Think you’re pretty good with a grill and a steak? Well, head on over to Southland Park tomorrow for their annual Southland Great Steak Cookoff. It goes on all day, and there will be lots of fun and entertainment, including music from the Little River Band.
For more information, call 800-467-6182.
“Are you ready to rock?”
That’s the first thing they’ll ask you at Sammy Hagar’s Red Rocker Bar & Grill, the new sports bar inside Southland Park. Here, the servers aren’t servers; they’re rock stars. And you know what, friend? You’re a rock star, too.
The new restaurant was developed as part of a $38 million expansion at Southland that includes a new building, new additional parking, and 500 new slot machines. According to management, that brings the grand total to 1,950 — the most in the area.
As for Red Rocker, it is open, spacious and well-lit, with tall ceilings. Red is everywhere — an obvious nod to Hagar, aka the Red Rocker, who’s best known for his hit “I Can’t Drive 55.” There are 55 flat-screen TVs, too, including a screen at every booth.
“During football season,” says Southland marketing manager Marshall Robertson, “there’s days where you got 10 games going on at one time. And if you come here, you can watch every single one of them.”
When it comes to food, Red Rocker offers its own take on classic pub grub, including finger-licking barbecue nachos ($7.99) and a burger called the Three Meat Box ($11.99), which is slathered with a tasty sweet onion jam. I also enjoyed the meatloaf cupcake ($12.99), a savory treat with an “icing” of garlic mashed potatoes.
“Something we’ve always hung our hat on,” Robertson says, “is the fact that we’re a close, convenient option. If you live downtown, you can be here in 10 minutes. So why not give us a try and come stop in for lunch?”
Justin Fox Burks
Belly Acres
So far, press coverage of Belly Acres — the new farm-to-table burger joint in Overton Square — has tended to focus on the zany décor, which, admittedly, is hard to miss. There’s a bright-red tractor inside the front door and a big yellow crop duster hanging from the ceiling.
“We figure, instead of bringing the farm to your table,” says owner Ben McLean, “we’ll bring your table to the farm.”
But the real story here isn’t the family atmosphere — it’s the menu. As an example, let’s take the Early Riser, a bacon cheeseburger served with a fried egg between waffles. The beef is fresh, thick, and juicy, and for good reason: Nearly all of the ingredients come from within a day’s drive of Memphis.
The beef is grass-fed, from Joyce Farms in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. The Bibb lettuce is from Tanimura & Antle Farm in Livingston, Tennessee. And the fried egg is sourced by Bring It Food Hub, right here in Memphis.
Here’s the kicker. The whole thing, including house-made chips and a drink, will run you $15 — the same price you’d pay at so-called premium fast-casual burger joints. Only at Belly Acres, the food is tastier, it’s local, and they’ll bring it to your table.
“We’re a place for families who want to feed their kids responsibly,” McLean says. “Or really, anybody who wants a really good, grass-fed burger.”
It’s an audacious plan, but if it works, you might soon be seeing a lot more of Belly Acres. Over the next five years, depending on the success of the Overton Square restaurant, McLean says he plans to open 15 more like it across the Southeast.
Memphians will soon be able to do more than play slots and watch greyhounds race when they travel across the bridge to Southland Park in West Memphis, thanks to a $37.4 million expansion and redesign of the gaming and racing facility.
The highlight of the expansion is Sammy Hagar’s Red Rocker Bar & Grill. Southland Park Gaming and Racing partnered with Rock Hall of Famer Hagar to create the 150-seat sports bar.
The restaurant will feature hand-prepared, signature bar food like wings, burgers, jalapeno poppers, and pulled pork nachos as well as beer distilled at 29 degrees and Hagar’s Cabo Wabo Tequila and Sammy’s Beach Bar Rum.
Troy Keeping in Southland’s new Red Rocker Bar & Grill
“We realized in the market, there are some sports bars but nothing like this in terms of a partnership with Sammy Hagar,” said Troy Keeping, Southland’s president and general manager. “We have a living room concept. You can come out, have a casual, relaxing living room feeling and be able to order and eat at the coffee table. Or you can sit down at the regular restaurant.“
The Red Rocker Bar & Grill will be adorned with a guitar chandelier, display cases featuring Hagar-signed rock memorabilia, 55 flat screen TVs, and a ceiling decorated with guitars. It’s slated to open around Thanksgiving.
The 41,000-square-foot expansion also includes an extended gaming floor. Gaming options will expand to more than 1,750, and there will be a new grand entrance. LED lighting has been installed across the building’s exterior, and Southland’s valet station has been expanded from two to four lanes.
“The real issue was our valet,” Keeping said. “We didn’t have the capacity for the demand. What this has done is given us four lanes to handle the issue. And then we redesigned the traffic flow through the parking lot, so it’s more of a boulevard that takes you right into valet. And then when you got in and you wanted to go eat at our restaurants, there was always a wait. And there were people waiting to play games, so you’re trying to play a game, and there is someone standing behind you, waiting for you to get up. [This expansion] should alleviate some of the pressure on our existing outlets and grow our business.”
Keeping said the expansion has been in the planning stage for about two years, but construction began in January. Prior to the latest endeavor, Southland underwent several revisions. In 2006, the lower grandstand of the facility’s greyhound racetrack was replaced with a gaming floor. A few years later, in 2011, the gaming floor was expanded and the Shine Blounge, a large bar and lounge, was added. It began operation in 2012.
Since 2006, Keeping said almost $150 million has been invested in expanding the facility. He said he hopes the latest expansion drives more traffic to Southland and provides patrons with an unforgettable experience.
“I want them to walk in and go, ‘Wow,’ and I want them to have fun,” Keeping said. “We’ve always done things with kind of a unique twist here. We really want people to come in and have a good time. We have something for everybody — from a sports bar to a buffet to a steakhouse to greyhound racing to gaming to black jack and poker. You name it, we’ve got it, and we want people to come over and have fun.”
There will be a ribbon-cutting and grand opening ceremony to celebrate Southland’s expansion on January 30th.
A MATA bus route to Southland Park for gaming and racing is now dumping riders on the side of Interstate 40, according to a video secretly recorded by members of the Memphis Bus Riders Union.
In the video, the bus driver says that as of about a month ago, Southland Park no longer allows MATA buses to drop off on Southland property. Instead, bus riders are dropped on the frontage road of I-40. With no sidewalks and cars and trucks speeding by, the group then walks or in the case of one wheel-chaired passenger, rolls over an uneven gravel road along the interstate and up an exit ramp to get to the racing park.
Check out the full video:
*UPDATE*
We spoke with Troy Keeping, manager at Southland Park Gaming and Racing, about why MATA was asked to stay off of Southland Park’s property.
“We didn’t ban MATA. What we did is ask them to relocate the bus stop because we were having safety issues in our parking lot,” says Keeping. “We used to have the bus stop in our parking lot and after the Tunica flood and the substantial increase in business we had a couple of potential almost accidents and there were too many people waiting for the bus in high traffic lanes where the bus stop was located so we asked them to relocate it off of our property because of safety issues.”
Keeping says they contacted the city of West Memphis to relocate the bus stop, though MATA resisted the move. According to Keeping, West Memphis asked Southland Park five or six years ago to put the stop on the park’s property.
“It was fine because we didn’t really have the volume of business that we have now,” says Keeping.
“I feel bad that they relocated it in what I would consider a poor area,” he says. “There’s a bus station next to Ford of West Memphis, that’s where we thought they were relocating it, but they’re just dropping them there at the service road in front of Ford. Frankly, in my opinion, MATA has not done the best job.”
When asked how moving the bus stop further away from Southland would be safer for bus riders, Keeping responded, “There’s not a good location on the property so it’s really up to MATA and the city to find a place that’s appropriate for them to stop. Whether or not the MATA bus came directly to Southland or not was not our concern. We don’t want the liability or the risk.”
As for how many customers come to Southland Park via the MATA bus, Keeping says it was enough to create a safety hazard, but in relation to their total customer base it’s not a lot of customers.
“When I saw the video, my first thought was, ‘While it may not be appropriate, people should exercise common sense before they get off of a bus in the middle of the frontage road. The people themselves should be responsible for their own behavior,” Keeping says. “If the bus isn’t taking them where they need to go, then I wouldn’t ride the bus. I don’t know what person would think they should get off on a frontage road in a wheelchair and ride in traffic. I look at a customer that does something like that and I think, really? I wouldn’t do that. I frankly wouldn’t ride the bus and get off there.”
But Brad Watkins of the Memphis Bus Riders Union and the Mid-South Peace and Justice Center says MATA hasn’t posted any information about the changed route at any of their terminals.
“[Keeping] completely misses the point. If you’re already on the bus and that’s your stop and you’re trying to get there — perhaps you work there or perhaps you’re there as a customer — how else are you supposed to get where you’re going?”
For now, Watkins says he has received reports that the MATA route to Southland Park now drops riders off at an abandoned gas station close to the Southland property so that people can go from the gas station to the parking lot of Southland Park.
A representative from MATA has not yet returned our phone calls.
The new slot-happy Southland Park Gaming and Racing in West Memphis is the most serious threat to Tunica’s casinos in their short history.
Yes, it’s West Memphis, which is more truck stop than tourist trap, and, yes, Arkansas’ state symbol should be an orange-and-white highway cone in a construction zone. No, it’s not going to happen in a year and, no, it won’t be nearly as dramatic as Katrina was to the Gulf Coast. But Southland will transform itself and make its mark.
Because it’s not about dogs, it’s about slots and that old adage that says if you let the camel get its nose inside the tent, pretty soon you have the whole camel. Arkansas let the camel get in this fall when Oaklawn horseracing track in Hot Springs and Southland commenced operating as casinos with restrictions.
For now, Southland is pretty much a dump. Ceiling tiles are missing on the second floor, and the off-track-betting rooms reek of stale smoke. The neighboring motels are strictly of the budget variety, and there’s not a golf course in sight. In my unofficial license-plate survey in the parking lot, 91 of 100 cars were from Arkansas or Tennessee.
In the casino part of the place, hundreds of slots were mostly idle on a recent weekday afternoon. Employees rolled carts around with pitchers of soft drinks on them. The buffet, however, was a definite improvement over the former dog-track fare.
Arkansas law only permits games of skill. So to play a slot you spin the reels twice, locking in your cherries, bars, and double diamonds on the first spin and hoping to improve them on the second spin. Progressive slots upstairs are linked to machines at Oaklawn for bigger payoffs. If you win you get a ticket redeemable at the cashier’s window instead of a bucket of coins. Video poker machines are the same as the ones in Tunica. Blackjack is played on 12 tables without cards, using digital computer screens instead. The “dealer” simply pushes a button and pays or collects the chips.
In other words, once you get down to the bare business of player and machine, it’s not much different from Tunica. But don’t take my word for it.
Anthony Sanfilippo is head of Harrah’s Central Division. He was involved in the expansion of casino gambling to Indiana, Louisiana, and Mississippi. He is leaving Harrah’s this month, when his employment contract expires.
“I would say Arkansas is opening up over at Southland a casino without table games at the dog track,” he said.
Slot machines account for 80 percent of casino revenues. Southland’s “skill” slots have all the bells and whistles of Tunica’s, and customers feel like they’re getting two spins for the price of one even if the payout percentage is similar.
Southland is 10 minutes from downtown Memphis, while Tunica is 30 to 45 minutes away. In Tunica’s early years, casino operators used to downplay the importance of distance from Memphis, which Sanfilippo says is the gateway for 60 percent of the Tunica business. Not any more. Harrah’s original casino in Tunica closed, and the company bought other properties closer to Memphis.
“From Grand Casino to the location of the first facility in Tunica was about 13 miles,” said Sanfilippo. “That’s a big difference.”
While Tunica casinos have added golf courses, glitzy hotels, and big-name entertainment, it’s been a race to the bottom for slot addicts. Backwaters such as Greenville were first to put in nickel and penny slots. Now, all the casinos have them.
Like Mississippi, Arkansas gambling will evolve. Let the state Racing Commission and the legislature get a taste of the gambling tax revenues for a year or so and see if the politicians loosen up the restrictions.
The camel, remember, has his nose in the tent.