Jordan Beatty – Memphis Flyer

Along with his tacos, Jordan Beatty is making two-pound colossal burritos at his Taco Tuesdays setup at Memphis Kitchen Co-Op.

Beatty, 29, isn’t Mexican, but, he says, “I would definitely say Mexican food is part of my vibe.” And, he adds, “I wanted to share my passion for Mexican food with other people who would enjoy it. I’ve been working on my Mexican food for about two years now. I’m really honing in on it. I’m really proud of my product.”

Tacos were Beatty’s introduction to Mexican food. “The first time I ever ate Mexican food was probably Taco Bell. My father was regional manager at Taco Bell for six or seven years. He managed four different stores, so we ate Taco Bell. I have three brothers my size. We are very large men. We ate Taco Bell almost every night ’cause that’s what my dad could get for free.”

Mexican food gives him “a good feeling,” Beatty says. “It’s very straightforward and honest. The ingredients speak for themselves without any real intense culinary techniques. It’s just pure flavors put together.”

Opera singing was Beatty’s first vibe. “When I was in elementary school, I wanted to be an opera singer. Not a chef. I would sing opera music to anyone who would listen.”

A “true baritone,” Beatty, who sang in the choir in middle school, high school, and college, liked the “emotion, the intensity” of opera music. Cooking wasn’t on his radar. “I come from a long line of people who can’t cook at all.”

Little Caesars pizza was Beatty’s first restaurant job. “I was the sign shaker from 11-3 p.m. And then I would go inside and scrub and clean.”

One sign was shaped like a guitar. “You’d see me dancing on the side of the road with that sign.”

Beatty also cooked. “They showed me how to make pizzas. And then I started working the line. I learned how to make dough.”

In college, Beatty wanted to be a teacher. He later opened Tiger Paws Landscape, his own landscape business, but he closed it after he developed “an allergy to trees, grass, and weeds.”

Beatty, who married a professional chef, Lee Anna Beatty, while he had his landscaping business, told her he was interested in learning to cook. “I just didn’t really know where to start. It just so happened that week chef Spencer McMillin posted on his Facebook page that he needed a dishwasher for the space where he was. Caritas Village. I started the next day.”

He rose from dishwasher to sous-chef, thanks to McMillin’s guidance. “I loved it. I went straight into it. I haven’t looked back.”

Beatty also worked at Tamboli’s Pasta & Pizza, The Vault, and FLIP SIDE Memphis before he moved to Memphis Kitchen Co-op and began working for co-owner Richard McCracken’s Amplified Meal Prep.

He also became his wife’s chef at Busy Bee Catering. “We do a little bit of everything. I would say mostly we are Asian fusion, Mexican inspired, and classic Americana.”

Beatty’s Taco Tuesdays is a part of Busy Bee Catering. “We’ve been serving what I call a premium taco bar for a while.”

He held his first official Taco Tuesday on August 8th. “I make my own adobo sauce, which is the basis of a lot of my Mexican cooking. A mixture of peppers, onions, garlic, vinegar, spices, and oil.

“I marinate my meats in it and my mushrooms. And that’s how I make my taco sauce.”

He offers chicken, beef, shrimp, barbacoa, and marinated mushroom tacos. “And I do one chef special every week that’s going to change.”

His first one was pollo adobo blanco. “Adobo beurre blanc over marinated chicken.”

And, yes, Beatty still sings. “Constantly. But not really for other people’s enjoyment. Just my own.”

Instead of opera, Beatty sings rock, folk, Americana, and country music.

“That’s one of the great parts of being a chef. The kitchen is my stage. I can just enjoy my time and sing and just kind of have a good time. And as long as I’m doing that, I don’t feel like I’m working at all.”

Memphis Kitchen Co-Op is at 7946 Fischer Steel Road in Cordova.

Get your game on. Flip Side will open its doors by the end of March.

The bar/restaurant at 1349 Autumn Avenue, across from Crosstown Concourse, will feature pinball, darts, a fresh bar with fruit cocktails and mocktails, and food. The new establishment (in the space that formerly housed The Doghouzz) is owned by the Tandem Restaurant Partners with Tony and Stephanie Westmoreland and Dr. Michael Muhlert.

Let’s talk about that food.

It’s “a Latin-inspired menu,” says executive chef Jordan Beatty, 28. “My lunch service is mostly geared towards a laid-back kind of quick-ish service where people can come in and make their order and get their food pretty quickly.”

This would especially accommodate people who “have that short-term lunch period” of maybe 30 minutes, he says. “Within 10 minutes or so you’ll have food and the rest of the time to eat and get back to work.”

The lunch menu will include tacos, burrito bowls, salads, quesadillas, and “some of our house salsas and quesos. We’re going to do a rojo, the classic tomato-based salsa, and a verde classico, green with jalapeños, onions, and whatnot.”

Then, Beatty says, “We’re going to elevate and have some dinner entrees that are only available from 5 to 9.”

Beatty, who already has four entrees firmed up, says one of them we’ll be his “Pollo Adobo Blanco,” which is “marinated chicken with a white wine adobo sauce over rice.”

Pollo Adobo Blanco (Credit: Maria Benton).

He also will serve red chicken tamales filled with “our house white queso and our salsa verde.”

The Shrimp and Grits includes “Chihuahua cheese chorizo, stone ground grits, white wine, and shrimp covered with adobo butter sauce.”

Shrimp and Grits at Flip Side (Credit: Maria Benton).

He adds, “And then we have our premier vegetarian entree: Calabacitas. It means ‘squash’ in Spanish. It’s a squash casserole — green and yellow squash, corn, peppers, onions, mayonnaise, and cotija, a really dry, crumbly cheese like a Mexican version of feta cheese.”

The dish is “browned in the oven. And that’s served in a cast iron skillet — the only entree served in a cast iron skillet.”

Calabacitas at Flip Side (Credit: Maria Benton).

All entrees come with Mexican rice, black beans, and pickled taqueria salad: pickled jalapeños, carrots, radishes, and onions made in house.

A Memphis native, Beatty was a sous chef at Caritas Village, sous chef and daytime chef at Tamboli’s Pasta & Pizza, and daytime chef/brunch chef at The Vault.

Now, at Flip Side, Beatty says, “I’m in the kitchen most days. I’ve been doing a lot of menu testing and tasting. I had a chef tasting last week. So, I was preparing for that over the last month, making my food over and over.”

Ben Wilson is Flip Side’s sous chef. “We’ve been going over logistics and setting up the kitchen and doing mock service to get that express idea totally put together so we don’t have anything to bog us down from 11 to 1. And we can fulfill that express idea I want to do.”

He’s excited about Flip Side, which will feature 16 pinball machines. “You come in and you put cash into the token machine. And we have Flip Side-branded tokens. Our logo on each token. That’s what you use to play all the pinball machines.”

David Yopp, Flip Side general manager, pinball aficionado, and partner, owns all the pinball machines. They have the Rush machine, which is “brand new. Just came out a few weeks ago,” as well as Godzilla, “which came out at the end of last year,” Beatty says, as well as “machines from the early ‘70s” and “everything in between.”

Yopp is “so passionate about pinball,” Beatty says. “I didn’t know much about pinball when I got this job. Over the last month and a half I’ve gone down the rabbit hole of pinball information and the history of pinball. And now I’ve played a lot of pinball and definitely enjoy it.

“When I first walked in the building, it just gave me an incredible feeling that everyone in that building was just so excited and wanting to bring together the pinball with the bar. And I was the final piece they got in the kitchen to kind of tie everything together.”