to beer cured salmon, and his creations merit multiple revisits to Bog & Barley.
But when in Ireland, they say, do as the Irish do, so we plumped for the bangers and mash, which uses sausages from Newman Farm in Missouri. “I only get pork from Newman Farm,” adds Alfonso. “The quality is amazing.” And he’s right. The sausages pack in a soft freshness, juices sizzling out and dripping into the velvety mashed potatoes they sit atop. A blanket of caramelized onion gravy adds a nice finishing touch to the whole thing, the perfect cherry on top for a meal that could go easily with a couple of beers.
Auld Bog stout at Bog & Barley (Photo: Bog & Barley)
Or one beer, in particular: Soul & Spirits Brewery created a signature beer, the Auld Bog, as the restaurant’s house brew. “I might think of it as a lighter version of Guinness,” says Naylor. And a special print behind the bar can create foam images in the beer’s head, akin to latte art. Mine was served with the Bog & Barley logo, but Naylor said that it can do custom images as well. But sorry, readers, no Michael Donahue beer art just yet. Maybe during our next late-night adventure.
Bog & Barley is located at 6150 Poplar Ave., Suite 124.
David, Tracy, and Sidney Murrell (Photo: Michael Donahue)
I can personally vouch for at least two Dancing Peppers Salsa flavors.
I took a jar of Memphis style, a barbecue sauce-flavored salsa, to a dinner party. It was a huge hit. The hostess couldn’t get enough.
The next day, I took a jar of the mild chili lime to a kindergarten graduation reception. A friend loved a particular taste, which she couldn’t identify. It sets the salsa apart, she says. (I later found out it’s the fresh poblano peppers.)
This is all probably great news to native Memphians David and Tracy Murrell, Dancing Peppers Salsa owners and founders.
David, 66, who was an engineer at Sharp Manufacturing Company, retired as a lab technician at ABB. Tracy, 59, was at International Paper for 11 years.
Dancing Peppers Salsa “is a hobby that we turned into a side business,” Tracy says. Their son, Sidney, 26, handles the social media and deliveries.
Photo: David Murrell
David got the salsa bug in the 1980s after trying Pace salsa for the first time during a trip to Texas. “I had never had salsa before,” he says.
He began to make his own salsa by looking at the ingredients on the jar. “The main ingredient was canned tomatoes. I also used tomato sauce, a little tomato paste. I heated it up and put in onions and garlic. It started with that. My main spice probably at that time was cumin. And chili powder and salt and pepper. No cilantro or anything. Just a basic type of salsa.”
David didn’t get his salsa to taste like Pace’s until he added bell peppers. But he discovered new spices, including Mexican oregano, on a business trip to Monterrey, Mexico. He began adding those to his salsa.
Tracy was a fan of David’s salsa. “I loved it,” she says. “I’d rather have chips and salsa than popcorn and Coke.”
David kept tweaking. And he acquired a name for himself. “I was kind of just ‘the salsa guy.’ That’s what I did.”
In late 2010, he dropped off a jar of his salsa at the old Easy Way produce distribution office on Mendenhall. He also left a note with the secretary that read, “If you’re interested in putting this in your stores, give me a call.”
A month later, he got a call from the owner of Easy Way. He said he wanted 50 cases. He asked David, “How far along are you with this? Have you got a label? Have you got a co-packer?”
David replied: “I have nothing but a recipe.”
But David eventually got his ducks in a row and began selling his salsa under the brand name Rojo Gold in 2011. But he later rebranded because the name was too close to another company.
The Murrells’ medium salsa, which has a pepper blend to give it a little kick, was the first flavor. “It took me forever to get the first one made. The medium hot recipe came out in about a week. I added some habanero and some chipotle powder.”
The Memphis style flavor originated after David and Tracy visited Memphis Italian Festival. They were still hungry when they got home, so David pureed some commercial barbecue sauce with some of their salsa. They loved it.
The barbecue sauce recipe he now uses is based on one from his friend’s mother. “I always loved her barbecue sauce. It’s like our Memphis style. Sweet and spicy.”
His recipe includes tomatoes, jalapeños, brown sugar, white sugar, molasses, onions, garlic, and then the barbecue spices.
Mild chili lime is the latest Dancing Peppers Salsa flavor. In addition to fresh poblano peppers, the salsa includes fresh onion, garlic, and lime juice. It also includes ancho chili pepper.
Naomi’s homestyle marinara, which uses San Marzano tomatoes, is just the latest salsa idea from the Murrells. And the blend is based on one of David’s mother’s Italian recipes.
Dancing Peppers Salsa is now in about 175 stores, including selected Kroger stores.
David has other Dancing Peppers Salsa business ideas dancing around in his head. But he’s not ready to reveal all of them just yet. For now, he’d like to get Dancing Peppers Salsa into more states. But, he says, “I don’t want to get stressed out. I like low stress. I want to keep it manageable.”
But the only thing you’re going to hunt there is maybe a second helping of huckleberry compote.
The “Hunt Club” part of the name was a joke, says owner Josh Conley. Etowah actually features dinners four times a year hosted by Conley and Cole Jeanes, chef/owner of Kinfolk Memphis. The seasonal dinners feature top chefs from around the country.
“Etowah” is a Muscogee (Creek) Nation Native-American word that translates to “city” or “place,” Conley says.
Jordan Rainbolt, chef/owner of Native Root in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, will be the featured chef May 27th at The Ravine.
Conley and Jeanes held a couple of Etowah dinners in Arkansas, where Conley and his wife bought a home. But, he says, “The concept makes more sense in Memphis. Memphis is such a great city for food concepts. I’ve always loved Memphis and Memphians because they get really excited about cool stuff. And it’s such a supportive town.”
Conley, who has worked in and out of the food and beverage industry, says, “This is a passion project.”
The idea began several years ago when he and a friend planned to open a bar. “We wanted a place that was really devoted to seasonally-based cocktails.”
Then, he says, “We got really excited about this idea of drinking and eating with the seasons.”
That brick-and-mortar concept never got off the ground, but later, Conley and Jeanes talked “over a glass of wine one night. I started telling him about this thing I wanted to do.”
One of their first dinners was held in a soybean field. Others were held in a parking garage and an artist’s studio.
They ask the featured chef one question: “What does this season — the one we’re doing the dinner in — taste like to you?”
The dinners are “all centered around food memories.” So, for May, he asks, “What does May taste like? What does it smell like? What texture?”
The chef is asked to feature something “special to the particular place and time and season.”
The number of diners “depends on the space” and what the chef’s concept is. The one in May will seat “80 to 100 people,” Conley says. “They usually sell out pretty quickly.”
Jeanes doesn’t cook at the events. “I’m support for the kitchen and food side of this,” he says. “When they come in, I provide them with a kitchen and make sure they get everything taken care of.”
May is the perfect time for Rainbolt to be the featured Etowah chef, she says. It’s “probably my favorite month.”
It’s “the end of spring, not quite summer yet.”
It’s also perfect because of “the produce that’s available,” she says. Spring “sets the tone for the rest of the year. And it’s just this momentum of produce and flowers starting to peak.”
Her restaurant “focuses on regionality and locality but also highlights Indigenous foods that are from this part of the country and world. So, a lot of my menu highlights Appalachian with Indigenous ties or how they overlap.”
Her five-course Etowah menu will include a seared and roasted venison loin with a whiskey-washed tallow pan sauce that will be served with dandelion greens. Dessert will be a huckleberry compote with native blue corn crust.
Response for the Etowah dinners has been great, Jeanes says. “It’s just a great overall experience. It’s tailored to make people feel good. We’re being very hospitable. The food is great.”
This is a one-time-only dinner, Conley says. “It’s experiencing a chef in a different way than you normally would, even if you went to their restaurant.
“These menus are love letters. And this letter happens to be addressed to a season.”
You might say Andrew Banker’s introduction to coffee was “slow roast.”
“Growing up, I would love just the cheap coffee and putting chocolate in it with my dad,” he says.
“My first real cup I enjoyed and really appreciated was once I got married. My brother-in-law gave me some fresh roasted coffee and it opened up a whole new world for me.”
Banker is now the founder of Vinculo Coffee Roasters, which offers fresh roasted coffee from Mexico and Ethiopia.
Born in Collierville, Banker used various coffee makers, but none of the coffee was satisfying. Then his brother-in-law Jake Gaines brought him coffee beans “just roasted within the past 30 days. The flavor was very unique and I’d never experienced that. So many more flavors were coming out.”
Banker and Gaines began roasting beans with a ReadyPop popcorn machine, which they put on top of a gas grill. “We needed the heat to get the beans to the right temperature. We’d be on his back porch cranking the popcorn popper and waiting for the first crack in the coffee-roasting process. As you crank, it rotates the coffee beans so there’s even cooking of the beans.
“When you get the beans to the right temperature, it sounds like a soft popcorn crack. That’s when you know you’re at the point that it’s coffee worth drinking.”
They made coffee with the popcorn popper and gas grill five or 10 times “just to experiment and have fun. Then, a few months later, Santa Claus brought us each a one-pound roaster. It’s called a Behmor. It looks like a small toaster oven. It has a cylinder inside of it and it roasts up to one pound.”
Banker’s coffee was called “Buddy’s” and “901 Roasted” before he came up with “Vinculo.” He got the idea for the name on a church mission trip to Mexico. “The church that connected us with Mexico is named Iglesias de Vínculo, which translates to ‘connection.’ They connect their congregation to God. Because they connected me with coffee farmers, it fit organically and naturally as a new name.”
His mission pastor introduced him to farmers in coffee-growing regions in Mexico. “He connected us with a guy in Pueblo and a guy in Xalpa. My first trip I bought very little beans. It was just to see the culture, see their setup.”
Banker recently received 2,000 pounds of coffee beans from Mexico. An even larger shipment from Ethiopia is due in a few months. With Mexican beans, coffee lovers get a “very smooth, nutty, chocolate, cocoa flavor coming out of the coffee.” Ethiopian beans provide a “very fruity, very floral, very bright cup of coffee.”
He plans to introduce Ethiopian coffee in a few weeks and Peruvian in a few months.
Banker first began roasting coffee commercially in 2019 after his family opened Happy Glaze Donuts in Germantown. He no longer roasts there, but he continues to sell his bagged coffee as well as his chocolate-covered coffee beans at the shop.
He now works with a commercial roaster in New Albany, MS, to create his roasted coffee beans.
Banker’s coffee is also sold at The Ginger’s Bread & Co. It can be ordered online at vinculocoffee.com.
What sets Vinculo’s coffee apart? “I think the intentionality of trying to be supportive of the coffee community where we’re getting the coffee is the biggest differentiation.
“Building those relationships, we can help those farmers produce coffee better.”
And buying the “fresher and higher-quality coffee beans” gives “a great cup to the consumers.”
Banker wants to place his coffee in more locations, including grocery stores. “I talked with a brewery in town about using our beans.”
His future plans go beyond coffee. Through his Peruvian contacts, he can buy “cacao” or cocoa beans to make cocoa — “a new avenue down the road,” says Banker, who adds, “I’m open to any door that is waiting to be opened.”
By the way, Banker isn’t a heavy coffee drinker. “Only just maybe a cup or two a day. I’ve never been an addict of coffee. But I consider myself a coffee snob, for sure.”
James Williams, Gary Windham, and Andy Johnson (Photo: Michael Donahue)
Spice Krewe isn’t a group of Mardi Gras revelers, but it does include three “kings.”
James Williams, Andy Johnson, and Gary Windham are founders of the Memphis-based spice company, which specializes in seasonings for crawfish and seafood boils.
Spice Krewe is one of the sponsors of Donuts & Dogs 5 Miler!, a fundraiser for Streetdog Foundation, that will be held April 23rd at Wiseacre Brewing Company at 398 South B.B. King Boulevard. Free samples as well as for-sale products will be featured.
Williams, 45, said his love for crawfish boils began when he was majoring in finance at Mississippi State University. His fraternity would do crawfish boils on Super Bulldog weekend. “It was basically the start of spring season. We would do big crawfish cookouts.”
They used commercial crawfish boil seasonings. “Nothing gourmet and nothing out of the ordinary.”
After moving to Memphis in 2000, Williams and his wife, Keshia, attended local crawfish boils, but the portions were small. They’d only get a pound or so of crawfish with some sausage and a piece of corn. “Definitely not what I was used to, eating crawfish.”
In 2010, Williams began holding his own crawfish boils at home. About 15 people got together and cooked around 40 pounds of crawfish. Team members cut up the potatoes, garlic, lemon, and oranges. They just used a commercial seasoning.
As the crowd began growing, Williams and his team began experimenting with seasonings.
They began ordering their crawfish seasoning from a company in Louisiana. But they had to scramble when their order was short in 2018 because their crawfish cookout was the next day. They came up with their own blend off the top of their heads.
It was that same year when the team decided to create its own unique blend. They wanted a mixture of Cajun, which is more salt, cayenne, and black pepper, and Creole, which includes mustard, coriander, and oregano.
“We built a spreadsheet. We took a bunch of Creole seasoning blends and a bunch of Cajun seasoning blends and put them across our spreadsheet and found commonalities where we could tweak.”
They eventually came up with their own seasoning blend. “It’s the mix of spices that are in it. They’re very unique in the mixture. But I would say it’s a little more of a savory flavor than just heat and salt.”
Williams, Johnson, and Windham launched Spice Krewe on Feb. 21st — Fat Tuesday — 2023. “It’s pretty much online only. We’re working on getting shelf space in some places.”
Crawfish season can last from January to July, but Spice Krewe seasonings also are good on “shrimp, fish, chicken, any kind of meat. A lot of people put it on eggs, hash browns, and in soups.”
Spice Krewe now offers four blends. According to the website, Bayou Blend is “an all-purpose Creole seasoning that’s the perfect mix of spicy and savory. This blend is carefully crafted to complement any dish, whether you’re cooking up some jambalaya or just adding some extra flavor to your roasted vegetables.”
Bayou Burn is “hotter than the Bayou Blend and gives your dishes an extra boost of heat.”
Bayou Seasoned Salt is “a tamer version of our Bayou Blend, perfect for those who prefer less heat and more salt.”
The Bayou Boil bag is “specifically designed for seafood boils. This blend is a perfect mix of seasonings that take the flavor of your seafood boil to the next level.”
Williams has already come up with 55 more seasonings. “I thought what we’d try to do is one or two actual releases a year. But maybe put out three or four or five or six as samples for people to try and do market research. What works best.”
They’re also discussing offshoot products like roux. “Maybe even dry mixes. Like doing our own jambalaya.”
And they’ve created a Spice Krewe step-by-step crawfish cooking method for beginners. They also offer names of places where people can buy pots, boilers, and other crawfish cooking equipment. “It’s not just about being a spice company. We want to bring the experience to people.”
