Tag: Taylor Berger

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News The Fly-By

Chilling Out at Flow Cryotherapy

I’m cold, and I’m naked, aside from my unmentionables and some thick socks, slippers, and heavy, oversized gloves. Yet, despite the -215 degree temperature and the swirling white smoke of liquid nitrogen inside this cryotherapy chamber, I’m feeling sort of invigorated.

I’m testing out the new East Memphis cryotherapy sauna, Flow Cryotherapy. It opened to the public on Monday, and it’s the first of its kind in Memphis. Cryotherapy is supposed to help with everything from chronic inflammation and joint pain to insomnia and psoriasis. I’m hoping it helps ease the runner’s knee pain I’ve been struggling with for months.

According to one of Flow Cryotherapy’s co-owners, Bill Ganus, I might get a little natural high. That must be the invigorating feeling I’ve got going on.

“You’ll get this amped-up feeling that comes from the adrenaline, endorphins, and super-oxygenated blood that’s being filtered and oxygenated in your core. It’s a great feeling. That effect is fairly short-term, about two to four hours depending on the person,” says Ganus, who opened the business with partners Taylor Berger, Jeff Seidman, and Jake Lawhead.

And there’s another bonus. Ganus says the cryotherapy session burns between 300 and 400 calories in the three-minute treatment, but some sources online claim cryotherapy can burn up to 800 calories per session. Supposedly, the calorie burn occurs afterward, as your body tries to regain its normal temperature.

“You can go from here to Muddy’s, and it will be calorie neutral,” Ganus jokes.

While it sounds a little like new-age, hocus-pocus, cryotherapy has some serious believers. Several Memphis Grizzlies are known to use cryo treatments before and after games. It’s also used at the Olympic rehabilitation center in Spala, Poland.

Since it’s supposed to help with joint pain and inflammation, it’s ideal for athletes looking to boost performance and recover quickly from injuries. And since it only takes three minutes, it’s much quicker and less painful than the old 30-minute ice-bath treatment.

“It has benefits that range from athletes being able to perform harder or longer or more often to elderly people with joint pain who want relief from the inflammation to people who want faster skin regeneration,” Ganus says. “There are a lot of people who do this purely for cosmetic reasons. It helps you regenerate collagen faster, and your skin gets stronger and tighter.”

Bianca in the cryo chamber

Here’s how it works: You undress and change into Flow Cryotherapy’s robe, socks, and slippers. For women underwear is optional, but men are advised to leave their tighty-whities on.

“Dudes should wear underwear because you want to keep everything close to your body,” Ganus explains.

You enter the chamber and ditch the robe over the side. An attendant hands you gloves, and then the platform is raised so that only your head sticks out above the top. The machine whirs and creates white nitrogen smoke that looks like something from a sci-fi movie. Inside, the temperature cools down to -215 degrees. The session only lasts for three minutes.

Flow Cryotherapy welcomes one-time users, and they sell monthly memberships that allow users to frequent the spa as often as they want. But Ganus says even loyal customers are limited to using the treatment twice daily.

“That frequency is not recommended for long-term use, but if you have something, [like a race], you’re trying to get ready for or recover from, you might want to get in the unit as often as you can,” Ganus said. “If you just finished an Iron Man [triathalon] and you need to recover quickly because you’ve got a marathon coming up, you’d want to come often.”

The first session at Flow Cryotherapy costs $20, and additional, individual sessions are $49. An unlimited monthly membership ranges from $199 to $239, depending on whether or not you sign a contract.

As for me, well, a week later, I am still having knee issues. But the pain in my knee did subside for several hours after the treatment, and Ganus tells me multiple treatments are needed to help with chronic pain.

Flow Cryotherapy (flowcryo.com) is located at 5101 Sanderlin, Suite 106.

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Food & Drink Hungry Memphis

Truck Stop Not Going Forward

Michael Tauer confirmed today that the Truck Stop, a restaurant planned for the corner of Central and Cooper will not go forward. 

Tauer and partner Taylor Berger had been working for two years on the Truck Stop, described as “a hybrid concept that combines a restaurant serving small plates, adult beverages, and desserts with parking space for a rotating cast of three food trucks.”

The project was met with some resistance. A community meeting was held where some questioned the design and the effect on traffic. 

Tauer said the decision not to pursue the project was made in the last two weeks or so. 

“It got to the point where it was cost prohibitive,” he says. 

He says it was not one issue that was causing an overrun, but was a cumulative effect, involving zoning, landscaping, engineering, site grading, curbs … 

Tauer says that he and Berger are “sad and frustrated.” “It was a concept unique to Memphis.”

Tauer calls the corner of Cooper and Center an “amazing location.” The future of the site remains with Loeb. 

There are no plans to put the Truck Stop at another site. 

“This is a big blow to us,” says Tauer. 

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News The Fly-By

New Art Center for Kids Opening in Overton Square

Anna Vergos Blair is the mother of two creative toddlers, but when they make art in her house, they leave a mess behind. She figured other moms must have the same problem, so she and her sister Katherine Vergos Riederer decided to open an art center for kids in Overton Square.

“It’s a space where kids can get messy,” Blair said. “My little ones love all the stuff that makes a mess — paint, glitter, glue, the stuff you don’t want all over your house. So we want this to be a space where kids aren’t scared to drop a container of glitter on the floor.”

The Art Project is set to open this summer at 2092 Trimble Place in Overton Square. The center will operate like a gym but for art. Parents can buy monthly or annual memberships and stop in with their kids any time. Or they can pay a one-time drop-in fee to check it out. The center will cater to kids ages 18 months to 12 years old.

Anna Vergos Blair and Katherine Vergos Riederer

There will be classes in various mediums — like painting or woodworking — led by local artists. But the main studio at The Art Project will be a bit of a free-for-all where kids can work without instruction.

“Kids can just create whatever they want in all different kinds of mediums. It’s not project-driven. It’s more Montessori-style,” Blair said.

All manner of art materials — paint, glitter, chalk, crayons, markers, feathers, googly eyes, etc. — will be available. Kids can choose whatever they want, pick a workstation, and let their little imaginations run wild.

Parents can help their kids if they want to be involved, but if they’d rather sit back and get some work done, there will be free wifi, coffee, and, if all goes as planned, beer and maybe wine. Artist facilitators will be available to assist or inspire kids.

Additionally, The Art Project will offer digitization services, so parents can have all their kids’ artwork scanned and saved.

“Parents have piles and piles of their kids’ artwork. We want to digitize that for parents, so they can create photo books or notecards or posters,” Riederer said.

Blair and Riederer’s family owns The Rendezvous restaurant, and they both grew up helping out there. Blair, now an attorney, began toying with the idea of opening an art center for kids around Christmas. She didn’t know where to start, so she reached out to local entrepreneur Taylor Berger.

“I emailed Taylor in January, and I said, ‘I don’t know you, but I see you’re always launching new businesses.’ So I asked for guidance on starting a business. We met for coffee, and he said, ‘Let’s do it,”‘ Blair said. “He and his partner Michael [Tauer] have little kids, and they signed on to help us right away. They had a space ready for us two days later.”

Riederer, who has a degree in apparel design, sees The Art Project as an opportunity to put her artistic skills to use. She spent some time designing clothing in New York, but since she’s moved back to Memphis, she’s found herself working again with the restaurant. She says she’s ready to pursue something in the creative realm.

“I always assumed I’d start my own company, but I kind of got hooked into the family business. I’ve lost my way for creating art,” Riederer said. “Plus, I have a baby on the way, so I thought this would be a good way to do something I really enjoy, something more fun and creative.”

The sisters enlisted their friend Dom Price, an architect in San Franciso, to design the space.

“There’s a center area that we call the ‘scribble space.’ It’s a rounded area on the inside with tables and chairs and an easel. And the outside of the circle will house the art supplies,” Blair said. “On the opposite wall, there is an area for hanging and drying art, and there’s a wash-up station. We want kids to be wowed when they walk in.”

The sisters are aiming for a June opening. The Art Project is online, Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and Instagram at @artprojectmemphis. The organizers can also be reached by email.

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News The Fly-By

The Kitchen Raises Ire and Questions

CREDIT: Shelby Farms Park Conservancy

Tempers flared and questions arose when news surfaced last week that a new restaurant concept called The Kitchen was coming to town.

Multi-millionaire Kimbal Musk owns the Boulder, Colorado-based restaurant chain and plans to open The Kitchen inside a new visitors center at Shelby Farms Park in 2016 and a more casual concept called The Kitchen Next Door at Crosstown Concourse in 2017.

Many Memphians looked beyond local stories that heralded the chain as “acclaimed” (The Commercial Appeal) and “renowned” (Memphis Daily News) and found a long feature at medium.com about Musk’s plans headlined “The Musk Who Wants to Change the Way We Eat.”

The story painted an ugly picture of Memphis, going beyond the typical “fattest city” designation to call Memphis “a toxic combination of cholesterol and poverty.” Musk saw these problems as an “opportunity for change,” and he and The Kitchen were the ones to bring it, according to the story.

Shelby Farms Park Conservancy

Rendering of new Shelby Farms Park visitors center

In fact, he said coming to Memphis wasn’t about the money, even calling the move “questionable” as a financial decision, according to the story. “If we didn’t have the social aspect, we would go to Las Vegas, New York, Los Angeles, places like that,” Musk was quoted as saying. It was this idea that rubbed many the wrong way.

“Musk has an interesting vision and plan, and I hope he succeeds,” Memphian Caroline Mitchell Carrico wrote in the Medium story’s comments. “However, I also bristle whenever my city is portrayed as a backwater that is dependent on outside saviors.”

Backlash like this (and worse) permeated social media at the end of the week. It even prompted local entrepreneur Taylor Berger to pen a blog post called “Kimbal Musk Is Not An Asshole,” a sort of backlash to the backlash.

“Take it on faith, y’all, that Kimbal Musk is not here to pillage our city,” Berger wrote. “He is exactly the kind of person, with the kind of vision and power to execute, that we need right now if we have any hope of becoming a world-class city.”

Musk is widely credited for shepherding the farm-to-table dining movement and said in a news statement he is “thrilled” to bring it to Memphis.

“Memphis is a vibrant and diverse city that is on the verge of a Real Food (sic) renaissance,” Musk said in the statement.

That raised the ire of Tsunami chef and owner Ben Smith, who has been locally sourcing ingredients since 1998 and hosting a farmers market in his parking lot for the past three years.

“My initial reaction was, Wait a minute, man, there are some people who have been here for a number of years that have really focused on this farm-to-table thing,” Smith said. “The interaction and relationship between farmers and Memphis restaurants is already well-established and well-supported.”

Questions also arose about The Kitchen’s locations — both in taxpayer-supported venues — that could have gone to local talent.

Shelby Farms Park Executive Director Laura Morris said her group issued a request for proposals, made a presentation to the Memphis Restaurant Association, and formed an ad hoc committee to “spread the word” about the opportunity. But the park never got a deal on the table from local restaurateurs, she said.

The Kitchen did not get a special deal or special incentives, she said.

“Looking at the lease, I’d say it’s a little bit above market for the park,” Morris said. “We did pretty well.”

The Kitchen will lease the restaurant and the grab-and-go counter at Shelby Farms for $172,260 for the first five years, according to the lease. Rent will rise slightly in the next five years.

Morris said she was aware that not everyone is excited about bringing in an outside operator, “but it’s not like we put a Cheesecake Factory at the park.”

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News The Fly-By

Rec Room Bar-arcade Opens on Broad

CREDIT: Justin Fox Burks

Sure you were good at Street Fighter II in your old teenage mall arcade days, but can you still get that K.O. after a few craft beers?

Beginning this week, fans of retro arcade games will have the chance to brush off their skills at the Rec Room, a new arcade bar inside a warehouse at 3000 Broad Avenue. The venture — spearheaded by a partnership group that includes entrepreneur Taylor Berger and Buckman chemical sales executive Bill Ganus among others — will feature a number of 1980s and ’90s arcade games as well as mini-living rooms set up with retro gaming consoles.

“This is about the last 40 years of pop culture. Video games trigger such visceral memories of being a teenager or even younger than that. We have Nintendo Power. We have old [school gym] bleachers where you can sit and have a beer,” Berger said. “All of these things trigger these really cool memories.”

Justin Fox Burks

Vintage arcade games at the Rec Room

Standing arcade floor games include Pac Man, Street Fighter II, Donkey Kong, Tron, Burger Time, and Road Blasters, among others. But groups can also rent one of six mini-living rooms — complete with couches and chairs — by the hour to play games on gaming consoles. The games, everything from Atari 2600 to Xbox 1 and PlayStation 4, are projected onto a wall.

“We were standing in this 6,000-square-foot warehouse, and we knew it could be an arcade,” Ganus said. “But even with the [floor] games in there, you’re staring at this huge concrete slab wall. We thought, ‘It would be really bad if we projected old-school consoles up on the wall, so your friends could come in, sit on a couch, and play two-player Contra on a 25-foot screen.”

Video games not your thing? In true rec room fashion, the bar has darts, foosball, ping-pong tables, air hockey, and cornhole boards.

Berger said they lucked onto the massive warehouse space because a friend of his is planning to open another business in part of the space.

“He had 6,000 extra square feet that he wasn’t using,” Berger said.

At first, the bar will serve four rotating styles of beer from Wiseacre Brewing Company, as well as some nationally distributed beers by Sweetwater and Oskar Blues Brewery. The Truck Stop food truck, which debuted at last year’s “Untapped” event at the Tennessee Brewery, will be on-site at the Rec Room peddling tacos. Bluff City Biscuits will sell biscuit sandwiches. The bar is open seven days a week, opening at 4 p.m. on week days but earlier on weekends.

“We’re opening at 10 a.m. on Saturday and noon on Sunday so people can ride over on the [Shelby Farms] Greenline in the morning, eat and play, and ride home,” Berger said.

The bar, near Tillman and Broad, sits on the soon-to-be-constructed Hampline bicycle path, which will run from Overton Park to the Greenline. The partnership group behind the venture, which includes 12 people including Berger and Ganus, is hoping the bar’s location near Tillman will help spur revitalization of the eastern side of Broad.

“There’s definitely room to expand Broad Avenue, especially as the Hampline is developed. It’s made this a really important corridor to connect the High Point area with Overton,” Ganus said.

Though the bar-arcade concept isn’t new, Berger said the Rec Room is different because it’s about transforming an outdated industrial park into something new and fun.

“This ain’t no Dave & Buster’s. This is a warehouse in Binghampton,” Berger said.

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News News Blog

Rec Room Bar-arcade Opens on Broad April 1st

On Wednesday, fans of retro arcade games will have the chance to brush off their skills at the Rec Room, a new arcade bar inside a warehouse at 3000 Broad Avenue.

The venture — spearheaded by a partnership group that includes Taylor Berger, Bill Ganus, Barry and Blake Lichterman, Andy Cates, Michael Tauer, and several others — will feature a number of 1980s and ’90s arcade games as well as mini-living rooms set up with retro gaming consoles.

Standing arcade floor games will include Pac Man, Street Fighter II, Donkey Kong, Tron, Burger Time, Road Blasters, among others. But groups can also rent one of six mini-living rooms — complete with couches and chairs — by the hour to play games on gaming consoles. The games, broadcast from everything from Atari 2600 to Xbox 1 and Playstation 4, will be projected onto a wall.

At first, the bar will serve four rotating styles of beer from Wiseacre Brewing Company, as well as some nationally distributed beers by Sweetwater and Oskar Blues Brewery. The Truck Stop food truck, which debuted at last year’s “Untapped” event at the Tennessee Brewery, will be on-site at the Rec Room peddling tacos. Bluff City Biscuits will sell biscuit sandwiches. The bar will be open seven days a week, opening at 4 p.m. on week days but earlier on weekends.

Check out this week’s Memphis Flyer for more details. Until then, check out these pics from Flyer photographer Justin Fox Burks of Rec Room’s Monday night soft opening.

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Food & Wine Food & Drink

Now Open: Midtown Crossing and Maui Brick Oven.

CREDIT: Justin Fox Burks

In recent years, Memphis has seen the resurgence of several neighborhoods that most people had written off: places like Overton Square, South Main, and Broad Avenue. Inevitably, those comebacks have been preceded by ferocious bouts of murmuring. Did you hear that Overton Square is coming back? I heard it’s coming back.

Now people have started murmuring about a new neighborhood: Crosstown. Buoyed by the redevelopment of the old Sears building, this formerly disinvested district is starting to show signs of life — and nowhere is that more apparent than at Midtown Crossing.

Justin Fox Burks

Midtown Crossing’s Octavia Young

This friendly neighborhood pub was started by chefs Jeremiah Shields and Octavia Young. Both cooked at Harrah’s in Tunica; both lost their jobs when the casino closed. But in this case, Tunica’s loss is Memphis’ gain.

“I love it here,” admits Young. “I was all set to move to North Carolina, but I wasn’t feeling it. It’s not my scene at all.”

Shields and Young want Midtown Crossing to be a center for the local community. Which is easy enough to say, but they actually seem to be following through on it. When I visited, there was a ukulele night going on in the main dining room.

The concept is simple. Take people who can play the uke and people who want to learn. Get everybody together in a big room — parents, children, hipsters, weirdos — and let them figure it out. All right, it gets pretty noisy. But it’s actually kinda cool when you think about it.

As far as food goes, Midtown Crossing serves an upscale take on pub grub: pizzas, sandwiches, nachos, cheese sticks. I say “upscale” because they do most of it in-house: They smoke their own meat and cure their own bacon. They pickle their own onions and make their own tomato jam.

The best thing I tried was the Wild Mushroom Pizza ($11). Although the mushrooms likely weren’t wild — they were too big, too unblemished — it was nonetheless quite tasty, served with crumbled bacon, caramelized onions, and topped with a fried egg.

Although many of the dishes lean heavily on meat, Young says she is interested in developing more vegetarian and vegan offerings. And she’s got time: Midtown Crossing just opened in December. For now, it seems to be hitting the right note. When I visited, it was crowded with a mix of twentysomethings, neighborhood regulars, and families.

When people talk about Maui Brick Oven, they tend to mention two things. First: gluten-free. Second: Germantown. And while both are technically correct, they also miss the point. Yes, Maui is out past Saddle Creek on Poplar. Yes, the restaurant eschews gluten, which is another word for wheat products.

But no one’s talking about the food, and food is the real story. It’s light, loaded with local vegetables — and actually pretty affordable. In a city swimming in greasy barbecue nachos, Maui is a breath of fresh air.

Take the Barefoot Bowl ($11). Beautiful portobello mushroom slices are arranged in a fan across the top of this hearty vegan dish, which includes pickled carrots, onions, and cauliflower, garlic kale, mandarin orange slices, and crispy garbanzo beans. It’s served over a bed of quinoa and brown rice and drizzled with Thai coconut sauce.

More to the point? It’s delicious.

“Sometimes these big burly dudes come in here for lunch,” says general manager Dana Doggrell, “and I can tell, they don’t know it’s gluten-free.

“And you know what?” he continues. “I don’t tell them. Because they’re enjoying it, and I don’t want to mess with that.”

Maui’s is owned by restaurateurs Taylor Berger and Michael Tauer, who launched it in partnership with the original Maui, in Hawaii. Tauer says he got the idea while vacationing with his wife, who can’t eat gluten.

In addition to pathbreaking grain bowls, the menu also features more traditional fare: things like crunchy coconut shrimp and brick-oven pizza. I particularly liked the Paradise Pesto Pizza ($14), loaded with artichoke hearts, roasted garlic, Greek olives, and feta.

If I had tasted that pizza without knowing it was gluten-free, you know what I would have said? Dang, that’s a good crust. Thin and crispy. Germantown or not, I’ll be heading back to Maui.

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News News Blog

Forum Opens Public Discussion Regarding Future of Fairgrounds

CREDIT: Alexandra Pusateri

Taylor Berger (left) and Kyle Veazey (right) opened the forum for discussion from speakers.

  • Alexandra Pusateri
  • Taylor Berger (left) and Kyle Veazey (right) opened the forum for discussion from speakers.

On a chilly Wednesday night, a mishmash of locals concerned about the future state of the old Fairgrounds property gathered in a Midtown theater. At the Circuit Playhouse, local entrepreneur Taylor Berger and his organization Make Memphis hosted a moderated forum of speakers to provide some public input into the potential of the old Fairgrounds and the Mid-South Coliseum redevelopment.

The forum, moderated by politics reporter Kyle Veazey of The Commercial Appeal, mostly focused on the Fairgrounds’ proposed $233 million redevelopment and the idea of turning that area of Midtown into a Tourism Development Zone (TDZ). By designating the three-mile area as such, the city can use the excess sales tax that would come from a revitalized Fairgrounds — and its surrounding areas, including Overton Square and Cooper Young — to pay off the $176 million public revenue bonds, over 30 years, that would be required to fund its redevelopment.

It was mentioned multiple times throughout the night that the city administration had been invited, but there was no appearance from anyone in city government in the audience except Wanda Halbert, the Memphis City councilmember who represents District 4 and the area that includes the Fairgrounds. Shelby County commissioners, on the other hand, were plenty.

In his designated few minutes, Shelby County Commissioner Steve Basar mentioned the interest of the bond that would occur over the time it takes to repay the loan, taking away $55 million away from the city during that time.

“[$233 million] is not the total tax dollars going into the project,” Basar said. “It doesn’t include the interest. So when you’re all done, you’re talking about a $300-million project plus. You’re tying up this revenue stream for 30 years.”

The current plans proposed for the old Fairgrounds would include an amateur sports complex, hotel, and retail space spanning over 400,000 square feet. Getting approval from the State Building Commission is the next step for the city to move forward on the project. 

“I’m here to support whatever it is you want to do,” said Reginald Milton, Shelby County commissioner. “If you don’t want to do this, that’s fine. If you do want to do it, that’s fine. I just don’t want us to be the ones to affect what you want out of this.”

Other county commissioners pledged to keep an eye on the project and listen to citizens speaking about the issue.

Non-elected officials also spoke at the forum, including Shawn Massey, who works with the Shopping Center Group.

“Midtown is under-retailed from a retailer’s perspective,” Massey said. “It’s a great community. It’s got lots of density, but there’s a lot of leakage. There’s a lot of Midtowners going and shopping in other parts of Memphis and not shopping at their home.”

Charles “Chooch” Pickard, an architect who is running for city council this year, asked if other ideas besides youth sports may be more viable for the old Fairgrounds.

“Wouldn’t a tourist destination based on music and sports history be a bigger draw?” Pickard said. “I’d rather we base the TDZ on authentic Memphis history tourism, of which there are still a lot of untapped options.”

Mike McCarthy, a proponent to save the Mid-South Coliseum, gathered over 3,000 signatures to save the building itself from demolition, surpassing the goal his group had set earlier in the month.

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Food & Drink Hungry Memphis

Bedrock Eats To Take Over Frank’s Deli Space

CREDIT: Justin Fox Burks

Justin Fox Burks

Brandi Marter

News from Taylor Berger’s site taylorberger.com: Bedrock Eats & Sweets has signed a lease for 327 S. Main, the former site of Frank’s Deli. 

Brandi Marter founded Bedrock, which provides Paleo prepared meals, grab-and-go dishes, and desserts, in 2013. She operates out of the YoLo Midtown location.

Bedrock provides protein-rich dishes, nothing processed. A sampling of meals includes brisket chili, pot roast, and lamb meatballs. 

The space on South Main will be remodeled with plans to open Bedrock in March.

From the post: 

For now, Brandi will continue to operate Bedrock out of the YoLo kitchen in Midtown. Most of her orders come from the Bedrock website, so the shift downtown won’t change most customers’ experience, except adding the new pick-up spot. Eventually, Brandi says she’d like to add counter service and cafe-style dining as well as a small community market at the South Main location. The larger space downtown will also enable her to increase production and start shipping outside the Memphis area.

Categories
Food & Wine Food & Drink

Love Pop on South Main; Bleu’s New Lounge

CREDIT: Justin Fox Burks

There isn’t any furniture at Love Pop Soda Shop. That’s right: no tables, no chairs, no display cases. Instead, they’ve got 700 white plastic milk crates. Milk crates to sit on, milk crates to rest your glass on. The bar is actually a long row of — you guessed it — stacked milk crates, topped by a smooth wood panel. You really have to see it to believe it.

You might think that such an arrangement would be the product of necessity, a last-minute fix for a shop that didn’t have the time or money to buy proper furniture. Far from it. The design, by Memphis-based brg3s architects, is actually pretty nifty.

Think about it. Turn a milk crate on its side, stick an LED light behind it, and what do you get? A stylish, semitranslucent display case. Like Legos, Milk crates are cheap and infinitely rearrangeable.

Justin Fox Burks

More important, the design reflects the simplicity of Love Pop’s concept: Do one thing. Do it well. As you may have guessed, Love Pop serves soda — more than 200 varieties and counting — but you won’t find any Mountain Dew around here. Instead, they focus on small-batch bubbles, the kind of pop that is produced like craft beer.

A good example is Simpson Springs Sarsaparilla ($3) — a close cousin to root beer. Whereas the ingredient labels on most corporate sodas read like a chemistry textbook, this 100-year-old recipe, produced at a mom-and-pop shop in South Easton, Massachusetts, includes just four ingredients — and one of them is carbonated spring water.

And the taste? It’s like A&W Root Beer without the jet fuel (high-fructose corn syrup, phosphoric acid, sodium benzoate, etc.). I am no shill for soda, but Simpson Springs surprised me. It’s rich and smooth with undertones of vanilla and sassafras.

Co-owner Mignonne Wright says she dreamed up Love Pop back in 2005, when she and her son, Brendan, were on a road trip through the American West. While driving down Route 66, they happened on a place called Pop Soda Ranch, and Brendan says he thought he had died and gone to heaven.

“Back then I was an 8th-grader,” Brendan explains, “So the idea of over 600 different kinds of soda — that sounded like the best thing in the world to me.”

Wright says she wants Love Pop to be an all-ages hangout, the kind of soda bar that will be refreshingly new to millennials and comfortingly familiar to baby boomers, nostalgic for the lunch counters of the 1950s and 60s. At the grand opening on Saturday, they will give out free ice cream to make floats. How many kinds of ice cream, you ask?

“Just one,” says co-owner Taylor Berger. “Vanilla. We figure you’ve got enough choices with 200 kinds of soda, so you shouldn’t have to stress about ice cream.”

Love Pop Soda Shop, 506 S. Main

www.lovepopsodashop.com

Over at Bleu — the restaurant in the Westin — they’ve updated their lounge with new paint and furniture. And there’s a brand-new tap system for beer. But the real news at Bleu isn’t the lounge. It’s the revamped menu by chef Ana Gonzalez.

A ball of energy with a tight ponytail, Gonzalez comes to Memphis by way of Colombia. After attending culinary school at Johnson and Wales, she went on to work at Disney’s Contemporary Resort and the Peabody’s Capriccio Grill. In the three months since she came on at Bleu, she has given the restaurant a bold new flavor, emphasizing small plates that feature fresh, local ingredients.

Take the Bacon-Wrapped Shrimp with Polenta Cake ($8). A pair of tiny towers draped with micro-greens from Memphis’ Green Girl Produce, it’s Gonzalez’s mischievous take on shrimp and grits. (Grits and polenta are essentially the same thing; the only difference is the type of corn used and the fineness of the grind.)

Drizzled with deliciously vinegary barbecue sauce, Gonzalez’s shrimp strikes the right balance. At the top, there is the fresh taste of micro-greens like radish and daikon sprouts. In the middle, the plump richness of shrimp and bacon. And at bottom, the crisp crunch of fried polenta. The best part? It’s inexpensive, so you can order a second round.