Tag: Hustle & Dough

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Food & Wine Food & Drink

Longshot Isn’t Your Average Sports Bar

Chef David Todd (Photo: Michael Donahue)

Has Longshot stopped evolving?

Not by a long shot.

The restaurant in the ARRIVE Memphis hotel has gone from serving homemade sausage and small plates to what executive chef David Todd calls “refined, approachable bar food.”

“We re-did the menu with some internationally influenced entrees. Some sandwiches. Some appetizers. Things like that.”

And, Todd adds, “As of January 1st, we’re open seven days a week. And we got lunch on Saturdays and Sundays.”

Longshot had its share of stops and starts after it first opened in November of 2019. “We opened about five or six months before the pandemic hit. The whole hotel. We tried to do the whole to-go food. What everybody did.”

It closed around April. “We opened for a few weeks around late June, early July. That would have been 2020.”

The restaurant was only open for a few weeks. “We had some people test positive for Covid.”

Longshot re-opened for the third time in April 2021. And stayed open. Todd kept a few items from the old menu but added more. Also, during those times the restaurant was open, Todd saw how “different food worked in the space.”

The restaurant had a definite culinary direction in the beginning. “When we first opened, we had nine different house-made sausages. We had small plates. It was really cool.”

But that “wasn’t robust and diverse enough to really capture a lot of repeat business.”

“One thing I’ve learned over the years opening restaurants, is you definitely pick your vision and your direction. Go down the path you want to go. But as you’re going down that path, you learn what customers are responding to and what the space dictates.”

Longshot “went to a more robust, sandwich-oriented food menu. It covered more ground.”

Todd refers to his Longshot fare as “inspired, elevated bar food. And that means there are still burgers and chicken sandwiches, and I’ve got nachos on the menu.”

But he also includes items like Tuna Poke Nachos. “Raw tuna marinated in soy and different spices.” And Pollo Asado Nachos — a “marinated chicken thigh I roast. And we chop that off and make nachos with a house-made queso.”

“We’ve got vegetarian options. We’ve got a Smoked Mushroom and Shishito Philly. And then we’ve got a KFC [Korean Fried Chicken] Sandwich on the menu. We did a Diner Burger, a fun take on a classic burger. There’s a crispy duck entree. A short rib entree.”

Last year, Todd also took over the pizza program upstairs at Hustle & Dough. He “rounded out that menu” a little bit. “I added a curry cauliflower dip, a quinoa salad.”

His philosophy was the same as for Longshot: “Lean into traditional things that people connect to and they enjoy. And they might be presented to you in an international way.”

Longshot can be referred to as a sports bar, but it’s not a typical sports bar, Todd says. “You got the shuffleboard tables in there, so when it’s busy it’s going to lend itself to a festive kind of fun, energetic atmosphere. So, it’s not quite like a sit-down dinner place.”

Todd adds, “If you’re in there having a sit-down dinner, you wouldn’t feel like a fish out of water. But if you want play shuffleboard and drink some beer, you’re not going to feel like a fish out of water, either. It’s like a melting pot space in there on some levels.”

Longshot and Hustle & Dough are in ARRIVE Memphis at 477 South Main Street.

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Food & Wine Food & Drink

You Have Arrived: Cocktails, Coffee, and Carbs at Arrive Hotel

I’m a total baby about cold weather. If it dips below 50 degrees, I’ll easily opt for Uber Eats over a trip into the cold to get food. This is one reason I think places like the Arrive Hotel are so cool: Once you’re there, everything you need is in one place.

Arrive is home to Longshot restaurant, bakery Hustle & Dough, coffeeshop Vice & Virtue, and the lobby bar, Bar Hustle. Each has its own look, feel, and menu, so you can spend the afternoon wandering from one to the other without ever really leaving the building.

Ali Rohrbacher, formerly the head baker at the cafe at Crosstown Arts and at The Liquor Store, runs the boutique bakery Hustle & Dough and shares the lobby with Tim and Teri Perkins of Vice & Virtue.

Photos by Lorna Field

Pablo Mata, lead bartender at Arrive’s Bar Hustle

The bakery serves up homemade breads like sourdoughs and baguettes, as well as special pastries and treats. Snacks for Bar Hustle are also cooked up in the Hustle & Dough kitchen, like the mushroom toast on porridge sourdough with basil pesto, wild mushrooms, ricotta, and parmesan; or Grandma Alice’s Pecan Pie, served with an all-butter pie crust and dark chocolate ganache “black bottom” — the Rohrbacher family recipe.

Erik Hmiel, beverage director for the hotel, says that fermentation is one thing the drinks and food have in common.

“One of the parallels that Ali [Rohrbacher], as a chef and baker, and I share is a mutual interest and appreciation for fermentation,” Hmiel says. “Obviously, that’s a big part of bread-making. She’s really obsessed in a great way with fermentation, and I’ve sort of jumped on that bandwagon and learned a lot from her.”

For example, Bar Hustle serves a cocktail with fermented blueberries, as well as a seasonal kombucha.

Like fermentation, a focus on flavor is another commonality between the food and drink menus at Arrive. Bar Hustle offers a selection of specialty cocktails dreamt up by Hmiel, each with their own unique ingredients and presentation. The Bird Graveyard is prepared with aquavit, Scotch, banana, carrot verjus, and marjoram and served in a tumbler glass with one large ice cube. It tastes slightly sweet and earthy. The deep purple Fabio’s Roller Coaster is made with rye, lemon, fermented blueberry, pastis, dry vermouth, and black sesame and served in a delicate coupe glass.

The cocktail menu is just as whimsical as the decor. The lobby is filled with velvet couches, plants, and oriental rugs. It’s easy to feel like you’re in a speakeasy or in Europe or in an eccentric aristocrat’s penthouse. It certainly doesn’t feel like a hotel lobby.

And that’s, in part, because Bar Hustle is for locals as much as it is for hotel guests.

“We put a lot of time, effort, and thought into what we’re putting out there,” Hmiel says. “We also have a service industry night on Sunday. At the end of the day, we just wanted to be a fun and inviting space for everyone.

“One of the things we might do in the future is a series of pop-ups every month, or every two months. That’s something we’re thinking about right now, going into the new year,” Hmiel continues. Bar Hustle also hosts musicians on Friday nights and is looking to expand their entertainment offerings in the coming year.

So if, like me, you hate going out into the cold, but you also don’t want to feel too stir-crazy at home all winter, take a trip to Arrive. You can start your day with coffee at Vice & Virtue, have lunch at Hustle & Dough, then grab a cocktail and a show at Bar Hustle — all without leaving the hotel. And, hey, if it’s too cold to go home, you can always rent a room for the night.

The Arrive Hotel is located at 477 S. Main.

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Food & Wine Food & Drink

Wrap it Up: A Roundup of 2019 Food News Tidbits

This was the year of seafood, South Main, and comeback stories, with old favorites like Fino’s and Zinnie’s making triumphant returns. Here are a few items of note from 2019.

RIP

Mary Burns, longtime owner of Java Cabana, died on October 4th after a nearly three-year battle with lung cancer. Burns purchased Java Cabana in 1998 and had become a fixture of Cooper-Young, serving as a member of the Cooper-Young Business Association and the Cooper-Young Garden Club. Burns is largely remembered for making Java Cabana what it is today, a welcoming safe haven for artists and poets alike.

City of Sole

Several seafood restaurants — particularly those specializing in crab dishes — have opened or opened new locations, including Crab’N’Go, Crab Island, DeeO’s Seafood, Red Hook Cajun Seafood & Bar, Saltwater Crab, and others.

Saltwater Crab opened its doors over the summer with an expansive menu including sushi, sandwiches, and crab options such as crab cakes, king crab, snow crab, and a saltwater crab roll. Atlanta-based restaurateur Gary Lin opened Saltwater Crab in early July, but the kitchen is managed by Memphis chefs. The menu is entirely “coastal,” so you won’t find any catfish here.

The Juicy Crab, a Georgia-based seafood chain, opened its first Memphis location on Winchester earlier this year, and The Coastal Fish Company opened in Shelby Farms in October. Mardi Gras Memphis, which specializes in Louisiana-style seafood boils, recently reopened their restaurant across from the Crosstown Concourse. And Picasso’s — a seafood and pasta place — opened in August at 6110 Macon, making it the newest seafood addition to East Memphis. The Cousins Maine Lobster food truck also opened in March.

Downtown Dining

South Main is now home to quite a few new dining and drinking destinations, including the restaurants (Hustle & Dough, Longshot), coffeeshop (Vice & Virtue), and bar (Bar Hustle) inside the Arrive Hotel, as well as those inside Puck Food Hall, Memphis’ first and only food hall, which had its grand opening in May.

The Central Station Hotel also opened on South Main in October, and with it came a new bar, Eight & Sand, and restaurant, Bishop — Andy Ticer and Michael Hudman’s newest project.

Justin Fox Burks

BarWare

BarWare, a neighborhood bar that features craft cocktails and elevated bar food, opened on Front this year, too. And several other notable establishments opened their doors Downtown, including Comeback Coffee, Hu. Diner, 3rd & Court, and more.

Old Favorites Return

This was also the year we saw many old favorites come back to life. Fino’s, the beloved Midtown deli, reopened on June 6th, bringing their classic gourmet sandwiches back after closing in late 2018.

Old Zinnie’s — the “best little neighborhood bar in the universe” — first opened in 1973 but closed abruptly in 2018, leaving many Memphis barflies feeling abandoned. They reopened on Halloween, the perfect night to welcome the regulars back to their local haunt. As if it never closed, Zinnie’s feels very much the same, and they’re even serving popcorn again like in the old days.

The infamous and inimitable Hernando’s Hide-A-Way also celebrated its reopening near the end of 2019. The spot, famous for hosting music legends like Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash, and Jerry Lee Lewis, closed in 2007 but was recently purchased and reopened by partners Dale Watson and Celine Lee along with co-owner Patrick Trovato of Long Island, New York. The owners plan to maintain the integrity of the original, offering plenty of local music and color, and, supposedly, the “best hamburger in Tennessee.”