spencer coplan – Memphis Flyer

Jason Viera

This beer has quite a head on (in) it.

Usually, when you go out to grab a cold one at your favorite drinking hole, you don’t get a lecture. Until maybe after you get home.

The seventh-annual Science of Beer, which was held January 17th at the Pink Palace Museum, featured mini-lectures, as well as talks with brewers and other beer-themed activities, along with more than 20 beer stations and almost the same number of food stations.

Each guest received a 16-ounce glass along with other items you don’t get at your local pub: a tasting card and a map of the event.

The combination beer tasting and education workshop raises money for the Pink Palace’s Education Department.

About 500 people attended and $30,000 was raised, says Pink Palace manager of marketing Bill Walsh.

Michael Donahue

Brandon Closson, Doyle Schaeffer, and Amanda Rast at Science of Beer.

Michael Donahue

Science of Beer

Michael Donahue

Bridgett Hauer and Clinton Ward at Science of Beer

Michael Donahue

Nate Oliva, Spencer Coplan, Gerald Darling, Spencer McMillin, and Conrad Phillips at the Homebrewer’s Dinner.

And speaking of beer…

If measured in karats, Caritas Community Center & Cafe dinners would be way up there. Take the Homebrewer’s Dinner, which was held January 17th. Former Caritas chef de cuisine Spencer McMillin was at the helm.

“I created this dinner with Michael Lee of Midsouth Malts (a home brewers supply store) to honor the underdog heroes of the Memphis brewing scene,” McMillin says. “The big boys – Wiseacre, High Cotton, Memphis Made, etc. – get all the credit – and they produce amazing beers – but there are people in the background making good stuff, too.

“The hit of the night was the 22-year-old barley wine aged for six months in a Jack Daniels barrel served with my dessert.”

That dessert was a parfait of coconut-caramel custard, almond toffee, white chocolate mousse, and candied bacon beer.

Also in the kitchen were Caritas chef de cuisine Conrad Phillips, Spencer Coplan and Gerald Darling from Wok’n in Memphis, and Nate Oliva.

Meet the 2020 Carnival Memphis king and queen: Ray Gill and Carter Stovall.

Ray Gill is king and Carter Stovall is queen of Carnival Memphis 2020.

Carnival Memphis will celebrate the commercial real estate development industry. The Business and Industry Salute will be held February 13th at Hilton Memphis.

Gill, founder of Gill Properties, and his wife, Betha, are the parents of three children, Brown, York, and Lizzie, who were members of the Carnival Memphis Royal Court.

Stovall, daughter of Baylor and Howard Stovall IV, is a junior at Cornell University, where she is studying pre-med.

The queen comes from a long line of Carnival Memphis lineage. William Howard Stovall II, her great-grandfather, was king in 1948; her grandfather, William Howard Stovall III, was king in 1976; and her father was king in 1976. Her mother was queen in 1993.

Carter and her brother, Quint, were Royal Pages in 2008. She served as the University Club of Memphis princess in the 2018 Royal Court.

Gill and Stovall will be presented at the Crown & Sceptre Ball, which will be held May 29th at the Hilton Memphis.

Hugh Mallory is Carnival Memphis’ president.

Boy Scouts Scouting Deserts Program, Red Zone Ministries, and Thrive Memphis are the recipients of this year’s Carnival Children’s Charity Initiative.

Michael Donahue

Spencer Coplan and Cara Greenstein at the Jewish Chinese Culinary Mashup dinner.

If you were lucky enough to attend the Jewish Chinese Culinary Mashup dinner, which was held January 19th at Puck Food Hall, you would have tasted matzo ball wonton soup and matzo encrusted amberjack fish, among other delicacies.

Spencer Coplan, chef/owner of Wok’n in Memphis, and Cara Greenstein joined forces for the dinner, Coplan says: “I’m Jewish. She’s Jewish. Jews love Chinese food.”

Chinese restaurants are “open on Christmas. It’s always been a thing. So, we talked about doing this for a couple of months now.”

They figured January was the first time to do the dinner, which is the inaugural event for Coplan’s Culinary Artisans Dinner Series. “Each month we’re going to do a collaboration with a chef, blogger, or someone who is involved in the food scene. We’re going to do a dinner with them.”

He and Greenstein met two weeks ago “and went over some fun ideas for the menu – bringing Chinese food and Israeli food together. This is what we came up with. It was mainly my food ideas.”

The next Culinary Artisans Dinner Series will be held February 24th at SoLa restaurant in Oxford, Mississippi. Coplan will team with SoLa chef/owner Erika Lipe. “It’s going to be more of an la carte. Guests can order what they want. She and I are collaborating on the menu. We both do Asian-inspired food with Southern twists, so we’re going to come up with some fun food ideas together and both our teams will execute the dinner.”

For information on the SoLo dinner, call (662)-238-3500.

Michael Donahue

Ashley Phoummavong, Amaia Johnson, Spencer Coplan, Gerald Darling, Omar Hernandez, and Ben Curtis at the Jewish Chinese Culinary Mashup dinner.

MIchael Donahue

Nick Manlavi and Zach Jennings at the Jewish Chinese Culinary Mashup dinner.

Michael Donahue

Melissa Peeler and Nancy Bogatin at Irish Orchestra party.

January 26th was a great day for the Iris. That night, members of Iris Orchestra were guests at a party at the home of Milton Schaeffer. They got to carry wine and food instead of musical instruments.

“Milton has thrown numerous parties for Iris over the years, and they are all over-the-top fabulous,” says Marcia Kaufmann, Iris Orchestra executive director.

The recent party was “a thank you for donors who had stepped up for the Iris 2020 Vision challenge – to increase their giving by 20 percent in honor of our 20th season and for the musicians who make it all worthwhile.”

About 115 people attended.

WE SAW YOU AROUND TOWN

Michael Donahue

Joshua and Janina Cosby at Antique Warehouse.

MIchael Donahue

Daniel Bonds, David Bonds, and Jansen Swift at Gibson’s Donuts.

Food — in one form or another — has always been a part of Spencer Coplan’s life.

“Right from the get-go, food was my thing,” says Coplan, 28. “My parents say that, as a child, I used to play with the cups and stuff in the bathtub, and I would put on my own little cooking show. I’m sure I made ‘spinach’ and other vegetables and maybe baked a ‘cake’ or what have you.”

Coplan now is owner of Wok’n in Memphis, a pop-up restaurant that serves Coplan’s non-traditional take on Chinese food. Locations include Saturday at the Cooper-Young Farmers’ Market and the second Sunday of each month at Porcellino’s Craft Butcher.

In addition to bathtub cuisine, Coplan was fascinated with food in general. “My parents would take me out to eat as a child, and I’d get rambunctious and restless,” he says. “They would just pick me up, and the closer I got to the kitchen, the more I’d calm down. When they would take me out to eat, they had to take me over to the window so I could see the kitchen and, apparently, I’d stop crying.”

Michael Donahue

Spencer Coplan

When he was 15, Coplan got a garde manger job at a restaurant. He liked the “instant gratification” of making something and a guest enjoying it. He was “a 15 year old who couldn’t do well in school and was always told ‘No,’ and ‘This is wrong,’ and ‘This is not how you’re supposed to do it.’

“And I never really was good at math or grammar, geography, things like that,” says Coplan. “So, to have someone say, ‘That salad looks really good,’ was kind of helpful to me as a teenager. To be like, ‘I can do something and not be scolded for it.'”

Coplan briefly went to culinary school for a year at Johnson & Wales University in Providence. “But I felt I could learn faster getting paid at a restaurant than paying lots of money to learn at a school.”

He got a job working for Tom Douglas at Etta’s Seafood in Seattle. Every year or so, Coplan changed jobs. He helped open RN74 for Michael Mina and Le Petiti Cochon, a little offal restaurant. He also worked at John Sundstrom’s Lark restaurant.

“I don’t know if it just comes easy to me, but I can understand flavors. Something about food really calms down my anxious brain.”

Coplan moved to Memphis after Teach for America placed his girlfriend, Jordan Ayers, in Memphis. “I said, ‘Well, I’m a cook. I can go anywhere.'”

His friend told him Andrew Michael Italian Kitchen was one of the top restaurants in Memphis. “I like pretentious fine dining because my first job was pretentious fine dining. I’ve always done it. I like the tweezers. I like the big white plates. The small amount of food.”

Coplan got a job at Andrew Michael Italian Kitchen, where he began experimenting with his own style of Chinese food.

He’s captivated by Asian food. “I spent a lot of my after hours in [Asian] restaurants in Seattle. I would go eat late night Chinese food or ramen or Korean food and really liked that kind of food.”

Coplan’s expertise in Chinese cooking was a result of “a lot of cookbooks and a lot of time messing around making staff meals for my colleagues. Just kind of being like, ‘Well, how does this taste? Does this taste like General Tso’s chicken?'”

But he doesn’t want his Asian food to be made exactly like Asian cooks make it. “I don’t want to be authentic. I want the ketchup, the sugar, lots of hoisin sauce. And not authentic Chinese food.”

Americanizing it? “Definitely,” he says. “I have no problem admitting that.”

For instance, instead of chilis and other fancier ingredients, the sauce in Coplan’s General Tso’s chicken includes “orange juice and sugar and ketchup and hoisin sauce.”

He wanted to “open up something that is cheap and casual and something that is accessible to everyone. Everyone knows what fried rice is. Everyone knows what beef and broccoli is.”

Coplan indulges his love for white tablecloth cooking by working a few nights a week at The Gray Canary. His goal is to one day open a bar that sells Chinese food. “Like Slider Inn. Just the same except instead of sliders, beef and broccoli and such.”

So, do people think Coplan is Asian? “Well, I have a Vietnamese man that works with me. And now we make the joke if anyone asks, ‘He’s Spencer.'”

Vegetarian Mapo Tofu from Michael Donahue on Vimeo.

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