Blue Honey Bistro is its name, but chef Drew Bryan, who owns the Germantown restaurant with his wife Courtney, is definitely not singing the blues these days. He was recently nominated for the prestigious James Beard Award as Best Chef: Southeast.
“We were not aware we were even in the running,” Bryan says. “We just got a text message: ‘Hey, congratulations for the nomination.’ We were like, ‘What?’”
Drew, who is from California, says cooking was not his passion growing up. He was even a picky eater as a child. He got a job as a dishwasher and moved up the line at the old Ciao Baby Cucina, but, he says, “I didn’t find it as a passion.”
Cooking was “more of a necessity than anything else. It was how I paid my bills.”
Things began to change in 2006. “It started to dawn on me, ‘I need to get serious about it. Or not.’”
He enrolled in the French Culinary Institute in New York, where he graduated on his 30th birthday. He began working in New York restaurants, an eye-opening experience. “It was completely different from what I’d seen in Memphis. … It was far more advanced — hydrocolloids and all these scientific things.”
Drew eventually moved back to Memphis, where he still owned a house. He worked under chef José Gutierrez at River Oaks Restaurant. That’s where he met Courtney, who was a bartender there. But there came a point when Drew was ready to make a change. “I wanted to take over a kitchen and do things my way. … I had to find my own way and my own place.”
After three years at River Oaks, Drew went to work at Spring Creek Ranch, where Courtney eventually joined him. They opened Blue Honey Bistro in 2017.
Courtney now runs the front of the house at Blue Honey Bistro. “[Drew] and I are very balanced with each other,” she says. “Where I’m weaker, he is stronger and where he is weaker, I am stronger. As far as our personalities, I would say we’re both bold, up-front people.”
“We are very much against-the-grain people,” Drew says, “so we wanted to open something that Germantown didn’t have.”
They wanted “an inviting environment that makes you feel okay to come in casual attire as well as your Sunday best,” Courtney says. “You’re going to feel comfortable either way.”
Blue Honey Bistro “has that Cheers atmosphere,” she says. “People come in and make friends with other regulars.”
The name “Blue Honey” refers to a rare phenomenon in North Carolina when bee honey turns from gold to blue. And it pertains to Drew and Courtney as well: “a rare couple enjoying working together and spending all their time together,” Courtney says.
As for the food, Drew says, “We started solely French because of my background in French cookery and technique.”
But they also do curries and different Asian-style dishes, among other cuisines. “I’ve tried to adopt certain cooking styles that are comfortable with the employees.”
Drew changes his menu every two to three weeks. “We try to change it as much as possible because I get bored really easily. For a while, just after Covid, we changed it weekly.”
They do have some staple items that don’t change, their most popular being “Mushrooms and Toast.” It’s ciabatta bread with sautéed mushrooms, Gruyere cheese, bacon, caramelized onion, beurre blanc, and a poached egg on top.
Drew wants his cooks to also make things they like to make. If not, they “aren’t building out to their abilities and complete potential that they have.”
January is typically a slow month for restaurants, but, Drew says, “Being nominated for James Beard has really kind of shaken the tree a lot.” Yet he didn’t “set out to try and garner a lot of notoriety or anything like that,” he says. “What we wanted was to open a restaurant because we really enjoy what we do.”
The James Beard Award finalists will be announced April 2nd, Drew says. “If you are a finalist, you are invited to the awards. And that is mid-June.”
Drew is pleased Acre Restaurant owner Wally Joe and Acre’s executive chef Andrew Adams are also nominated in his category. “I would love to win, but if there’s anybody I would not be disappointed in losing to, it is Wally and Andrew.”
