Steve & Todd's Creole Italian popup will move into The Second Line's space for a week (Credit: Caleb Sigler)
Fino’s from the Hill will temporarily close its doors at 1853 Madison Avenue and relocate to nearby The Second Line at 2144 Monroe. Both restaurants are owned by chef Kelly English.
According to a text from marketing director for Iris Group LLC Caleb Sigler, the restaurant will be closed between September 19th and 25th.
The Second Line will have a new name and feature a different type of cuisine during that week.
“The building they [Fino’s] are located in is having main water line renovations, so we decided to do something special for you,” Sigler says. “Introducing Steve & Todd’s Creole Italian PopUp! The Second Line will convert to a Creole Italian restaurant for the week serving lunch and dinner from Monday to Sunday with brunch on Saturday and Sunday. A full new menu will include items like stuffed eggplant (cheese stuffed with crabmeat cream sauce), sweet heat oysters, muffulettas, baked ziti, eggplant parm, sautéed red snapper topped with shrimp and crawfish and a crabmeat cream sauce, grilled shrimp or oysters over pasta Bordelaise, spaghetti and meatballs, and more.
A popup is coming to The Second Line for a week. (Credit: Caleb Sigler)
Our teams at both our restaurants have been hard at work to make this the most enjoyable and tasty event possible. You don’t want to miss this. Last time we did a popup it turned into Pantá.”
Pantá is another Kelly English restaurant, which took the place of Restaurant Iris, which will itself open where The Grove Grill once operated in Laurelwood Shopping Center.
Some items from Fino’s and Second Line will be included at Steve & Todd’s Creole Italian PopUp. “There are a few items from both restaurants, but not the full menu,” Sigler says.
The Second Line will have a new name and feature different cuisine during that week.
So, who are “Steve” and “Todd?” “The name is sort of a joke,” Sigler says. “Steve Richey is a co-owner of the company and Todd English is Kelly’s brother. Derk Meitzler is the general manager of Second Line and Pantá, and Matthew Crysup is the manager of Fino’s. This is their baby.”
An interesting aspect of the 2021 Memphis food scene was the number of heavy hitters making changes to their restaurants.
Kelly English decided to move his popular Restaurant Iris to the space previously occupied by The Grove Grill in Laurelwood. In June, English said in a Flyer interview that the new location is a much bigger space. “The dining room in Laurelwood is bigger than the entire property Iris is on,” he said.
He opened Pantà in Iris’ location at 2146 Monroe Avenue in October. English told the Flyer he went with a Catalonian concept. It was something he wanted to do since he took a six-month trip in his early twenties to Barcelona. “I really do love this type of food and the way they live,” he said. “And what we want is to be known as a later-night establishment.”
Explaining the name, English said, “Pantà is the Catalonian word for ‘swamp,’ which is reflected in the mural around the bar. Growing up in Louisiana, swamps played a big part of my youth. Mostly my mom trying to keep me out of them.”
English plans to open the new Iris at 4550 Poplar Avenue “right around Easter. We are thrilled to see that come together.”
Chef Jason Severs and his wife Rebecca moved Bari Ristorante e Enoteca from its old location in Cooper-Young to 524 South Cooper. The new location, which opened in August, is more than 300 square feet bigger. They can still seat 40 people in the dining room, but they also can seat 40 more outside on the patio and more people at the bar in the front of the restaurant.
The new restaurant features wide, open spaces as opposed to the old restaurant, which, Jason said in a Flyer interview, was “a bunch of different, small rooms.” And Rebecca said, “You couldn’t expand there.”
The food is the same as what they served at the old location, Jason said. “Southeastern Italian. Lots of fresh vegetables. From the earth. All local when we can.”
Chefs Andrew Ticer and Michael Hudman, who own several restaurants, reopened their popular Hog & Hominy at 707 West Brookhaven Circle after a fire in January 2020. The restaurant was rebuilt. It opened in November.
In a Flyer interview, general manager Evan Potts said the new restaurant is about twice as large. They expanded it as far as it would go in all directions.
Hudman said he told his wife how the restaurant now has an “old Art Deco diner feel.” That rings true, from its silver metal lettered sign out front to the fluted light fixtures in the dining room and the general vibe.
They are serving Neapolitan-inspired pizzas and “fun takes on traditional Italian fare,” Potts said. And their craft cocktails, which the establishment is known for.
Finally, it’s not a restaurant per se, but people have been known to eat inside. Or maybe just pop a few cashews in their mouth. The Peanut Shoppe is closing at the end of the year at its old location at 24 South Main Street, where it has stood since — co-owner Rida AbuZaineh believes — 1951, and moving to its new location at 121 South Main.
AbuZaineh told the Flyer they weren’t informed until a few months before that the building where his shop is now located was going to be sold. It will be turned into apartments and condos, he said.
The new location is similar to the current location. “The new one is rectangular shape. This one is rectangular shape but so narrow. The width is the difference … three times the width of this narrow store.”
AbuZaineh said he will be open “through Christmas Eve. It’s an excellent day if it falls on the weekend like it does this year. We are always the last people to leave the area.”
Which means Santa will have plenty of time to stock up on nuts and candy to fill all those stockings.
Bocadillo de Plato a les Landes: harissa roasted duck on baguette with chermoula slaw (Credit: Pantà)
It’s fair to say that excitement for Pantà has been buzzing in Memphis for a while now. Chef Kelly English announced earlier this year that he’d be flipping Overton Square’s longstanding Restaurant Iris space into a new Catalonian concept, something he’s dreamed of for decades since a six-month trip to Barcelona in his early twenties.
Pantà finally opens to the public tomorrow at 2146 Monroe, and the building’s complete decorative and culinary transformation is sure to make a splash with hungry Memphians. Despite a hectic week getting ready for opening night, several key members of the Pantà team – English, manager and bartender Aaron Ivory, and designer David Quarles IV – made time to speak to the Memphis Flyer about their excitement for the restaurant.
Flyer: Pantà is a departure from your other restaurants. How did you come to settle on this style of cuisine?
Kelly English: When I lived in Barcelona, that was really when I fell in love with both food and wine, so this is something I’ve had in my head for a while. And during the pandemic, one of our pivots was a three-month pop up of Catalan food that we did here at Iris, and it really helped put food on the table for our staff. And we realized that operating a 12-table fine dining restaurant that needed valet parking wasn’t going to be sustainable.
So we made the deal to move Iris to the former Grove Grill space at Laurelwood, and it then just seemed so natural to turn this into Pantà. We’d seen the concept work and how much fun it was for us, and how much joy it brought to others. I really do live this type of food and the way they live. And what we want is to be known as a later night establishment. We’ll be open Thursday to Saturday from six to midnight, and then on Sundays, we’ll do a siesta service from two to six, for people who might not be up in time for brunch, or for those who work brunch and might want to do something when they get off.
What are some of the specialty dishes that diners can look forward to when they come to Pantà?
English: We’re not going to do anything that isn’t super specifically Catalan, with the caveat that we reserve the right to ‘Memphis’ anything that we need. A great example is patatas bravas. It’s a very traditional dish. They’re fried potatoes with a couple of different aiolis on it. Then there’s also a different version of that called a Bomba Barceloneta, which is the same idea, except they stuff braised meat in the mashed potatoes and they fry it. What we’re going to do is put Payne’s barbecue inside of these mashed potatoes.
So we’re really looking to put a lot of Memphis’ fingerprints on it. But our menu will be fresh, it will be vibrant; we’re going to have a lot of seafood, there will be a lot of vegetable-driven plates. We’ve only got a couple dishes on the menu that use red meat. And all our dishes are going to be small, and are meant to be shared among people while you order multiple things.
Peix Crua: fish, citrus, burnt butter, tarragon, jalapeños, and hazelnuts. (Credit: Pantà)
What was your approach when you started thinking about changing the interior?
English: Well, we wanted a space that simply didn’t exist yet. And that’s where David Quarles comes in. When we first met with him, we talked about what I thought about Barcelona, and we looked at Parc Güell, which is a big inspiration for how the space came together. When I look around now, we’ve got a really unique space here.
David Quarles IV: Kelly told me that they wanted a place where everyone felt welcome. It needed to be a place that kind of transported you out of Memphis a little bit. So I used the colors of Spain, and Barcelona, a lot to inspire the design. We landed on Antoni Gaudí. So I looked up a lot of his work, and we ended up landing on the Casa Vicens. And so I looked up the color inspiration there, the lines that are in his architecture, just everything, and used that as the base. That was one of his first projects, and since this is one of our first large-scale restaurant projects, it felt like it was lining up as it should.
The first design we came up with was the dining room. The colors in the wallpaper there are echoed in every single element outside of that space. I just wanted to really provide a visual experience for anyone who came in. The whole design style is based off a colorful memphis interpretation of art nouveau. You’re not overwhelmed, but you now have a problem choosing where you want to sit first.
Whenever I do spaces, I want the rooms to immerse with each other rather than yell at each other. I feel that now a lot of the spaces are speaking together, and having a good colorful conversation.
Aaron Ivory: It’s one of the most beautiful places I’ve ever seen. It’s vibrant, but still has a good nightlife vibe to it, where we can control the lights and change the mood. I cannot wait for people to walk in and see what David has done.
Pantà will have an extensive beverage list, featuring signature cocktails, Spanish wine, and gin & tonics. (Credit: Pantà)
In terms of drinks and cocktails, whatcan diners expect from Pantà?
Ivory: Me, my bartending partner Morgan McKinney [owner of Best Shot Co.], and our beverage director Laurin Culp have been working a lot on coming up with a great bar program. Morgan has come up with some really great cocktail ideas, and one of my favorites is the Naked Dragon, which mixes reposado tequila, some aperol, chili-infused yellow chartreuse, and lime juice. The dragon is kind of our mascot here.
Quarles: We came up with the idea of having our private dining are be the Dragon Room, since that’s the logo. It has a dragon mural painted by Frances [Berry] on the ceiling.
English: Laurin has put together a great list of curated Spanish wines, and we’ll have a whole section of the menu for gin & tonics.
Ivory: And I think the vibe we’ll have is something that will really complement Memphis. It’s a place that will be both low-key, yet high energy. You can come in, split a few tapas with your girlfriend or boyfriend or whomever, and drink some nice wine and just take it easy. You know, take the whole load off your shoulders here.
And it really lends itself to being a place you can go at any part of your night: pop in for a drink before or after dinner, or even stop by or a couple of cocktail before or after, say, going to the theater. We really want it to be an inclusive space for all of Memphis. And there’s been so much love and so much support going into this restaurant, so I can’t help but to be happy and ready and interested to see what types of people we bring in.
Pantà opens to the public tomorrow, October 30th. The restaurant is open from 6 p.m. to midnight Thursday-Saturday, and open from 2-6 p.m. for Sunday siesta service.
