Nick Scott – Memphis Flyer

“My Favorite Things,” which has become a holiday classic song over the years, triggered the idea to ask Memphis chefs and food aficionados what memory sticks with them as one of the best things they’ve ever eaten anywhere. They might not be able to fit it into a stocking, but it ranks up there with “bright copper kettles and warm woolen mittens.”

Kelly English, chef/owner of Restaurant Iris, The Second Line, Panta, and Fino’s from the Hill: “There is one dish that really made my mind up to jump in and try to be a chef — the gnocchi and gulf crab meat with truffle at the restaurant August in New Orleans. On a flavor and texture level, this was a mind-blowing dish. But it was simple. It’s a bite I will never forget.”

Keun Anderson, head chef at Texas de Brazil: “I love anime and Naruto is one of my favorite animes. So, when it comes to the best food I ever had, I can’t help myself. I love ramen. And Flame Ramen is the best.”

Reuben Skahill, veteran Memphis bartender/server: “I had a bender of goat cheese pasta with blackened chicken from Amerigo [Italian Restaurant] five days a week for three years and was always satisfied … warm pasta that makes its own creamy sauce from the goat cheese and sun-dried tomatoes as you mix all the flavors together.”

Karen Barrett, chef/owner of The Happy Belly Company of Memphis: “One of my favorite food memories is when I was learning to cook with my great-grandmother, and she literally made the best sweet potato pie I’ve ever had in my life. The crust was perfect and her pie filling was so rich and deeply colored you’d almost think it was pumpkin. … I won’t share the secret to her pie, but I will tell you there’s nothing wrong with adding a little bourbon in your recipe. Trust me on this one.”

Josh Steiner, MealMD executive chef: “My grandma Jacqueline’s lasagna. It has all kinds of cheeses like whipped ricotta mixed with fresh herbs. It also has a lot of fresh marinara. And I like to add lots of black pepper to it.”

Jimmy “Sushi Jimmi” Sinh, chef/owner of Poke Paradise food truck: “The tomahawk [steak] from Folk’s Folly. It’s a lot better ’cause the bone adds more flavor to the meat. And they just make it the way I like it.”

Justin Hughes, assistant pastry chef at The Peabody: “One of the best things I’ve had was from The Crazy Noodle. It was the cucumber salad and spicy Korean ramen they serve. The ramen is well-balanced with flavor.”

Nick Scott, chef/owner of Salt|Soy: “My friend Mitsu Isoda ran Jewel Bako in New York. He did a dry-aged bluefin tuna nigiri. It was the absolute best piece of fish that I’ve ever tasted. He now runs Omakase Room by Mitsu in New York. He dry-aged it for around 25 days in a very cold temperature. It compounded the flavor and tenderized the meat. It melted as you ate it. He brushed soy on it and put a small amount of wasabi underneath the fish. It didn’t need anything. It was easily the best thing I’ve eaten.”

Miles Tamboli, chef/owner of Tamboli’s Pasta & Pizza: “Artesano pizza bar, town of Lagoa da Conceicao on the island of Santa Catarina in the city of Florianopolis, Brazil. This place used to be way less fancy. When I went there around 2005 they had this burger they called the X Burger that had everything you can imagine on it. Two patties, peas, corn, a hot dog, special sauce, a slab of ham, all kinds of shit. It was incredible.”

Schuyler O’Brien, founder/creator of Over Yonder ice cream: “The best meal I ever had was a 13-course tasting menu at The Barn at Blackberry Farm. The most memorable thing I’ve ever eaten were the Pig Face Parker House rolls from Odd Duck in Austin — classic yeast rolls stuffed with braised pig face on house Dijon mustard.”

Salt/Soy is slated to open in February in the Broad Avenue Arts District.

The goal is to get the restaurant at 2583 Broad “up and going before Valentine’s Day so we can do omakase, a Japanese tasting menu,” says owner/sushi chef Nick Scott. “Usually, the omakase chef comes up with a tasting menu on the fly. This is something we’d set; three or four courses.”

Salt/Soy was hosting pop-up omakases Thursdays through Fridays at Alchemy, which Scott also owns. The pop-up events were “mainly a preview for what’s to come,” he says. They were “a huge success. The lines couldn’t get through the door.”

Camille Jones

Alex Moseley, and Brad McCarley

When Salt/Soy opens on Broad, the menu will include vegetarian and pork ramen bowls. The restaurant’s general manager, Brad McCarley, who Scott worked with at the old City Block Salumeria, is “curing all the meat in-house. We’re fermenting our own miso, our own kimchi. We’ll let that inspire the direction we go in. He’s got a ‘fried chicken and dumpling’ dumpling. It’s incredible.”

There are talks of doing a dim sum brunch on Sundays, but offering it between noon and 6 p.m. instead of earlier in the day.

But Salt/Soy isn’t going to limit itself to serving one type of food, Scott says. “We’re not pigeonholing ourselves to only doing Japanese. It will be Asian-inspired; pulling from all cultures and melding them together.”

And, he says, “I’m also looking for some Pacific inspiration there. We might throw in some tiki stuff. We may do some riffs on classic tiki drinks. We’ve talked about that. The overall menu — the food menu, the sushi menu, and the cocktail menu — is going to be really fun, exciting, different.”

Salt/Soy began as a pop-up in 2018 at Puck Food Hall. The idea was “sushi and seafood with ceviches and different types of crudos,” Scott says. And “market-style fish and seafood by the pound.

“The next stage we started looking for brick and mortar. We looked at a lot of places. We knew Lucky Cat [Ramen] went out of business, unfortunately. And there was a lot of talk about it within the industry, a lot of people who wanted to get in there. I had some real estate contacts who lead me in the right direction, and it kind of fell in my lap.

“It was a no-brainer,” he adds. “They had everything built out and ready to go. We changed a few things, but not a lot. That happened in October.”

The concept for the new location is “less of a market concept and more of an izakaya sushi concept,” Scott says. “A Japanese drinking establishment, with Japanese tapas, serving small plates. People come in and have drinks and cocktails.”

Downstairs will be “a little more upper-scale dining,” he says. “We’ll have the patio, which will evolve over spring and summer — a massive patio. And then upstairs will be more of a late-night, rock-and-roll situation. Kind of a little more gritty than downstairs. We’ve talked about getting a Bluetooth record player up there and playing only vinyl.”

Bar manager Alex Moseley came over from Alchemy. McKenzie Nelson, who was at Lucky Cat and High Noon, also will be behind the bar. Both bartenders are “very creative,” Scott says.

The restaurant has been given an artful makeover. They repainted the interiors and brought in an artist, David Johnson, to survey the space to determine how he could bring his own creative vision into the mix.

Scott says Johnson outfitted some of the downstairs spaces with paintings that work with the restaurant’s new color scheme. “His artwork is black and white with pops of color — and [the pieces] will be for sale.”

The restaurant’s name already adorns the front door. Scott can’t wait for that door to open to the public. “It’s going to be a fun place.”