Tag: Grace

Categories
Food & Wine Food & Drink

Fresh Starts

CREDIT: Justin Fox Burks

Marley’s, the new Caribbean-themed restaurant on Beale, has quite a hurdle to clear. Taking over the space that once housed the Plush Club (shut down last spring for being a public nuisance) means fighting the considerable stigma surrounding the building. “We want to prove to the city of Memphis that this is a legitimate business, and we’re reputable people here to do right,” owner Shaundra Glass says.

After getting approval from Attorney General Bill Gibbons, Glass began an overhaul of the old space, including brand-new kitchen equipment, flooring, tables, chairs, plumbing, in addition to a new roof, new bathrooms, and a new stage. She even brought in a real palm tree as a centerpiece of the main dining room. The deck out front is the next project.

“A lot of homeless people sleep out there in the area where it is enclosed,” Glass says. “We’d rather just take it down and set up a regular little patio where people can sit and listen to the music from Beale Street. We want to be part of Beale Street.”

Glass assembled her team of chefs through recommendations from L’Ecole Culinaire in Cordova, including head chef Karen Barrett and an in-house pastry chef. They make all their dishes — even the ketchup and mayonnaise — from scratch. “Everything we make is original to this restaurant,” Glass says. “When you make it all yourself, you can tailor everything.”

Menu offerings, made spicy or mild upon your request, reflect their dedication to authentic island cuisine. Jammin’ Lamb Skewers with cucumber sauce, Cayman Island Hot Wings, spicy jerk-seasoned tempura battered veggies, and more top off the appetizer portion of the menu. Soups include Ocho Rios Callaloo — a blend of spinach, coconut milk, okra, and seasonings — and Negril Pepper Pot Stew with andouille sausage, sweet potatoes, collard greens, and rice.

There is, of course, jerk chicken, as well as Kingston Jerk Ribs, a Barbados roasted pork sandwich, panko- and parmesan-crusted Bermuda red snapper, Rasta Pasta served with colorful vegetables and coconut cream sauce, and the exotic Guadalupe Oxtail Stew. They’ve also got an extensive dessert menu, from coconut carrot cake and fried, rum-glazed sweet potato pie to plaintains Foster and mango cobbler with vanilla bean ice cream.

Marley’s is open Monday through Thursday from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. and 5 to 10 p.m. and Friday and Saturday noon to 3 p.m. and 5 p.m. to 1 a.m.

Marley’s, 380 Beale

(526-1400)

Grace is shaking things up: They’ve moved an open kitchen space into the bar area, added Friday lunch to their offerings, and completed their conversion to a fully farm-to-table restaurant. In other words, everything at Grace (and Au Fond next door) is made with ingredients sourced from farmers — bypassing outside vendors entirely.

“The most difficult things are the flours and butters and creams,” owner Ben Vaughn says, “things you don’t really think about when you make that move. It’s the first of its kind in our area.”

Menu specifics are tough to pin down because everything is based on what is available daily, but at this week’s inaugural Friday lunch, Vaughn will definitely be working with a whole pig. All the other elements will be fresh, seasonal, and creative.

“It’s like Top Chef in here every day,” Vaughn says.

Lunch at Grace will be different from Au Fond — a little slower-paced, with more preparation time involved, and more like a chef’s table. “We’re going to blow it out, make it a celebration every Friday,” Vaughn says.

Over the next eight weeks, the Friday lunch will be a taste of the farm-to-table approach, for somewhere between $9 and $15. Reservations are recommended but not required.

Grace, 938 S. Cooper (274-8511)

bvrestaurants.com

Categories
Memphis Gaydar News

Have a Drink, Support Equality

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Stop by Grace Restaurant tonight (Tuesday, Aug. 3rd) from 5 to 7 p.m. to show your support for the proposed non-discrimination ordinance protecting LGBT city employees.

Tennessee Equality Project members will be on hand with laptops so ordinance backers can easily send a message to Mayor A C Wharton and city council members, urging their support.

While you’re there, grab a drink. A percentage of drink sale proceeds benefit the Memphis Gay & Lesbian Community Center’s Outflix Film Festival, which will be held September 10th-16th.

See the event’s Facebook page for more information. Grace is located at 938 S. Cooper.

Categories
Food & Wine Food & Drink

Plates & Updates

CREDIT: Justin Fox Burks

What does Chef Ben put on all of his tomatoes before they leave our
kitchen?” This was Grace restaurant’s Facebook update on October 28th.
The person who answered correctly was promised a $50 gift
certificate.

Over 200 guesses (ranging from sea salt to mini cucumbers), one
hour, and one hint later, someone finally got the right answer:
gastrique. Since then, chef/owner Ben Vaughn has been doing food and
wine trivia giveaways about once a week.

Christiana Leibovich, who participated in the tomato quiz, was
endeared by it. “It made me feel like they were fun, and I liked
connecting with the owner/chef,” she says.

Vaughn also updates with pictures of dishes, specials, and general
restaurant info. “It really creates fan ownership for Grace,” he says.
“When customers come in for lunch or dinner, they kinda already know me
and feel like it’s their place.”

The user-friendly formats of Facebook and Twitter have made them
especially popular with restaurants. David Lindsey, director of
marketing for Sekisui, Inc., says, “With Facebook and Twitter, we don’t
have to give away anything to gain fans. The effects of viral marketing
that are built into social networking sites do the work for us.”

Deni Reilly says that when she first created the Majestic Grille fan
page, she sent it out to just her group of friends. Those friends sent
it to their friends and so on. “In a few days we had hundreds of
members that I didn’t know,” Reilly says. “The people who sign up as
fans of your page are genuinely interested, so you’ve already got a
built-in target audience.”

Reilly says she was hesitant about using Twitter at first. She says,
“I figured, other than my mother, who really cares that much?” After
some research and requests from her guests, she added Twitter to the
marketing plan but in a very specific way. “Every morning, we tweet our
lunch or brunch specials and, in the late afternoon, our dinner
specials, and people love it.” Reilly says.

What Lindsey appreciates most about Facebook and Twitter is that
most any restaurant manager can learn to use the services in about five
minutes. “It doesn’t cost anything, and I don’t have to provide tech
support,” he says.

Colleen Couch-Smith and Ben Smith of Tsunami like having the ability
to get feedback on things that are in the works. “It gives us a good
audience to sound off ideas to as well as a place for our customers to
have a voice,” Colleen says.

The folks at the Cove credit its Facebook page for helping people
become aware of their specials and promotions, but, like the Smiths,
they’ve really benefited from the feedback they receive on Facebook.
Mike Grabman, “the really tall bartender” who updates the bar’s page,
says, “It gives the customer a unique opportunity to communicate their
wants and desires for what the Cove should be. It is as much their
place to hang out and feel comfortable as it is our place.”

Christopher McRae, owner/operator of Main Street Hound Dogs and the
“best-looking purveyor of hot dogs, fresh squeezed limeades, soups and
hot drinks on the corner of Union and Main,” uses Twitter to better get
to know his customers. He got the idea from a New York Times
article his sister-in-law sent him. “I have found Twitter to be an
almost playful way for me to interact with my customers. I can look
them up and learn more about them,” McRae says.

It will be interesting to see where the social media revolution
takes the customer/restaurant relationship in the future. Ben Smith
jokingly contemplates adding a “reality TV” element onto Tsunami’s
Facebook page.

“I think that people get a vicarious pleasure,” he says, “from
watching other people go through the hell of running a restaurant.”

Categories
Food & Wine Food & Drink

A Graceful Entrance

CREDIT: Justin Fox Burks

Justin Fox Burks

Ben Vaughn

First, there’s the understated ease of the restaurant’s
décor: sofa by the window, bamboo bar, walls painted a color
called “celery ice.” Next is the well-tuned staff: friendly greeting,
water poured, wine chilled. Then comes the melt-in-your-mouth surprise:
perfect brioche, served with extra butter.

Are we having fun yet? You bet, and all this happens before ordering
dinner at Ben Vaughn’s new restaurant Grace, which opened
September 18th next to Burke’s Book Store in Cooper-Young.

Vaughn, the former chef at River Oaks in East Memphis, named Grace
after his daughter, but the ambience is uniquely his own.

“I wanted the kind of restaurant where I would go for lunch or
dinner to eat and chill: laid-back Southern charm, a fun place with
good food that is seasonal and locally sourced,” Vaughn said.

Building menus around local food is a mission Vaughn takes
seriously. Seafood comes from the Alabama gulf coast, by way of
Paradise Seafood (spiny lobsters one weekend, snapper and Apalachicola
oysters the next) and produce and cheese are purchased from local
farmers.

“I talk to Lori Greene [Downing Hollow Farm] in the morning, see
what she’s got, and go from there,” Vaughn said. “The first week, I
changed the menu three times.”

So how does Vaughn’s culinary flexibility translate into lunch
(served weekdays) and dinner (served Monday through Saturday)? On a
recent Friday evening, the menu offered six small plates, priced from
$8 to $11. We ordered a B.L.T. salad (local greens, applewood smoked
bacon, heirloom tomatoes, blue cheese) and fried green tomatoes stuffed
with goat cheese. (Confession: The tomatoes were so memorable, I
dreamed about them that night.)

For entrées, we went with seared big-eye tuna ($26) and the
pan crisp scallops ($23). We were tempted to order a poached pear with
pecan baklava for dessert, but we couldn’t eat another bite. Blame the
brioche.

“It takes two days to make them,” Vaughn said, crediting pastry chef
Chris Burbeck. “There’s so much butter that it has to rest at a cold
temperature for an entire day to set the dough.”

For now, there is no cork fee to bring wine because the restaurant
is waiting on its liquor license. Once in place, the wine list will
include about 50 choices — mostly small production labels —
including half-bottles and wines poured by the glass.

With only 16 tables, reservations are recommended. Or stop by
spontaneously and sit at the bar, where you can watch the kitchen at
work through a large glass door.

Grace, 938 S. Cooper (274-8511)

Need an impressive Saturday-night date without breaking the bank?
Try a lobster dinner at Sole Restaurant & Raw Bar, where
boiled Maine lobster comes with corn fritters, almond slaw, and lobster
bisque for under $30. The special, offered only on Saturday nights,
runs through the month of October.

“We had an amazing turnout last week and sold every lobster we had,”
executive chef Matthew Crone said. “We try to accommodate
everyone, but we can only order so many.”

If the lobsters sell out, the restaurant serves lots of other
seafood, including nine different types of oysters and entrées
like striped bass with roasted baby turnips, watercress, fried capers,
and saffron aioli.

Sole Restaurant & Raw Bar, 221 S. Third (334-5950), memphissole.com

Lucchesi’s Ravioli and Pasta Company, the popular Italian
deli and market in East Memphis, has added two organic pasta sauces to
their list of take-home foods in response to customer requests.

“The recipes are the same as our regular sauces, but they are made
with all organic ingredients,” Alyce Mantia said. “Even the
olive oil is organic. If this works, we’re going to try using organic
meat and produce for some of our filled pastas.”

Priced at $4.99, the organic marinara sauce is only 50 cents more
than the original variety. Organic tomato basil sauce also is available
for $6.99.

“The tomato-basil sauce is made with eggplant and zucchini,” Mantia
said. “It’s a nice chunky sauce. It’s my favorite.”

Categories
We Recommend We Recommend

On With the Show

“Come on,” says Tina Birchett. Birchett, publisher of the local African-American women’s magazine Grace, is issuing an invitation to this weekend’s “Sisterhood Showcase” at the Memphis Cook Convention Center. This huge, annual two-day event draws more than 25,000 participants and features fashion shows, cooking demos, live music, health screenings, and more. Among the celebrity guests appearing this year are Chef G. Garvin of TV One’s Turn Up the Heat, gospel star Yolanda Adams (pictured), and bestselling author Kimberia Lawson Roby.

Birchett, who works on the event year-round, recently took a break to talk about the showcase.

Flyer: What’s the history of the showcase?

Birchett: I started it 13 years ago, because I thought there was a need for women who wanted to empower their lives, especially in financial areas and their health.

Who would you say is your audience? Middle-class working women?

It’s just basically people in Memphis. People don’t realize that 35 percent of the audience is men. We reach all age groups.

What is the goal of the showcase?

Every year, if there’s just one person who takes a diabetes screening, for example, and finds out they’re diabetic and gets some help, then that one person made it all worth it. If there’s one person who says I’m going to start saving, then it’s all worth it. If one person leaves walking a little bit taller, that’s my reward.

Beyond helping people, what’s your favorite part of the show?

Everybody knows that when the “Men Who Define Fine Fashion Show” is on, do not call me, ring me, buzz me. I take off my walkie-talkie and take a ringside seat at the end of the walkway.

“Sisterhood Showcase,” Saturday, June 7th, 10 a.m.-8 p.m., and Sunday, June 8th, noon-6:30 p.m. at the Memphis Cook Convention Center. Tickets are $10 in advance, $15 at the door. For more information, go to sisterhoodshowcase.com.