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A Taste of the South at Memphis’ Magnolia and May

While the pandemic ravaged existing restaurants, incredibly some new restaurants decided to open. Some of them, like Memphis’ new Southern eatery Magnolia and May did so almost clandestinely, with so little fanfare that I missed the opening altogether. Instead, on the first fairly warm Sunday of the year, the place showed up in an app where I often search for breakfast or brunch restaurants, and since I am always enthused about new places to eat breakfast, I decided to try them out.

Magnolia and May, which describes itself as a “country brasserie,” is not particularly easy to find. It sits on Mount Moriah, tucked behind Gus’s World-Famous Fried Chicken, at the place where Mendenhall breaks off from Mount Moriah near the railroad tracks and Poplar Avenue. The truly tiny building has the look of a small hunting cabin, but it can surprisingly handle a fairly large number of patrons. The inside is cheerful and bright, and the porch features several outdoor tables, which were all occupied, despite the threat of rain.

Although the menu features a lot more than breakfast, it was breakfast that brought me to the place, so I chose to order from the brunch menu. Rather than chicken and waffles, Magnolia and May features chicken and french toast, accompanied by a bacon marmalade. I liked the concept, and both the chicken and french toast were great, but I disliked the bacon marmalade. Marmalades are typically sweet, but this one prominently contained onions and peppers, and seemed out of place on my chicken. Others may love it. As for the french toast, it was delicious with butter and maple syrup. The restaurant features several other brunch items, including a standard breakfast called the “Perfect Gentleman.” Coffee was from local Memphis roaster J. Brooks, and was quite good as well.

Magnolia and May has a full bar, and with brunch, of course, offers mimosas. It makes a good addition to the Sunday brunch options in Memphis, and has Southern-inspired menu options for other times of day as well.

Magnolia and May

718 Mount Moriah Rd

Memphis, TN 38117

(901) 676-8100

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Pizza Meets Hip Hop and Community at Slim & Husky’s

Memphis has lots of pizza restaurants, but a hip-hop-themed pizza restaurant is a whole different thing altogether. Slim & Husky’s Pizza Beeria, a Memphis branch of a Nashville-based chain, was eagerly anticipated locally, and is located in a historic business across from the former home of the Commercial-Appeal newspaper on Union Avenue just east of downtown. The concept was founded by three friends and former football players from Tennessee State University who wanted to provide jobs, food and community to the North Nashville neighborhood where the first location was started. With locations now in Antioch, Tennessee, Sacramento, Atlanta and Memphis, Slim & Husky’s seems well on its way to becoming an institution.

The basic food concept on which Slim & Husky’s is based will be familiar to many; an individual-sized pizza concept in which customers can choose from a vast array of toppings at no extra cost. The basic idea entered the Memphis market much earlier in the form of Pyro’s Fire Fresh Pizza, but Slim & Husky’s is at once quite different; the pizzas are rectangular rather than round, and there are two different sizes, the “slim” and the slightly larger “husky.” I was also impressed with the high quality of the ingredients. There is an array of pre-planned pizza varieties, including the unique PREAM, which stands for Pizza Rules Everything Around Me; when one of these is ordered, a bell is rung and the staff chants the slogan. Customers can also plan their own pizzas from a vast array of sauces and toppings.

The other thing that really sets Slim & Husky’s apart is its embrace of hip-hop culture. The walls include paintings of such Memphis rap legends as Eightball and MJG and Playa Fly. These artists had signed their pictures on the restaurant’s opening day. The soundtrack overhead is also hip-hop; a warning on the door indicates that explicit lyrics are possible, but I have yet to hear any when I have visited. The music gives the brightly-painted restaurant a bouncy, upbeat vibe.

Finally, no dinner would be complete without dessert, and The Rollout is Slim & Husky’s dessert department, offering an astonishing array of five different cinnamon rolls. On my first visit, I tried one of the basic OG S & H House Rolls, which are basically warm, gooey, moist cinnamon rolls, and one of the Cookie Monsta rolls, which feature white chocolate sauce, Oreo cookies and peanut butter crumbles. I came away pleasantly full and imbued with a sense of fun and community.

Slim & Husky’s Pizza Beeria Memphis

634 Union Av

Memphis, TN 38103

(901) 617-1655

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Great Blues and Barbecue in Coldwater, Mississippi

Memphis is known for great barbecue, but strangely, barbecue is rarer in Mississippi, so when a new place appeared in the town of Coldwater, in Tate County, advertising itself as “blues and barbecue,” my interest was piqued, to say the least.

Coldwater is an interesting town in its own right, having been founded by the Federal government in 1942, to replace an older town of Coldwater that was flooded by the construction of Arkabutla Dam and Lake. The old town had been something of a prosaic railroad town with a traditional grid pattern of streets, but the new town was designed by an urban planner in Memphis, with curved streets typical of subdivisions. Highway 51 was four-laned and given service roads on either side, and a long, rectangular square was developed instead of the traditional four-square parks that older Southern towns were built around. Many of the old town’s houses and businesses were disassembled and trucked to the new site prior to the lake bed being filled.

But Coldwater has not been a place for eating out, or for live music, as a rule. Part of the problem was that until a few years ago, Tate County did not permit any alcohol sales, which pushed restaurants, clubs and live music to the neighboring county of Panola, where Como developed a sort of rural equivalent of Beale Street along its Main Street. So I was curious to check out this new restaurant and see what it was about.

Red’s Coldwater BBQ and Blues, despite the name, has no connection to the famous Red’s Juke Joint in Clarksdale. The latter is primarily a blues venue, the former a restaurant. But the decor of the new Coldwater restaurant does emphasize blues and music, with a piano, saxophone and other instruments on the walls, and cheerful bright colors and lights everywhere. The back room has a fairly small stage, which is used for bands on nights when the place has live music. Despite the name, the emphasis currently seems more on country music than blues, but Red’s features a weekly jam session on Thursdays, and karaoke on Fridays. The large, circular kitchen out back resembles a grain silo, and behind it is an old, historic smokehouse that was full of smoking meat when it was shown to me. It smelled delicious. There is apparently ample room for outdoor music events in warmer weather.

As for the food—delicious, but some words of caution are in order, as things are done a little differently at Red’s. The menu is quite simple, as there are basically two choices: three meats and two sides for $15, or one sandwich and one side for $10. Ordering is done buffet style; the meat choices are pork shoulder, brisket and pulled chicken, and the sides include potato hash (which has onions and peppers) and homemade macaroni and cheese. Drinks are from cold cans. It’s hard to get decent brisket outside of Texas, but Red’s has decent brisket, and in fact all the meats were really good. As for the sides, I was especially impressed with the macaroni and cheese, which had a dark golden color and sharp cheese flavor.

The owner indicates that he intends to add blues to the live entertainment mix in coming weeks, so I look forward to that. Live music opportunities are seriously lacking in Tate and Panola Counties.

Red’s Coldwater BBQ & Blues

646 B E Service Dr

Coldwater, MS 38618

(601) 667-8041

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RIP Puck Food Hall

Food halls, sort of like food courts without the mall, have become something of a trend in other cities; for the customer, they allow people to sample many different kinds of food in one place, while, for the restauranteur, they allow lower overhead for new startups. The concept has worked well at the St. Roch Market in New Orleans, and at Cultivation Food Hall in Jackson, Mississippi, so when I heard that Puck Food Hall was opening at the 409 South Main building on the south end of downtown, I expected it would do well. Instead, it struggled from day one, and undoubtedly the COVID-19 pandemic piled on. By the time I first visited in November, it was already winding down toward an inevitable closing.

Although Puck Food Hall will close for good in December, it was still home to Dr. Bean’s Coffee and Tea Emporium and to a retail outlet for Clarksdale-based Sweet Magnolia Gelato Company on my last visit. Dr. Bean’s will be relocating to the former Lo Fi Coffee stand within Stock and Belle at 387 South Main. Sweet Magnolia Gelato will likely be leaving downtown for a location in the east county suburbs.

Here’s hoping that after the pandemic, someone will try again to bring the food hall concept to Memphis. I think with the right management and in the right location, it could do well.

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One Curfew You Won’t Object To: Curfew Memphis

The COVID-19 pandemic has led to lots of lockdowns and curfews, but in the middle of it came a Curfew of a different sort: the new gourmet restaurant called Curfew Memphis in the new Canopy Memphis Hotel downtown across from the Peabody. Well-known Chef Fabio Viviani is the driving force behind Curfew, whose ethos seems to be that of a sports bar with a gourmet twist.

My first impression was the bright, sleek modern surroundings of the place. With plenty of glass windows, the restaurant has a nice, cheerful open feel, and the seating, which includes couches, suggests comfort and a feeling of being at home.

I ordered a burger, which the menu says was made from “beef belly.” It was beautiful cooked to order, and delicious, with cheese, bacon, and (at my request) house made steak sauce. The accompanying french fries were hot and golden brown. The menu is not large, but includes interesting choices, including a rib-eye steak, which I will certainly have to try on another visit. Prices are not cheap, but I felt the burger was worth every penny I paid. My server was cheerful and very attentive.

The area of the hotel lobby nearest the restaurant was decorated with record albums and small speakers. This seems to be a continuing trend in new Memphis hotels; similar music and record themes are in the lobbies of the Central Station Hotel and Arrive Memphis. Apparently, music is the way Memphis tourism will be marketed going forward.

Curfew Memphis

164 Union Av

Memphis, TN 38103

(901) 467-0308

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A Taste of the Crescent City at Ben Yay’s in Memphis

New Orleans-themed restaurants have come and gone over the years in Memphis; few of them offered beignets, those delightful doughnuts we learned to love at the Cafe du Monde in Jackson Square. Fortunately, there is now a place called Ben Yay’s on the Main Street Mall in downtown Memphis that offers the best in New Orleans cuisine and the delicious beignets as well.

Located in a space that has housed several New Orleans-themed restaurants over the years including most notably Chef Gary’s Deja Vu, which closed when he passed away, Ben yay’s proclaims itself a “Gumbo Shop,” but they have an absolutely delicious shrimp po-boy, and one that is fairly authentic. Nothing fancy, of course; po-boys are not fancy food. But it is, as all good po-boys are, a thing of beauty. There are too many shrimp for the french loaf; they fall off the sandwich onto your plate, which is the mark of a good po-boy. The french fries that came with it were delicious as well.

But it is what came afterwards that sets Ben Yay’s apart. Authentic New Orleans-style beignets, covered with powdered sugar. There have been beignet places in Memphis before, including several locations of Crescent City Beignet that have since closed, and a suburban place called Voodoo Cafe in Bartlett which sells sweet and savory beignets shaped like voodoo dolls. But the beignets at Ben Yay’s give the place its name, and are the most like what you would find in New Orleans I have seen in Memphis. They are delicious, but messy, and your clothes WILL be covered in powdered sugar when you are through enjoying them. All the same, it’s worth it.

Ben Yay’s Gumbo Shop

51 S Main St.

Memphis, TN 38103

(901) 779-4125

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Halloween: From Whiteville to Como to Sardis

Halloween this year fell on a Saturday, and early in the afternoon, I drove over to Backermann’s Country Market in Whiteville, Tennessee, an Amish bakery known for its fried pies and other desserts. I had hoped to buy a chocolate peanut butter pie to take back home, but to my disappointment, I found that they do not stock them, and only bake them when ordered. I ended up not buying anything, and upon my return to Somerville in Fayette County, discovered that the new coffee bar I heard about there had closed at 3 PM. So I decided to head down to Moscow and into Mississippi on my way to Como.

With my car having been in the shop for two months, this was my first opportunity to visit Como in some time, and I had heard that Micol Davis of the band Blue Mother Tupelo had opened a coffee bar there called Como Coffee Stop. As it turned out, the new coffee shop is in the former Delta Recording Service building next to the post office, which has more recently been an ice cream parlor, an arts and crafts store, and a drum lesson studio (at least in the back room). The Coffee Stop is a business born of necessity, as the COVID pandemic has canceled almost all of Blue Mother Tupelo’s shows; for now, it does not have an espresso machine, but serves brewed Community Coffee and baked goods. I enjoyed visiting with Micol, and had planned on walking down to Windy City Grille for a dinner, but my friend Sherena Boyce (R. L.’s daughter) called me and wanted to go to Tribecca Allie Cafe in Sardis.

So I drove back to Senatobia to pick her up, and we rode down to Sardis to Tribecca, which has been proclaimed some of the best pizza in the United States. After a period of time when they were closed to inside dining and allowing to-go orders only, they are now back to allowing at least limited dine-in service. The pizzas at Tribecca are unique because they are cooked over a wood fire, which imparts a special flavor to them. After dinner, we were invited by our waitress to attend the Panola Playhouse’s performance of Little Shop of Horrors next door, but Sherena did not particularly want to go, and I was tired. It was late enough that trick or treating was largely over, and so we both went home.

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A Beautiful Late-Summer Evening in Brunswick, Tennessee

Here at The Delta Review, we have discussed the excellent Brunswick Kitchen restaurant before, and it is enough here to restate that it is a great and fun getaway from Memphis for a Friday evening dinner of catfish or pulled pork barbecue, in an old general store building which makes for a fun and pleasant setting.

But on this particular Friday night, there was a mysterious golden glow in the sky, after a day that had seen pop-up showers. Not only did the sunlight seem to make all the colors of buildings and trees more brilliant, but for the first time I noticed that the old abandoned house in the block north of the restaurant was situated in the middle of a pecan orchard. I had never noticed the perfectly straight rows of trees until that precise moment. It was a gorgeous sight to go along with a great meal.

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Friday Night Dinner at The Biscuitry in Bolivar

Periodically, I receive sponsored messages in my Facebook timeline, and on one afternoon, a message from a restaurant called The Biscuitry caught my attention. The restaurant turned out to be in Bolivar, Tennessee, in Hardeman County, and the message was to the effect that they were going to start opening for happy hour and dinner on Fridays (the restaurant was otherwise open only for breakfast and lunch). With Bolivar only about an hour from my house in Bartlett, I decided to drive over there on the following Friday and try it out.

Like many other West Tennessee towns, Bolivar is historic, built around a typical Southern town square. A statue of Simon Bolivar, for whom the town is named, stands in front of the courthouse. As it turned out, The Biscuitry was located across the street from a historic Big Star supermarket, and next door to the historic Luez Theatre. I found the restaurant lovingly restored and decorated, and the place was full, with an upbeat and convivial atmosphere, despite the COVID-19 pandemic.

My waitress was also cheerful and upbeat, and she helped me greatly in negotiating all the various menu choices. Indeed, one of my difficulties was in deciding which of the many delicious menu options to try. Ultimately, I tried a burger, which, uniquely, was seared with a sugar-based dry rub. This caramelized and crusted on the outside, which made the burger absolutely amazing. It came with bacon and cheese on it, and nearly a whole plate of french fries. Afterwards, I enjoyed a slice of dark chocolate cake and a cup of coffee before heading back out to the square.

There was actually a live music concert on the court square as I was coming out of the restaurant, but it was country music, which is not my cup of tea, and it was beginning to drizzle somewhat. Instead I drove down into the southside of Bolivar, where I finally managed to find the old lodge hall of the United Sons and Daughters of Charity, which was a Black benevolent society in Bolivar. The historic building seems abandoned and in poor shape, but it was amazing to see it and photograph it. Altogether I had a satisfying meal and an enjoyable evening.

The Biscuitry

215 N Main St

Bolivar, TN 38008

(731) 212-3214

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Memphis Has A New Home for Wood-Fired Gourmet Pizzas

The unexpected and sudden closure of Elemento Neapolitan Pizza hit me hard, as it was basically Memphis’ best pizzeria, hands down. So when I saw that its location in Crosstown Concourse had been taken over by a new pizza restaurant called Pizzeria Trasimeno, I was eager to try it and see if it was a suitable substitute for Elemento.

As it turns out, while Trasimeno does not have the elaborate “build-your-own” vibe of Elemento, nor as many topping choices, it is still authentic Italian wood-fired oven pizzas, and some of the differences may in fact be temporary due to the impact of COVID-19 restrictions and regulations. The Coca-Cola freestyle machine was gone, and soft drinks came only in cans, and once my pizza was ready, I was required to eat it outside on the patio. But my pepperoni pizza was absolutely delicious, and I would say that it ranks among the top pizzas in Memphis. I have not tried any other variety of their pizzas yet, but will be doing so in the near future. The verdict- Trasimeno is indeed a worthy successor to Elemento, and worth a visit.

Pizzeria Trasimeno

1350 Concourse Av, #181

Memphis, TN 38104

(901) 308-1113