Memphis Que

[NOTE: Enerald Thai has moved from the location on Mt. Moriah mentioned in this post to Highway 64 near I-40.]

Memphis has plenty of well-established catfish restaurants like Soul Fish and the Catfish Cabin. But there is also some great catfish lurking in places most people wouldn't think to look for it.

In all the posts I've done about Southern food catfish is one major staple that I've pretty much completely neglected. It is just as heavily associated with the South as barbecue, fried chicken or neckbones. And I certainly love the taste of a perfectly prepared catfish dinner, like the ones that used to be served up every Friday at the Brunswick General Store on Brunswick Road near Bolton High School.

The now-empty Brunswick General Store building.

The Brunswick General Store was within walking distance of my parents' house. It was known for its large, expertly-seasoned fried catfish fillets and sides that included baseball-sized jalapeno hush puppies. Unfortunately, the store was eventually sold to new owners who began cutting corners, which quickly alienated longtime customers leading to the closing of the area institution.

This was a significant blow to my dad and many of his neighbors, for whom the catfish Fridays were a decades-old tradition. But my dad recently mentioned to me that the Wolfchase-area Gus's Fried Chicken had the best catfish he'd found since the decline of the Brunswick General Store. Given my deep love for the fried chicken served at Gus's I was immediately ready to sample some catfish there.

Although I frequently see catfish dinners on area menus, I tend to avoid them since they are hard to reconcile with my goal of making relatively healthy choices while eating Southern food every day. Your typical catfish dinner is a starch-heavy pile of battered fish, French fries and hush puppies that have all been cooked in toxic, industrially-produced vegetable oils. But at Gus's peanut oil is the preferred cooking oil and I was able to request mixed greens and baked beans as my side items.

The catfish ended up being a spot-on rendition of traditional, country-style catfish with cornmeal breading. And the standard four-piece meal was more than I could finish. It was an interesting contrast to the also-good-but-different catfish I was accustomed to from the Collierville Gus's, where I frequently stop for lunch.

The Collierville Gus's gives you the option of adding a piece of catfish to a fried chicken dinner for a nominal fee, so a two-piece dark meat with an added piece of catfish is a pretty standard order for me there. In Collierville the catfish uses the same batter as the outstanding fried chicken instead of the traditional country batter used at the Wolfchase store. On a recent stop in Collierville I asked about the different approach and found out that the Collierville location is owned by the same people as the Downtown location, while the Mendenhall and Wolfchase locations have two different separate owners.

As often as I drive past the Mendenhall location I've never stopped there since the parking lot is always so crowded, so I'm not sure what approach it takes to catfish. Besides, when I am craving catfish on that end of town I usually end up heading further down Mt. Moriah to Emerald Thai. Two of my favorite spots for eating catfish in Memphis are places that specialize in Southeast Asian cuisine. It shouldn't come as any surprise considering that part of the world is home to the largest species of catfish on the planet; the Mekong giant catfish that currently holds the record for being the world's largest freshwater fish period.

I'll come back to the catfish at Emerald Thai in a minute, but first I want to discuss the restaurant where I initially fell in love with catfish as an Asian entree. I was working in a Downtown radiator factory about ten years ago when my then-girlfriend/now-wife and I first discovered Saigon Le on Cleveland just south of Poplar. A large percentage of my coworkers were Vietnamese immigrants so one day I brought a Saigon Le menu to work with me and asked some of them what they would order there to see if I was overlooking any hidden gems.

I always prefer when my takeout order of catfish from Saigon Le is served with the sauce in a separate container to keep the fried fish from getting soggy.

One of the first recommendations one of my Vietnamese coworkers made was was fried catfish with tomato sauce. The first time my wife and I ordered it we were surprised by the country-style breading on the catfish. Meanwhile, we weren't sure what to expect from a Vietnamese tomato sauce but it ended up being a flavorful combination of tomatoes, peppers and pineapples. A decade later, the dish is still a common order for us when we get food from the restaurant.

The catfish topped with sauce. And my wife considers it a high crime to ever order Saigon Le takeout without getting an order of the restaurant's vegetable fried rice.

Vietnamese cooking has been heavily influenced by Western imperialism dating back to French occupation during the mid-1800s. French-Asian fusion cooking was happening naturally in Vietnam over a century before the concept became trendy in the restaurant world. Put two cooks in the same kitchen and they will naturally steal good ideas from each other. Plenty of G.I.s from the Southern U.S. served in Vietnam and I'm sure it wasn't long after some of them saw giant catfish being pulled out of rivers and ponds over there that the Vietnamese people were introduced to country-style breading.

While Saigon Le and Gus's both have great catfish, my most regular catfish stop in Memphis is the Emerald Thai Restaurant on Mt. Moriah. Since the unfortunate closing of my beloved Chao Praya over in Hickory Hill, Emerald has become my favorite local Thai place. Also worth noting is that my sister-in-law is from Thailand and also vouches for the food there.

I've never had a bad experience at Emerald, but there is one dish there that I am truly addicted to. I order the pad prik made with catfish so often that when I walk in the owner usually just asks, "You want fish?" when she sees me instead of handing me a menu. It's a large fillet of fried catfish in a sea of chopped vegetables and spicy, savory sauce. Once you've eaten it you'll find yourself making return trips to order it again when you end up daydreaming about it later.

There is also a lower-priced lunch menu at Emerald that I sometimes order from. On those days I get the cashew chicken. At most Thai restaurants cashew chicken sounds good but it usually ends up being a little bland and disappointing. The cashew chicken at Emerald is loaded with little hot pepper pods that add a fiery kick to the dish. Even if you don't eat them they still infuse some spice into the dish.

The lunch meals also include a cup of soup. I'm convinced the Tom Kha Kai soup has magic curative powers for any time I am suffering from Memphis weather allergies. It is loaded with chicken, mushrooms, kaffir leaves, galanga and chilies in coconut milk with lime zest.

Sidestreet Burgers on Highway 178 in Olive Branch has been on my radar for nearly a year now, but I hadn't stopped in until a few weeks ago. Part of the problem was catching the place open, since if I am in Olive Branch it is usually on either a Monday or a Thursday and the restaurant is closed on Mondays. And I have to drive past the Rib Zone on Lamar to get to Olive Branch, so I'm frequently not hungry by the time I reach Sidestreet. But the full parking lot on days that the restaurant was open convinced me the burgers were worth checking out.

It turns out that Sidestreet is a one-man operation run by a friendly young chef named Jonathan Mah. He keeps things simple with a short but well-thought menu. On the day I visited I noticed an enticing-sounding Sriracha steak on the specials board, but I'd showed up craving a burger so I stuck with the restaurant's namesake item despite my deep love for Sriracha sauce. I went all-out and ordered the half-pound cheeseburger topped with bacon and caramelized onions.

The restaurant has a topping bar where I also added lettuce, tomato and pickle.

The burger was suitably huge and cooked to a perfect medium. Seth over at the Best Memphis Burger Blog frequently documents his troubles with getting kitchens to accommodate his desire for a juicy, medium burger so I'd highly recommend that he take a trip down to Olive Branch for a burger prepared by Mah.

While I was eating I was thoroughly entertained by a sign on the wall with the heading "Our credit card philosophy." Bring cash when you visit because the restaurant doesn't accept credit cards. Why not? The reasoning explained on the poster told a very long story from the era of the Ch'in and Han dynasties involving walking fish with magic bones, gold slippers, merchants, kings and people crushed to death by flying stones. The story had nothing to do with credit. At the end of it said, "And that's why Sidestreet Burgers doesn't accept credit cards."

I was still thinking about the Sriracha steak on the specials board when I checked the Sidestreet Burgers Urbanspoon page and saw other customers mentioning how consistently good and creative the restaurant's specials are. So despite the excellent burgers, don't dismiss Sidestreet as just a burger joint. With a young chef bringing a strong sense of humor, creativity and general love of food to his establishment; Mah has made the little restaurant a place worth following.

I was working in Olive Branch on Monday and decided to swing back by Sidestreet just to see what kind of specials were available, assuming that if worst came to worst I could just order a big, juicy burger. I forgot the restaurant was closed on Mondays. But behind the restaurant I noticed I sign for a country-cooking place called Wray's Fins and Feathers. So I drove around only to discover that it is closed on Mondays too. And that I when I saw two familiar names sitting on Pigeon Roost Road in old, historic Olive Branch.

That is Evan's Cafe on the left and Blocker's Soul Food on the right.

I knew the Blocker's Soul Food on Winchester had closed recently, and with the Raleigh location converted to Lorenzo's Soul Food I thought the name had disappeared from the local soul food landscape. It turns out Blocker's is still open, just moved to Olive Branch. But Blocker's is also closed on Mondays, leading me to begin wondering if I was going to be forced to eat some sort of fast food garbage in the hideously soulless new section of Olive Branch over around Craft Goodman and Goodman surrounding the Super Wal-Mart.

I was saved from that fate by a name from even further in my past. During my days as a newspaper reporter for the Commercial Appeal I worked in the paper's DeSoto County office back in 2000. There were two country cooking restaurants on Goodman that I would frequent in those days -- the Magnolia Cafe in Olive Branch and Evan's Cafe in Horn Lake.

The two restaurants were owned and operated by a Southern-raised and accented Asian husband and wife team. He ran Evan's, she ran Magnolia. I knew both restaurants were long-gone from their original locations, but I didn't know Evan's had reappeared in Olive Branch.

I remember a friend who used to regularly meet me for lunch at the Magnolia Cafe commenting once after the owner had just checked up on us and recommended getting seconds that, "it's sort of like a friend's mom cooked a bunch of food and invited you over to eat." It's a similar experience at Evan's, with a friendly owner, very low-priced buffet, and an extremely family-friendly atmosphere.

When I say family-friendly atmosphere I mean that the restaurant has a tradition of aways showing family-friendly older movies on a big TV in the dining room and all the tables use butcher paper as placemats with crayons available for anyone who wants to draw on them. The walls of the spartan restaurant are decorated with crayon art created by kids who have dined there in the past.

The lunch buffet was only $4.99 plus an additional $0.75 for a glass of water. I actually applaud a fast-food-priced restaurant for charging a small fee for water and giving me a full-sized cup. As someone who works outside in the Memphis heat, I hate ordering a water with my food somewhere and being given the equivalent of a child's sippy cup. I don't order water to be cheap. I order it because I'm thirsty and it's what I want to drink.

At the buffet I got pulled pork, a baked chicken thigh, turnip greens and broccoli. I mean "broccoli" in the purest Southern sense; swimming in a sea of Velveeta. The Federal government actually played a major role in making Velveeta a staple of country and soul food by distributing Velveeta-like government cheese to people on public assistance for several decades from the '60s through the '90s. Government cheese is gone these days but countless recipes created around it live on with items like Rotel chicken and Rotel spaghetti appearing on soul food menus throughout the South. Despite the Velveeta-soaked broccoli Evan's bakes most of its meat items and doesn't have any fryers, so don't worry about it being a restaurant where everything is greasy.

Evan's definitely veers more towards country cooking than soul food. The baked chicken thighs I ate packed a lot of seasoning but most of the items are the more blandly season style generally preferred by older white people in the South. My greens were very mildy seasoned, and I didn't see any of the mandatory hot green pepper sauce sitting around for me to season them myself.

The pulled pork was tender and juicy, but the lack of smoke flavor and slightly mushy consistency makes me pretty sure it was prepared in a slow cooker, not a pit. For pulled pork on a $4.99 buffet I can't complain. In fact I had seconds of both it and the greens. The food at Evan's isn't going to be fancy or exciting. But it will be consistently good enough, affordable, quick, and come with service that makes you feel like an old friend.

While I was paying for my meal when I finished eating I mentioned that I used to eat at both the old Evan's location and the Magnolia Cafe. Evan's owner Galvin Mah said that his wife closed the Magnolia Cafe to go manage a restaurant in Germantown due to struggles with arthritis and steadily increasing rents in the shopping center where she had been located. Then he hit me with the question, "Have you tried my son's restaurant up the street; Sidestreet Burgers?"

I laughed at the obvious realization and answered "yes." Husband, wife, son; over the course of nearly 15 years I've never had a bad dining experience at any restaurant owned by any member of the Mah family.

The section of Pigeon Roost where Evan's is located is another example, like the Collierville Square or old Millington, of attractive and inviting design in a town that has since abandoned the principles of dense, walkable development and retail stores built out to the street in favor of rubber-stamping future blight like that seen in Hickory Hill and on Stateline Road.

UPDATE: Since I mentioned to pay attention to the specials board at Sidestreet Burgers; a couple weeks after this post I stopped back by Sidestreet and Chef Jonathan Mah had this creation that I was lucky enough to eat:

Mah called this the Hott Pigg. It's ground pork stuffed with applewood bacon and rosemary then topped with pepperjack cheese, jalapeno slaw and apple butter barbecue sauce. It was exceptional. If you stop by it may not be available, but don't hesitate to ask what the best special available is that day.

I've posted in the past about the excellent ribs at Latham's Meat Company in Jackson, TN, but after a recent visit I decided to do a follow-up post about just how consistently impressive they are. Before I got a chance to write that post I got a text from one of my friend's over at the Go Carnivore blog asking if I'd ever written about the food at the famous Charles Vergos' Rendezvous restaurant in Downtown Memphis. When I told him I hadn't he declared it was time for us to get together for the "official final word" on the Downtown institution.

You can get the Go Carnivore take on our visit here. It's a great, highly-detailed account of our visit.

The main point of my barbecue quest has been to find jewels like Latham's. Since it is the complete opposite of the Rendezvous on so many levels I decided a direct comparison of the two could be interesting. Up to that point I hadn't bothered with a visit to the Rendezvous since I do most of my barbecue exploration at lunchtime while I'm working and the combination of high, for barbecue, prices and long waits never made it seem like a good time to drop in. And as one of the most famous barbecue joints on the planet that mostly caters to tourists the Rendezvous wasn't the kind of hidden gem I was trying to uncover on my quest.

Enough distance separates the two restaurants that obviously no one is reading this and trying to decide between a visit to one or the other. The point was simply to contrast our area's most famous eatery to a place even most Memphians have never heard of. The majority of the people eating at and writing about the Rendezvous are new to this region's barbecue. Most of the articles you read about the restaurant are so formulaic that they stick to the tired, old "rib speakeasy hidden away in an alley" narrative to describe it.

Yes the Rendezvous is located in an alley; an alley off Union Avenue directly across the street from the Peabody Hotel. I took this picture standing in front of the Peabody. The alley is in between the Holiday Inn and Benchmark Hotel pictured here.

The restaurant does keep the alley smelling great.

After our meal I took this picture of the Peabody as seen from the entrance to the Rendezvous. In some informal polling of other diners we didn't encounter anyone else from Memphis.

Most of the people eating at the Rendezvous are out-of-towners. And most of them enjoy the food they get there. But it's safe to assume that most of them have never experienced ribs like the ones at Latham's. A lot of people visit Memphis and their only experience with our barbecue comes from the Rendezvous and Beale Street tourist traps like the Blues City Cafe. The sad part is that some of those visitors are people from places like Kansas City and Austin who know their barbecue. They try barbecue from a touristy Downtown place here and go home shaking their heads saying, "I don't know what all the fuss about Memphis barbecue is about."

The customer base at Latham's is almost all local Jackson residents. The breakfast and lunch spot isn't remotely famous. It didn't even show up on the Memphis Flyer's recent list of babrecue restaurants worthy of a brief roadtrip from Memphis. But that doesn't mean that it doesn't have plenty of loyal customers. Show up for lunch and expect to see the spacious parking lot overflowing.

People frequently ask me where they need to go for ribs. There is no one answer to that question. If you are a serious rib connoisseur then Leonard's Barbecue, the Bar-B-Q Shop, Central BBQ, Memphis Barbecue Company, the Cozy Corner, Jack's Rib Shack and the Double J Smokehouse are all well-worth your time and attention. And that just represents a handful of my favorite places. But with all the ribs I eat, there is something truly special about a trip to Latham's. If you are visiting Memphis, try some of the places I just listed. If you are a Memphian who has already been to all those places think about taking a trip to Jackson (and to Helen's in Brownville) to round out your West Tennessee barbecue knowledge.

The Rendezvous doesn't actually represent traditional Memphis barbecue, or even pretend to. The ribs there are grilled for a relatively short time over high heat and seasoned with Greek spices. Meanwhile the cooking style at Latham's is so old-school that I can't visit without spending some time behind the store staring mesmerized at the at the old cinder block smokehouse where the real craftsmanship occurs.

The piles of wood are burned in the barrels to create charcoal for slow, off-heat cooking inside the smokehouse. It's a time-consuming process that creates a perfect flavor and texture profile in the meat that can't be recreated any other way.

The atmosphere inside the two restaurants is as fundamentally different as the cooking styles. The basement dining area for the Rendezvous is such a neat space, patrolled by sharply-dressed waiters, that it made me want the food to be be special too. On the other hand, I was skeptical the first time I stopped in at Latham's and saw barbecue sitting in steam trays under heat lamps as customers where being served cafeteria style.

To get to the cafeteria-style serving area at Latham's you have walk past the butcher counter. The dining area is also school cafeteria-level spartan. If you need a restaurant for a first date or entertaining business clients then Latham's probably isn't your ideal spot. Especially considering it doesn't serve alcohol and isn't open for dinner.

For atmosphere I can see the Rendezvous's appeal. For someone who craves the taste of smoke-infused meat with perfectly rendered fat it leaves a lot to be desired. During our visit we tried three different meats; ordering brisket and pulled pork along with our ribs. Meanwhile, at Latham's I've never ordered anything but the ribs.

Latham's is known for its country plate lunches. All the food I've seen there looks good. And I've been meaning to try the pulled pork for a while now. I mean, look at all that pink in the meat sitting next to the also impressive-looking smoked chicken. That is the telltale sign of good smoked meat. They've even given me a free sample of the pulled pork when I told them I need to try it some time. It is excellent pulled pork, but excellent ribs are better.

Excellent ribs are a quasi-religious experience that makes it difficult to restrain yourself from grunting like a caveman character from Quest For Fire while you eat.

The ribs at Latham's are always pink all the way down to the bone. This is the magic of the smokehouse.

The ribs from the Rendezvous look great when they come to the table too.

But one look at the interior of the ribs reveals just how inferior the char-grilling approach is to slow smoking. It's not just a matter a coloration. The presence or lack of a pink smoke line is just a visual clue. The real issue is flavor and texture; areas where the Rendezvous's ribs have more in common with a grilled pork chop dusted with Greek seasoning than real Mid-south barbecue.

When I say the Rendezvous doesn't represent real Memphis barbecue I want to make clear that I am complaining about the seasoning. I don't have any problem with the Greek-influenced rub. Alex's Tavern near my house loads its ribs with Greek seasoning, but slow cooks them on an old outdoor smoker. They are some of the best ribs you'll ever eat. I'm serious, go try them. And I didn't even think to mention Alex's on my list of places for serious rib connoisseurs earlier in this post.

That is the biggest issue I have with the Rendezvous. It is frequently named as one of the best places in Memphis to eat ribs. And it is an entertaining dining experience. But when it comes to the actual quality of the ribs being served, the Rendezvous doesn't even qualify as an also-ran in the world of Memphis-area ribs.

The two best things we had at the Rendezvous were the beef brisket and the baked beans. Brisket is such a naturally tough, fatty cut that there is no edible way to quickly grill it, which must force the restaurant to take a slow and low approach to it. I loved the thick hearty beans. On the other hand, the beans at Latham's are just slop straight from a can. But how big of a deciding factor are beans when picking a barbecue restaurant?

The cole slaw at the Rendezvous was bizarre in taste, appearance and consistency. "I feel like I'm eating applesauce," was my proclamation during our dinner there. The pulled pork was a a mushy, underwhelming mess. People who don't eat a lot of pulled pork need to understand that there is a huge difference between juicy meat, which comes from being infused with perfectly rendered fat, and mushy meat, which is caused by poor cooking technique killing the texture of the meat itself.

Go Carnivore declared that "Effectively, Rendezvous is the worst BBQ that Memphis has to offer." I wouldn't go that far. In my barbecue travels through this area I've had some flat-out bad ribs (more tales of bad ribs here and here). But the Rendezvous definitely represents the biggest gap between hype and reality. The other huge name in Memphis ribs, Corky's, may not have the best ribs in Memphis either, but its restaurants still offer solid, reasonably good Memphis barbecue. My great remorse is for those barbecue connoisseurs from places like Austin and Kansas City that I mentioned earlier who eat at the Rendezvous and on Beale Street during a visit here and go home telling people "I tried some of the 'best ribs in Memphis' and those folks obviously don't know what they're doing."

My wife went to Los Angeles to visit an old friend of ours recently meaning I was free to prepare whatever bachelor chow I wanted for myself while she was gone. My first step was to buy up a good supply of collard and mustard greens along with a pack of Nathan's hot dogs.

I also went digging in the freezer and pulled out a box of precooked, heat-and-serve Corky's ribs I'd bought at an area Kroger a few months ago intending to try them. Then things went completely meat crazy when a friend of mine who writes for the Go Carnivore blog and whose wife was out of town with mine decided to have a cookout in his backyard. I thawed out a venison shoulder I had in the freezer and smoked it as my contribution to that feast. (Step-by-step on the smoked venison shoulder is at the bottom of the post if you came here Googling that).

I bought the Corky's frozen ribs on a whim a few months ago curious to see if they were worth eating. I knew they couldn't be worse than a McRib or a pork rib MRE.

Before I could heat up the ribs I had to cook my greens. I normally start out by boiling salt pork in water for about 20 minutes. Easy Way was out of salt pork so I got salt cured pork fat back instead. Salt pork is made from the belly fat of the pig while fat back is from the back. Either one is fine for flavoring greens. I also add a big scoop of bacon grease. With the fat back I had to add more salt latter than I normally do with salt pork. A friend recently mentioned that he boils his greens in beer so I gave that a try as well. He mentioned that any light domestic swill will work. I ended up using about three cans of Bud Light to cover the fat back. It did add a nice extra dimension of flavor to the finished product.

The most time consuming part of cooking collard greens is cutting out the thick middle stalks. I used two bunches of collards and one bunch of mustard greens. And I always add a diced jalapeno or two along with some crushed red pepper flakes. The collards cooked for a couple hours while I added the mustard greens in with just a couple hours to go.

If you've ever cooked Southern greens, or spinach, or kale, you understand how you can start with an overflowing pot like this...

...And end up with this after they cook down.

This is how the vacuum-sealed Corky's ribs look when you pull them out of the box.

The instructions on the Corky's ribs said to lay them on foil on a baking tray and then add all the additional sauce from the pouch. The nutrition facts showed that this approach gives you 22 grams of sugar for every three rib bones. No thanks. I used as little of the sauce as possible, even wiping a lot of it off with a paper towel.

The instructions said to sprinkle the ribs with Corky's dry rub after cooking for dry ribs. During a recent stop at Latham's Meat Company I'd picked up some of that restaurant's dry rub so I used it on half the slab. I like the dry rub Corky's uses in its restaurants, but the Latham's rub is what I had on hand.

Interestingly, as much as I love the dry ribs at Latham's, the section of my Corky's ribs with it added tasted way too salty. But the ribs at Latham's don't come with the heavy dusting of rub you see on most restaurants' dry ribs.

The ribs had a nice smoke flavor but were a little dry and tough. That might have come from following the instructions to cook them uncovered but not using much of the sauce. I wrapped the leftovers in foil when I reheated them and they ended up better than my first meal. Overall the frozen ribs were pretty okay, but I don't understand the point of buying them here in Memphis where good fresh ribs are so readily available.

Back in December my friends at Go Carnivore gave me a venison shoulder and said they wanted to see what I could do with it on a smoker. I had been hesitant to try it out of fear of ruining it since venison is so much leaner than the pork meat I was used to cooking on my smoker. But we had a ridiculous amount of food lined up for our cookout so I was able to experiment with little pressure since there would still be plenty to eat even if the shoulder turned out inedible.

We had guys steadily showing up with smokers, each cooking enough to feed everyone there. This is Memphis. We know how to overdo it at a backyard barbecue.

The day before the cookout I'd rubbed the venison shoulder with a heavy coat of pork lard before rubbing it with a mix of mustard, apple cider vinegar and homemade dry rub from my friend Travis.

I smoked it in the same $40 Brinkmann smoker I use for pork. Good barbecue doesn't require expensive equipment. Just attention to detail. I used a mix of lump charcoal and hickory wood.

Be on the lookout for black widow spiders this time of year in the South. I caught this beast living in my smoker when I went to set it up.

Every hour I melted a generous amount of pork lard in a pan on my stove and used it to baste the shoulder before spraying it with pineapple juice and apple cider vinegar.

The total cook time was nine hours; three hours on each side then three hours wrapped in foil. I gave it another good coat of pork lard followed by a coat of barbecue sauce before putting it in the foil. I don't know an exact temperature, but I tried to keep things on the low side of the "ideal" section on the Brinkmann's cheapo temp gauge.

I had no idea what the end result was going to be like when I unwrapped it, but it turned out great.

It ended up being similar to good brisket, with a nice bark and good smoke penetration. The meat stayed tender and moist, which I attribute to the powers of pork lard. Everyone devoured it with no added sauce.

I was feeling generous so I also caught a house fly to feed the black widow I'd caught in my smoker so it could feast as well.

I recently spotted Dindie's Soul Food on a familiar stretch of Stage Road between Coleman and Austin Peay in Raleigh. I lived in Raleigh up until I was a teenager. The restaurant sits across the the street from the old Raleigh Skateland, which is apparently called the Raleigh Skate Center these days. And it is just a few buildings down from the Living Word Fellowship Church, which was called Living Word Lutheran Church when I went to Cub Scout and Boy Scout meetings there as a youth.

Given my fond memories of the area I was very happy when Dindie's ended up being a great place to eat.

The exterior of the building is pretty drab. I think I remember it being a Chinese restaurant when I was a kid.

Inside the restaurant is clean and inviting. As I was welcomed in by the friendly owner I noticed that Dindie's also has the honor of being the only soul food restaurant I know of in the city that is endorsed by a professional wrestler -- Eddie "Snowman" Crawford.

After looking over the menu and reading the day's specials I ended up ordering the grilled tilapia with greens and cabbage. It was July 5 and working in the heat the day after the excesses of July 4 left me wanting a relatively light lunch. I loved the seasoning on everything. I never touched the salt, pepper or any of the hot sauces on my table. And the fish was perfectly grilled with plenty of moisture in the fillets.

When I asked the owner he said the restaurant had been open for nearly a year, but a lot of people seemed to just now be noticing it. Given the freshness and quality of the food I expect his business to grow as people who notice and stop in become regular customers and tell their friends.

UPDATE: I stopped back by Dindie's a couple weeks after this post and ended up trying the meatloaf, once again ordering greens and cabbage since they were so good on my first visit. The sides were as good as I remember and the meatloaf was nearly as good as the meatloaf at Southern Hands (the linked Collierville location is closed now but Southern Hands still has a Hickory Hill restaurant). At Dindie's the meatloaf was offered with either a tomato sauce or a brown gravy sauce. I went with the tomato since it sounded closest to the sauce I love at Southern Hands. With Dindie's proximity to Covington Pike, where I frequently work, and the food I've had so far I can tell it will be a regular stop for me in the future.

Attempting to try every barbecue and soul food place around Memphis is a lot like a game of Whack-a-Mole. Existing places close and new places open at a steady pace. I posted about the Wolfchase location of A&R Bar-B-Q in January of last year. I was pretty critical of the ribs I had there, but on return visits I did enjoy some good pulled pork from the restaurant.

That location closed a few months ago, but I recently noticed the space being renovated for a new place called Ty's Bar-B-Q.

While I was critical of the ribs I had at the Wolfchase A&R, don't let that discourage you from ordering ribs at the Elvis Presley location that cooks in an old-school smokehouse.

I stopped in Ty's during the renovation process back in May and talked with the owner, who told me he was shooting for an opening in mid-June. There was a heavy barbecue aroma in the building during my visit that assured me the new owner was getting himself acquainted with his new pit as well as worrying about cosmetic touches. June came and went before I finally saw an open sign in the window. I wasn't surprised, since renovation work always takes longer and costs more than expected.

The new pig-shaped benches out front were a nice addition.

When I finally spotted an open sign a couple weeks ago I immediately stopped in for lunch. The restaurant has a large collection of trophies from area barbecue competitions on display so I went straight for what I consider the ultimate test of Memphis barbecue -- dry rub ribs.

The rib plate at Ty's only comes with one side so I opted for slaw. It was a good choice. The roughly chopped, mustardy slaw included a nice dusting of dry rub mixed in with it and was delicious.

The ribs had a nice bark, well-rendered fat and good smoke penetration. I'd ordered them with sauce on the side but they ended up being good enough to enjoy sauceless.

When I stopped in the following week I ordered the pulled pork plate. It comes with two sides so I got beans and slaw.

The baked beans ended up being great as well. They had plenty of meat in them and a nice, thick sauce. I don't eat the bread at the barbecue places I visit, since I try to keep my junk food to a minimum, but if I did Ty's would certainly get extra credit for using buttered Texas Toast like the beloved Bar-B-Q shop in Midtown. The meal was $8.99 and at first glance the pile of pulled pork seemed deceptively small since it was packed together so tightly.

Once I separated the meat with a fork I realized just how big of a serving it actually was. Like the ribs it was good enough to be enjoyed without any sauce.

Since the restaurant offered three varieties of sauce I wanted to try them all even though the meat didn't need it. Of the three I was somewhat surprised when I ended up preferring the smoky to the hot and original. I'm normally not a fan of liquid smoke since it seems like cheating. But the smoke flavor in this sauce wasn't overwhelming enough to seem fake, especially since the meat was good enough that even when I did add sauce I was using it sparingly.

I was happy to find a good, locally-owned barbecue place so close to my parents' house. I usually meet up with my dad for lunch on Tuesdays in that part of town, which happens to be the day that Gridley's nearby is closed. Of the other barbecue options in the area, we were both underwhelmed by the newly-opened Baby Jack's and while Fat Larry's has great brisket the pork there has been unimpressive lately as well. My dad instilled a lot of my love for barbecue. He was traveling for work so he wasn't with me during my first two visits but I look forward to taking him to Ty's soon.

Jackson, TN, continues to impress me with its selection of great Southern food restaurants.

I'd been noticing the BluesFest House of Soul Food across the street from the mall on Highland in Jackson for several months now. But the parking lot was always empty, making me assume the new restaurant wasn't open yet. I admit I probably should have put more effort into scoping the place out, but it is right down the street from Latham's Meat Company so any time I'd pass by around lunchtime I'd already have a full stomach. In fact, I'd just eaten at Latham's about about a month ago when I noticed the lot at BluesFest was full of cars.

The sign announcing the restaurant's "chitt'lin drive thru" assured me there was some serious soul food being served inside the spacious building.

It turns out that the restaurant had been open for several months locals were beginning to discover it. It made me wish I'd stopped in earlier, but my love for the ribs at Latham's makes it hard for me to not eat there whenever I get a chance.

The inside of the restaurant is heavily decorated with guitars and other blues-related memorabilia and there was blues music playing in the dining room during my visit, which all combined to create a very enjoyable atmosphere.

I had a good feeling about the food as soon as I noticed the bottles of various varieties of homemade hot pepper sauces.

There are a lot of playful little touches that add to the experience at BluesFest. The servers use aluminium trashcan lids as serving platters.

All of the food that I saw looked great. I was torn between the pork chop, the grilled fish and the fried chicken when the man in front of me in line ordered a pork chop with greens and cabbage and I just asked for the same thing he was having. The little touches continued to add up when I realized that all the drinks are served in one quart Mason jars and every meal includes the option of either a dinner roll or your own little cast iron skillet full of fresh cornbread. I'm not sure why anyone would order a plane roll with those choices.

The Italian-seasoned pork chop was baked and smothered with a mix of finely chopped veggies in a tasty broth. It and the sides were all excellent, especially once I hit my greens and cabbage with the homemade green hot pepper sauce. The cornbread was sweeter than I prefer but that might have been something of a blessing since it cause me to just eat a few little pieces instead of devouring the entire skillet full. Everything was good enough that when I'm on Highland in Jackson in the future I'll be faced with a similar dilemma to the one I encounter when I work near the Collierville Square. In Collierville I frequently flip a coin to decide between lunch at Gus's Fried Chicken and Captain John's Barbecue. I'll probably have to do the same thing to pick between lunches at Latham's and BluesFest.

On my was out at BluesFest I stopped by the restroom where the music themed continued. The men's room was labeled B.B. King's while the lady's was labeled Tina Turner's.

The section of Elvis Presley Boulevard just north of Brooks Road in South Memphis seems to be the place to go for finding roadside vendors smoking barbecue. I recently noticed the trailer identifying itself as Malia's sitting in between the A&R on Elvis Presley and the spot where I sampled the pulled pork from the Dr. BBQ bus.

I was planning to get some ribs to-go from A&R when I saw Malia's. Once I spotted the barrel smoker built into the side of the trailer I knew I had to sample some of the food from it.

At the time I stopped the vent was open on the trailer's smoker so I could look in and see the burning coals.

Malia's also had an additional large smoker beside the trailer and offered a fairly lengthy selection of smoked meats.

Since I had originally planned to get ribs from A&R that is what I ordered when I ended up getting dinner from the Malia's trailer instead. The rib plate included one side item so I opted for cole slaw.

I got the half-slab plate for $12 with the ribs served dry with the sauce on the side. They had a great flavor but were fairly tough in places. Malia's uses full spare ribs, which are hard to cook to a consistently tender consistency. I prefer when places use ribs where the tips have been separated from the St. Louis cut. The extra butcher work makes the meat more expensive per pound but the separate cuts are much easier to work with. The extra difficulty in doing full spare ribs correctly is a good indicator of just how much skill is involved for those expert pitmasters who are able to do whole hog well.

I avoid the bread when I eat barbecue to keep my quest as healthy as possible but if you are a fan of white bread with your smoked meat Malia's hooks you up. The styrofoam clamshell that my sauce and slaw came in also included five slices of bread. The slaw was exactly the way I prefer it with plenty of mustard and vinegar. The next time I see the Malia's trailer I'll try either the pulled pork or the smoked sausage or bologna. Actually at just $3 an order for both of them I'll probably try the sausage and the bologna rather than trying to pick one or the other. Full spare ribs are hard to get exactly right, but there is no way the smoked sausages coming from that rig could fail to be perfect.

Any fool can make a sandwich by throwing ingredients in between two slices of bread. But the word sammich implies something grander. A sammich is constructed around a clear vision, with generous quantities of carefully chosen ingredients combined to make something truly glorious.

There is one sammich that has been on my bucket list for years. I've always loved a good reuben, but until recently I'd never experienced the Holy Grail of reubens -- one from a Kosher-style deli in New York city.

That changed last week while my wife and I were vacationing in New York. We were staying in an apartment in Manhattan's East Village; just a few blocks from the world-famous Katz's Deli that was founded in 1888.

When you enter Katz you get a ticket that you carry with you as you gather whatever food and drink items you want. The workers keep a tally of your order on the ticket as you present it each time you ask for anything. You pay for everything at once at the register as you leave.

On my first visit I headed straight for the sandwich counter and ordered a reuben. The employee who assembled my sammich gave me a sample of the corned beef to try while he was working. It lived up to all my dreams, practically melting in my mouth.

This blog is usually devoted to the art of slow-cooking meat with smoke. While corned beef is slow-cured with a salt-water brine instead it is interesting to note that the most common cut used for corned beef is brisket; a fatty cut that is also well-loved and renowned in barbecue circles.

Smoke and salt are the two oldest preservatives in human history. In fact, Pastrami is made by smoking corned meats after they are salt-cured. So I like to think of the corned beef brisket I enjoyed at Katz's as an ancient but close relative to barbecue.

A lot of restaurants are putting "reubens" on their menus these days that aren't actually reubens. Turkey and fancy slaw on wheat bread may make a sandwich you enjoy, but don't call it a reuben. On the other hand, the reuben at Katz's is a textbook perfect example with corned beef, sauerkrat, swiss cheese and Russian dressing piled on rye bread. And I mean piled. After tax and tip one sandwich is over $20, but one sandwich was also enough food to feed my wife and I combined.

When my wife booked the apartment we stayed in I didn't realize how close it was to Katz's. But once we realized I could run and grab one while she was getting ready in the mornings it became a recurring meal. And it's one I am already missing dearly now that I'm back here in Memphis, although the next time I'm in Manhattan I'll have to force myself to shy away from the reuben on at least one visit in order to try the deli's also-famous and massive pastrami sammich.

While my wife and I were looking over the organ meat-heavy menu at Takashi in Manhattan's West Village our server asked how adventurous we are about trying different cuts of meat. The entire reason we were there was the heavy praise we'd read for the restaurant's assortment of seasoned animal parts that patrons cook themselves on grills at the tables. From chitterlings to pig's feet to hog maw I haven't shied away from trying any cuts as I've explored the soul food landscape of Memphis.

We had arrived after a long but enormously fun day of touring Central Park on bicycles followed by seeing a matinee performance of the hilarious musical The Book of Mormon by South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone on Broadway. Takashi doesn't take reservations for groups smaller than four people so when we arrived we found out our wait would be a little over an hour. We killed time by walking around the neighborhood and checking out the nearby High Line until the restaurant called to tell us our table was ready.

We had some really enjoyable dishes along with some underwhelming ones, but with some better ordering decisions the overall meal could have been much better. For appetizers we started with the beef pilaf-stuffed zucchini blossoms and the bresaola made with Kobe beef prosciutto topped with blue cheese and greens. The stuffed blossoms were great but the bresaola, while okay, was a bit of a disappoint. The taste was entirely dominated by the blue cheese. We had also thought about ordering the squid ink rice and miso-marinated sweetbreads and after seeing an order of them arrive at another table ended up wishing we had asked for them instead of the bresaola.

Tongue three ways on the left and heart on the right. Depending on how adventurous you are the menu offers everything from traditional ribeye steak to "cow balls escargot style with garlic shiso butter."

For our main course we ordered the beef heart and the "the tongue experience," which consists of cuts from three different parts of the tongue. It had come highly recommended, including an endorsement in author Timothy Ferriss's highly entertaining cookbook The 4-Hour Chef. And I frequently eat and enjoy tongue in lengua tacos, both from taquerias amd cooked myself at home in a slow cooker. But as delicious and tender as slow cooked tongue is, it just came across as overly tough and chewy when grilled no matter how much we played with the cooking time. On the other hand, the heart was excellent with just a quick sear on each side.

The tongue was one of the main dishes that drew us to Takashi, but with options like cheek meat and more traditional steak cuts on the menu we regretted ordering it. Our meal at Takashi ended up being an interesting experience that could have been much improved if we'd ordered a few things differently. Also, organ meats are so prevalent in Southern soul food precisely because they are cheap. I am of the firm belief that any food can be good if it is cooked correctly. Some foods just take more skill than others. But at Takashi you are cooking the meats yourself. It is hard not to feel a little ridiculous paying over $100 for two people to cook their own organ meats, especially considering the gigantic pile of offal I could throw on the grill at home after a trip to the Winchester Farmer's Market with a $100 bill.

Since barbecue has become extremely trendy in New York City during the past couple of years I had a lot of people recommending various places to try it during the recent vacation my wife and I took there. I mostly ignored those recommendations since I already eat great barbecue all the time at home. After all, if someone was visiting Memphis from New York I wouldn't tell them where to get pizza and deli food around here.

But after a day of exploring Queens and Brooklyn that included a lot of bar hopping we ended up trying some NYC que after all. And it ended up being good stuff.

We were having drinks with some old friends at a bar called Hot Bird on Clinton Hill in Brooklyn's Prospect Heights neighborhood when we noticed other patrons bringing in carry-out containers of barbecue. After asking around we found out there was a Carolina-style barbecue restaurant next door called Little Brothers BBQ.

When a friend went over to get some food for he and his girlfriend he returned with two impressive-looking sandwiches and a copy of the menu. The pulled pork looked good and once my wife noticed pulled pork-topped macaroni and cheese on the menu she sent me over to get an order for us.

The pulled pork I'd seen on the sandwiches had sported a noticeable pink smoke line that indicted the restaurant was using a real smoker. When I walked in the door I saw a pile of wood that gave me further assurance Little Brother was serving real barbecue, not a gas oven imitation. After placing my order I chatted with the young woman who took my order for a few minutes and she pointed out the large smoker in the kitchen behind her. This dedication to the craft of genuine smoked barbecue is commendable, especially when you consider how prohibitively expensive it must be to source quality hardwoods for cooking in Brooklyn.

A tub of macaroni and cheese topped with pulled pork is something I would generally avoid at home where wheat is one of the three junk ingredients, along with sugar and vegetable oils, that I try to severely limit in my diet to keep my nonstop consumption of barbecue and soul food healthy. But this was vacation and it made a great evening snack while we were having drinks on the Hot Bird's wonderful patio.

For any New Yorkers who are unfamiliar with Southern-style smoked pork, the pulled pork I had at Little Brother was a good guide to what you should be looking for. It had a nice bark, which is what we call the charred pieces from the outer surface of the meat. Beneath that bark there was a nice deep pink layer of meat that comes from good smoke penetration during the cooking process.

I didn't care for the sauce. It was spicy and had plenty of vinegar like a lot of the sauces I love but something about the flavor profile just seemed off to me. But the meat was good enough to stand on its own, which is the hallmark of good barbecue. While it wasn't as good as the best Memphis has to offer it was actually notably better than what you'll find in some of our Downtown tourist traps.

There have been some rather comically naive claims in some of the New York press that barbecue is on the decline in the South at the same time it has been spreading through the Northeast. All we in barbecue country can offer those writers is a traditional Southern eye-rolling "bless your heart." One of the biggest problems I have maintaining this blog is keeping up with the steady stream of great new restaurants. But I can see where the myth comes from. It seems like the Yankees jumping on the smoked meat bandwagon are genuinely interested in the craft and trying their best to copy traditional cooking methods. They are certainly bringing a respect to the art you won't see at any of the fast food joints rushing to add pulled pork to their menus. Meanwhile, locals in places like Memphis may shun the tourist traps in their hometowns, but by default they are the only places that many visitors experience.

The pulled pork meat at Little Brother was solidly good enough to qualify as "Memphis average" even if the sauce was a little lacking. That should make it a welcome addition to the already-incredible dinning scene for anyone grabbing a pint and a shot at a Brooklyn bar.

The day after my wife and I returned from our recent vacation to Boston and New York City I ended up working in Henderson, TN. I make the drive down Highway 45 from Jackson, TN, down to Henderson every couple of months. The quiet little stretch of road is called the "Rockabilly Highway" from back in the days when it was full of little honky tonk clubs where now-legendary musicians like Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis Johnny Cash, Carl Perkins and Buddy Holly would perform, which is why the Rockabilly Hall of Fame is located in Jackson.

After several days in Manhattan it was a little startling to readjust to just how much open land there is in the rural South. As much as I enjoyed our trip it definitely felt good to be back in the part of the world where I feel at home. And I already knew the restaurant I was going to try for some home cooking to accompany that feeling.

I'd noticed Greens, Beans and Taters on the side of the highway a couple months earlier, but I'd already eaten lunch up in Jackson on that trip so I just made a mental note to try it the next time I had a chance. Sometimes you see a new restaurant open up and you wonder what kind of food it serves. That wasn't the case with Greens, Beans and Taters; where one look at the name told me exactly what sort of traditional Southern staples I could expect to find on the menu.

The inside of the restaurant was spacious and clean, and the staff welcomed me in with the kind of enthusiastic Southern charm that let me know I was back in Tennessee. You order cafeteria-style at Greens, Beans and Taters and I was torn between the meatloaf and the fried chicken I saw on display since both looked excellent.

I ultimately went with the meatloaf. People use the phrase meat-and-three to describe soul food and country cooking restaurants even though almost all of the places I visit these days just include two sides with their plate meals. Greens, Beans and Taters still upholds the old tradition of three generous side servings. In a nod to the establishment's namesake foods I got turnip greens and lima beans, but I did get cabbage instead of any of the available forms of taters.

Each meal comes with a choice of a roll, a corn muffin or skillet cornbread. The man in front of me in line and I both opted for the skillet cornbread. The young man taking our order apologized saying that they were a little old and said that if we had any problem with them to bring them back for either corn muffins or some fresh skillet cornbread he was expecting out of the kitchen shortly. There was absolutely nothing wrong with the little cornbread pancakes, but his concern with making sure everything on our plates was top-notch indicated the kind of service and quality the restaurant strives for.

As he was handing me my plate the same young man asked if I was a fan of bread pudding as I was looking over the desserts beside the cash register. I told him that I'm generally not much of a dessert eater but I was intrigued by the strawberry-moonshine fried pies I saw on display. He grabbed one out of the case and said to enjoy it on the house since it was my first visit.

All of my food was cooked and seasoned with skill. As expected at a place called Greens, Beans and Taters there was a bottle of Bruce's Green Hot Pepper Sauce at my table but I only added a few shakes of it to my cabbage and lima beans. I ate half of my fried pie and took the other half home where my wife immediately claimed it and agreed with my assessment that the crust was merely okay but the strawberry filling was outstanding.

I'm already looking forward to the next time I end up in Henderson just so I can sample more of the menu at Greens, Beans and Taters.

My last stop for work yesterday was in Brownsville, TN, so I swung by Helen's Bar-B-Q on Washington Avenue to pick up two pulled pork dinners to take home for my wife and I. About five minutes later as I was headed back to I-40 home I stopped on the side of Anderson Avenue to buy some more barbecue from a roadside trailer.

The trailer was just south of the four-way stop at Anderson and Highway 70. It is usually there Tuesday through Saturday afternoons.

The pulled pork Helen Turner creates in the old screened-in smoke room behind her little restaurant is incredible. So when I saw a little trailer with a banner identifying it as Raisin' Cain BBQ I was curious to sample pulled pork from someone ballsy enough to peddle their wares right around the corner from her.

I ordered a pulled pork sandwich with the sauce and the slaw on the side to keep everything from turning into a soggy mess on the way home. The young white guy operating the trailer offered both hot and mild sauce so I asked for hot since that is also what I got from Helen's and I wanted an even competition. That and I just like spicy barbecue sauce.

My sandwich, which ended up being loaded with pork when I got it home, was only $4.50. The pulled pork plates from Helen's that came with piles of meat, beans, slaw and potato salad were only $8 and some change each, so either place will give you ample food for your money.

As I was driving off from Raisin' Cain I noticed smoke drifting from a large smoker sitting behind it. It took me nearly an hour to get back to my home home in Midtown Memphis. With two large orders from Helen's and a big sandwich from Raisin' Cain sitting directly behind me it was a near torturous experience being taunted by the smells coming from those three paper bags.

For dinner my wife and I split the meat from the Raisin' Cain sandwich and added the Raisin' Cain spicy sauce to it to eat alongside our Helen's pulled pork for a direct comparison. As soon as I looked at the meat from Raisin' Cain I was impressed by the nice bark. It actually had more pink in it than the meat from Helen's, and while this might sound like heresy to a lot of people, it also had a slightly better overall texture. The pulled pork from Helen's is always so tender that some of the meat ends up being downright mushy.

The flavor of the actual meat was an even match even when compared side by side. The sauce was a different story. Helen's won the battle of hot barbecue sauces hands-down. Her sauce is a perfect balance of sweetness and spice. The sauce from Raisin' Cain tasted more like a plain traditional hot sauce, like a Louisiana or a Frank's Red Hot, than a barbecue sauce.

Helen's cole slaw with its strong vinegar bite also made the Raisin' Cain slaw taste bland by comparison. There was nothing wrong with the slaw from Raisin' Cain, it had a nice roughly chopped consistency and a nice touch of mayo without being overly creamy. Anyone who doesn't like vinegary slaw would prefer it to Helen's, and I realize slaw is one food item where personal preferences vary widely. I didn't try any other sides from Raisin' Cain but the beans and potato salad from Helen's were as perfect as always.

Overall, while Helen's won out for overall eating experience, if I worked or lived on the southern side of Brownsville I could easily see myself just grabbing a quick meal from Raisin' Cain rather than driving across town to Helen's in the north. Keep in mind this is Brownsville, where across town means a distance of less than five miles. That is pretty high praise for pulled pork from a little roadside trailer. If I'd run across Raisin' Cain almost anywhere else this post would have been almost entirely praise. But when you park your tailer next to a heavy-hitter like Helen's you have to accept that it is going to set the standard for you to compete with.

There was a period where I gave up on the tacos from Chiwawa and just stuck to the hot dogs and corn dog when I'd visit. But I've recently enjoyed some really good barbecue tacos there.

The growing pains experienced by Chiwawa since it opened last spring have included a lot of two-steps-forward, one-step-back improvements. I first visited the cool-looking taco and hot dog restaurant in the old Chicago Pizza Factory building during its soft opening last spring when the dining experience was a total comedy of errors.

I have loved witnessing the ongoing revitalization of Overton Square, which is a short bike ride distance from my house. Chiwawa is such a neat space that I really want to see it live up to its potential. On a visit last I had some tacos that made me think the restaurant was finally hitting its stride. The owners brought in a new head chef, Brown Burch, a few months ago and he had been steadily improving the menu and creating interesting specials. Then I heard that the restaurant's owners got rid of him before I could even write my post about the improvements. Like I said, two-steps-forward, one-step-back has been an ongoing theme here. So this post represents my positive experiences with food from a new chef who is already gone.

The patio is the main draw at Chiwawa, but even if you are just stopping in for a drink you still want the option of ordering some good food. This can be a problem at Overton Square drinking establishments. My friends and I frequently hang out together at both Boscos and the Bayou, since both are great places to have a few drink with friendly staffs and fun atmospheres. Because of that we often end up eating the generally mediocre-at-best food that both places serve.

When a kitchen has underwhelmed you enough times you learn to find something safe and foolproof on the menu, like the hot wings at the Bayou. At Chiwawa that food was the corn dog after several experiences with ultra-dried-out pork tacos and fish tacos that tasted like they had reheated frozen fish sticks on them. But when we noticed a new lineup of tacos on the menu on a recent visit I decided to order several and ended up being glad I did.

I ordered three tacos. The Memphis Mercado has smoked pork shoulder, guajillo chili sauce, cactus, avocado, pineapple and cilantro. The El Patito features confit duck leg, pineapple-mango habanero sauce red cabbage. And the Tacos de Madre contain smoked brisket seasoned with cumin and oregano and topped with caramelized onions, roasted tomato chipotle sauce and cotija cheese.

All three tacos were delicious. The barbecue tacos had tasty, noticeable smoke in the meat and the flavor combinations were all well though out and balanced. They represented the exact type of fun, creative food I had been hoping for since the restaurant opened. I tried them again a couple days ago and they were as good as before, so I'm hoping the big improvements made by Chef Brown will last after his departure.

Fun and creative should be what people are looking for from the tacos at Chiwawa, not traditional. I've heard some people complain that the tacos there aren't real, traditional ones but real traditional tacos are already available all around Memphis.

A lot of people argue about the best place to get authentic tacos around town. The reality is that there are countless places that are all uniformly good. I routinely stop at taquerias while driving around town for work and the main reason I don't blog about them is that they are all so consistent. Particularly in the southeastern section of the city; from the airport through Oakhaven, Fox Meadows and Hickory Hill; all you have to do is look for a place with a sign announcing "tacos" or "taqueria."

Tacos Borolas is a place I tried a couple a few days after my first experience with the new and improved Chiwawa tacos.

If all the exterior signage is in Spanish and the menu options include lengua (tongue) you can pretty much count on some good tacos.

Lengua tacos are my favorite but Tacos Borolas was out during my visit so I got fish, spicy pork and chorizo tacos.

The fish taco comes already dressed and there is a little topping bar in the restaurant for dressing the other tacos. Taqueria La Guadalupana on Summer is the most well-known authentic taco place in Memphis, and the food there is great, but it is actually hard to go wrong exploring the little mom and pop places. Just look for restaurants that are fairly spartan. The more heavily decorated around a contrived "Mexican" theme a place is the more likely it is to serve bland meats on flour tortillas.

Last Friday a group of extraordinarily talented chefs gathered in Downtown Memphis to cook heritage pigs from small, area farms in a friendly competition that transitioned into more of an Irish wake by the end of the night. Cochon Heritage BBQ is a spin-off of the Cochon 555 series. Like the Cochon 555 event in Memphis last year, each chef's team uses a heritage pig from the farm of their choice. As the name implies, at Cochon Heritage BBQ the focus is on the art of slow, off heat cooking with smoke.

The focus is also on small farms that are dedicated to raising animals humanely and sustainably. This year four of the six teams competing used Berkshire hogs from Newman Farm. Anyone who has purchased Newman Farm pork products either at area farmers' markets or off the menu at outstanding local restaurants like Sweet Grass, Hog and Hominy and Andrew Michael Italian Kitchen understands why so many teams opted to compete with pigs from Newman. So the tragic sudden death of Newman Farm patriarch Mark Newman less than two weeks before the event turned it into a send-off for a great man who left a huge mark on the culinary landscape.

Mark was a huge advocate for both sustainable farming and the talented chefs who used his products in their kitchens. And that naturally made him a huge advocate for the Cochon events as well. His big grin and joking personality made him an integral part the local farmers' market scene. At the Cochon 555 event in Memphis some of my favorite memories are of sharing whiskey and stories with him. The first Cochon Heritage BBQ followed shortly after during last year's Labor Day weekend, but I missed that event since my wife and I were vacationing on the West Coast at the time. We made plans to attend Memphis's second Heritage BBQ competition at Beale Street Landing assuming we'd be sharing more jokes and drinks with him.

It was my first visit to Beale Street Landing, a taxpayer-funded fiasco that has finally partially opened years behind schedule and millions of dollars over budget. But that can be an urban planning rant for another post. [UPDATE a week after I posted this the Memphis Flyer provided a great summary of the Beale Street Landing fiasco.]

The tone for the evening was set as soon as I walked in the front door of Beale Street Landing and was greeted with a hug from Mark's wife of 39 years, Rita. After offering my condolences I moved on to sample the food from the first team I encountered.

The St. Jude Culinary Team headed by Mile McMath and Rick Farmer are a skilled group of cooks who spend their work days feeding the staff and patients at the St. Jude Children's Research Hospital.

The St. Jude team had a sign announcing its use of a Newman Pig for the Cochon competition...

...And Mark's name had been added to the team's shirts.

The St. Jude team presented its food on cafeteria style trays and immediately established how high the level of competition was going to be. From left on top; that is braised pork belly with dim sum-style sticky rice, an oyster topped with barbecue bologna, and an outstanding tamale. Below that from; pork short ribs with pig ear "pasta," a butermilk and cornbread parfait and a can of field peas with pork tongue pastrami and pickled pig's feet and ears.

The next station featured a team that combined staff from two Atlanta restaurants with chefs Chad Clevenger of Alma Cocina and Nick McCormick of TAP Gastropub. Here you see a crispy barbecue rillette, pork posole, a Cuban-style pork torta and a green bean salad. Just two teams into sampling the competition I was already feeling sorry for the judges who would have to pick a favorite.

My first two stops had been at indoor stations. Next I moved outside where three teams were suffering in the August heat. I'm not sure why an event in Memphis that included so much outdoor space was scheduled to start a 5 p.m. on a day in August. By 7 p.m. the temperature got much more bearable but those first two hours were muggy and scorching. This team paired chefs Ryan Trimm of Southward, Sweet Grass and Next Door Memphis with Josh Galliano of the Libertine in St. Louis.

The Trimm/Galliano dup served slow-roasted ham with peach preserves on lard biscuits, a pig's head baked bean and jalapeno stew, ribs, a "pizza" of pork loin on pork rinds with a mustard sauce and pulled pork corn dog bites dusted with dry rub.

Tamales were a popular dish, which was great for a tamale lover like me. The Central BBQ team headed by Craig Blondis and Chris Taylor served a pulled pork tamale with a "soul stew" of ham, sausage, beans and peas; greens served with rind-on pork belly; and pork and peanut bonbons. I found out that the bread on the top left of my plate was supposed to be for the Central BBQ answer to the McRib sandwich. Despite how underwhelming as an actual McRib is, I hate that I missed trying the Central team's take on it.

After sampling two of the outdoor teams I retreated inside away from the August heat to try Jackson Kramer of Interim's spice-rubbed ham and his outstanding pressed pork confit.

While cooling off inside I also took time to grab a Manhattan before heading back into the heat to try the last food station. The whiskey was as abundant at Cochon Heritage BBQ as it has been at any of the Cochon 555 event I've attended.

The heat was already uncomfortable when we arrived and after trying food from five teams along with a generous sampling of quality bourbons and beers I had to brace myself to try the final table. But I'd heard enough people raving about the entries from Travis Grimes of Husk in Charleston, S.C., that I knew I had to find room for them. The husk team ended up winning the event. It served peach barbecue sauce-glazed fried bologna with a pickled peach relish; confit pork neck corn fritters; pork shoulder with heirloom tomatoes, onions, Ricotta and olive oil; and field peas cooked with bacon and ham hocks.

I was able to duck back inside to the air conditioning whenever I got too hot outside. Evan Potts, who normally bartends at the Cove on Broad, didn't have that luxury. He was working an outdoor bar beside the river, getting the full brunt of the sun as it moved to the west.

The sun was literally melting the stacks of plastic cups he was using to serve drinks.

Like any cochon event there were also oysters, this time topped with bacon and goat cheese...

...And lots of additional good cheeses...

...and butcher demonstrations.

The view from Beale Street Landing, even in its current unfinished state, is spectacular.

As the sun went down and the temperature dropped everyone gathered around the stage for the awards ceremony.

Cochon events usually end with the awards ceremony. At this event the awards ceremony quickly morphed into a memorial service for Mark Newman.

Mark's Family on stage with Cochon 555 founder Brady Lowe (second from left with microphone). The event took on the feel of an Irish wake as family and friends shared memories, toasts were drank, tears flowed and multiple F-bombs were dropped on stage by people searching for the right words.

Lowe took time to present the trophy to the event's winners, the Husk team led by Travis Grimes. Then hot air lanterns were dispersed through the crowd for attendees to light and release over the Mississippi River in memory of Mark.

A few weeks ago the Commercial Appeal newspaper released its annual Memphis Most issue. The Memphis Most poll is a shameless copy of the Best of Memphis poll published annually in the Memphis Flyer newspaper. Along with being the original, the Best of Memphis poll in the Flyer is generally considered the more credible guide to the city, although some of the Best of Memphis results will also make knowledgeable people curse and cringe the way the Memphis Most list will.

What do I mean by curse and cringe? In this year's Memphis Most poll Pete & Sam's was declared Best Italian in a city with options like Bari and Andrew Michael Italian Kitchen. Best Hot Wings went to Buffalo Wild Wings while Best Deli went to Jason's Deli and Best Coffee Shop went to Starbucks. Seriously, if you are unfamiliar enough with local options for hot wings, deli food and coffee to vote for those chains, just don't vote. Also, the Cupboard won for Best Vegetarian. The Cupboard is a meat and three country cooking place, meaning it serves the kind of food I eat all the time. It is 10 minutes from my house. I haven't eaten there in years. It doesn't even have the best vegetarian country vegetables on that particular block of the Medical District. For that, go to Peggy's Heavenly Home Cooking.

Not all the winners were dumbfounding selections. Restaurant Iris took Best Fine Dining, Gus's Fried Chicken took Best Southern Fried Chicken and Brother Juniper's took Best Breakfast; all of which were completely deserving choices. But it was still a poll were a Best Shopping Center award went to Collierville's Carriage Crossing; a design nightmare that someone manages to combine the absolute worst elements of dense urban design, suburban strip malls and indoor shopping malls into one terrible experience.

The award for Best Barbecue Ribs went to the Germantown Commissary. I've had plenty of pulled pork from the Commissary over the years but I'd never sampled the ribs there so I decided I needed to make a special trip to see how they measured up. I went with a skeptical but open mind. The pulled pork at the Commissary has always been good, but not exceptional. And the ribs won, but in a poll where the Rendezvous got enough votes for an honorable mention while Leonard's didn't appear on the list at all.

The restaurant is located inside a converted old general store next to the train tracks in old Germantown. The historic location definitely adds to the dining experience.

I had to plan a special trip to eat at the Commissary. It is on the opposite side of the county from my Midtown home. And while I usually try restaurants while I am working, the Commissary is in a heavily residential area that I never travel to for work. So last week I took a ride out there with a friend to try some ribs for dinner. My friend recently moved to Memphis and had heard enough about the Commissary that he was already curious to try it before it appeared on the Memphis Most list.

We arrived a little before 8 p.m. as the main dinner rush was just starting to clear out. All the staff members we encountered were friendly and there was only a short wait before we were seated and ordered a round of Ghost River beers while we looked over the menu.

We may have gone a little overboard with our ordering. We got two full-slab rib dinners, onion rings, chicken wings, and a tamale.

We ordered the wings expecting hot wings, but they were actually just breaded and fried chicken wings served with honey mustard sauce. Not bad, just not what we expected. I guess we just assumed chicken wings are tossed in hot sauce and butter and served with blue cheese or ranch dressing. The onion rings were ordered on a whim and were okay, but they were mostly breading without much onion.

The single tamale was surprisingly filling. It was a Delta-style tamale and came topped with chili and cheese. I enjoyed it overall, but the tamale itself under all that topping was a little dry and bland.*

After sampling all the sides we were ready to tear into the main course. The slabs of ribs at the Commissary are served dry, with no sauce or rub. Dry rub and mild and hot barbecue sauce are all available at the table. The restaurant still includes a tasty deviled egg with its barbecue dinners, which makes for a nice little extra treat. The beans and slaw were both solidly good, as they have always been when I've had food from the Commissary. The rib meat demonstrated great smoke penetration with pink coloration running all the way to the bone.

The ribs themselves are good. I can see where someone who had only tried the lackluster ribs from some of the big names like the Rendezvous or the now-defunct Neely's, along with the "fast food ribs" from Tops, could think they'd found the best in town. It is also important to note that people who live in Germantown are generally not the kind of people who are going to spend a lot of time exploring the rest of the city. That isn't me bashing Germantown. It is one of the nicest suburban areas in the city because it has always shunned the kind of poorly-designed, future-blight, commercial development that the rest of the city's suburbs have never had the foresight to avoid.

But while the ribs at the Commissary are certainly better than average, we were there to see if they were worthy of being crowned the Best Ribs in the Memphis area. As I've noted in the past, I prefer my ribs with dry rub instead of sauce. But even if you prefer sauce, the sauce at Commissary is underwhelmingly mild and flavorless. Even the hot is like someone just added an element of heat to the mild sauce, which has no other flavor elements to make it interesting.

So that brings us to the dry rub. The dry rub is what adds that extra dimension of flavor that takes the ribs to the next level at places like Leonard's, the Bar-B-Q Shop, Jack's Rib Shack, Alex's Tavern and Memphis Barbecue Company that serve truly outstanding ribs. So I had high hoped when I took a section of my commissary ribs and dusted them with the dry rub that was on the table. It tasted like candy. Seriously, it tasted like something that would get sprinkled on an apple on a stick at the fair. It looked like dry rub, but you could get the same result just dusting ribs with brown sugar. There was no other flavor profile to the rub other than overbearing sweetness.

While the sauces and dry rub at the Commissary failed to impress, the ribs are good enough to be enjoyed on their own. They aren't exceptionally juicy or flavorful, but there is a good smoke presence. They are solidly above average. Before anyone complains that, "truly great ribs don't need sauce or rub," I'll say that I agree completely. The ribs at Latham's Meat Company in Jackson, TN, are served without any sauce or rub, and they are truly outstanding. But there is still a complex element of flavor there that the Commissary lacks. If I lived in Germantown, I'd probably eat a lot of Commissary barbecue. It is certainly better than the Tops a few blocks from my house that I frequent out of convenience. Combine convenience with above average quality and it is probably the best place for the demographic it is drawing its customers from. After all, Alex's Tavern may have much better ribs, but good luck on convincing the average Germantown housewife to drive across town to eat there.

*Since I mentioned the tamale being a little dry and bland I'd like to point out that hitting the perfect balance of spice and fat in a tamale is an art. I recently tried this place at Winchester and Kirby Parkway in Hickory Hill were the tamales had a nice spicy kick to them but were a little to soggy and greasy. It is also interesting to note that Hattie's Tamales had an actual store near this intersection for years that I never made it into before it closed. So once I saw they were available from the little shack on a trailer I made sure to get some while I had the chance. The best tamales I've found in the Memphis area are still the ones at the South Memphis Grocery.

Last weekend I was in Lebanon, TN, a small town just east of Nashville, with some friends for the annual Redneck Rumble car show. The Rumble is an event for rat rods, traditional-style hot rods and bobber-style motorcycles.

If you like traditional hot rods like these, you'll like the Redneck rumble.

Since I was going to be passing through Nashville around dinner time on the way home I posted a message on the Memphis Que Facebook page asking for recommendations on where to eat. Several people mention Nashville hot chicken places like Prince's and Hattie B's. Nashville hot chicken is one form of southern food I haven't explored yet, and based on some of the pictures I've seen and reviews I've read it is something I need to try. But I was in the mood for barbecue (big surprise right?) so I followed a tip to check out a place called Papa Kay Joe's Bar-B-Que located west of Nashville in Centerville.

The pig on the sign is exactly the same as the one on this sign from a boarded-up barbecue joint in West Memphis, AR.

I looked up Papa Kay Joe's on my phone and found a listing for an address on Ward Street in Centerville. It was going to be about a 40 mile total detour from the interstate, but it seemed like a worthwhile adventure. The directions on my phone said to take Exit 172 and head south on Highway 46 for several miles before making a right on Highway 100 and driving about 17 miles to get to Centerville. But we had only been off of I-40 traveling on Highway 46 for a couple miles when we saw a big sign for Papa Kay Joe's

At first we were confused, but also happy that we weren't going to be driving near as far out of the way as we expected. On the way into the restaurant I noticed an additional sign noting that we were actually at Papa Kay Joe's East. There are two locations. So if you are traveling on I-40 and want to try Papa Kay Joe's barbecue without driving all the way to Centerville just head south from Exit 172 and you'll find the restaurant on the right side of the road a couple miles down. Just be warned that it is closed on Sunday, Monday and Tuesday.

Once we were seated and looked over the menu the friend I was traveling with ordered a pulled pork sandwich with fires and slaw. I noticed an interesting sounding item on the menu that featured a pile of pulled pork on a cornbread cake but I ordered a rib dinner with beans and slaw.

My friend let me try a bite of the pulled pork from his sandwich before he inhaled it and it was great.It could easily be eaten with no sauce, although the restaurant offers both mild and hot barbecue sauce.

My ribs failed to impress me. They came coated with an ultra-sweet sauce that dominated the flavor. The hot barbecue sauce available at the table was much better than what came on the ribs, I would have requested the hot but my server had told me the ribs were served dry. Their texture varied from overly-mushy in some areas to over-cooked to a jerky-like consistency in other areas. Compared to the excellent pulled pork my friend I was left with that feeling where you want a time machine to jump back and warn yourself to order differently.

The menu listed both mayo and vinegar slaw. My friend and I both ordered the vinegar-based but the restaurant was out so we ended up opting for the mayo based instead. While I generally prefer vinegar slaw the mayo slaw at Papa Kay Joe's is really good. It is roughly chopped, the mayo is used sparingly and it is seasoned with black pepper. If more mayo-based slaw was like the variation served at Papa Kay Joe's I wouldn't have an aversion to it. The beans were totally average.

My rib dinner also came with a cornbread pancake. I realized just how much of a mistake I'd made while ordering when I took a bite. The thing was delicious. My friend asked to try a bite and ended up wide-eyed at how good it was as well. On the way out of the restaurant I noticed a framed article on the wall from Southern Living magazine. It quoted owner Devin Pickard saying the cornbread cakes are fried in pork lard on a griddle because he thinks barbecue restaurants should celebrate pork fat.

The next time I have an opportunity to eat at Papa Kay Joe's there is no question what I will be ordering. I will be getting one of those outstanding pork lard-fried cornbread cakes topped with the restaurant's outstanding pulled pork and slaw. Even now I find myself daydreaming about just how spectacular it will taste.

I was driving through Atoka on my way to Brighton, TN, last week when I noticed the former Post Office Barbecue building had reopened as a place calling itself the Paradise Grill. The name made me assume the restaurant specialized in grilled seafood and steaks, but I stopped to to ask for a menu to see if barbecue was available as well. If the building still had the pit used to produce the incredible pulled pork that was served up by Post Office it made sense to wonder if the new restaurant was putting it to use.

After a quick look at the menu I immediately asked for a table. Paradise Pit Barbecue would be a better name for the restaurant, which is run by members of the Paradise Porkers barbecue team. There seems to be a recent trend of barbecue teams opening restaurants. I've been extremely impressed by the barbecue at the recently-opened Ty's Bar-B-Que in the Wolfchase area. And I was already somewhat familiar with the Paradise Porkers, having hazy memories of ending up drinking and singing along with Jimmy Buffett tunes in the team's tent late one night during this year's Memphis in May barbecue contest.

The walls are decorated with some of the trophies the team has picked up on the competition barbecue circuit. The fake parrot is a pretty good indicator of the type of decor exhibited throughout the restaurant. Some people will love it, some people will hate it. I've never worried too much about design aesthetics in barbecue joints as long as the food is good.

I asked about the ribs on the menu but my server told me they are served wet so I opted for the pulled pork plate instead. The meat had a great mix of textures from the inner and outer sections of the shoulder with plenty of delicious bark and a nice, deep smoke ring. The baked beans were loaded with smoked pork to a nearly 50/50 ratio of meat to beans while the slaw was a solid example the vinegar-based style I prefer.

The pulled pork was served unsauced and good enough to be eaten that way. There were bold and sweet varieties of barbecue sauce located at the table, sitting on a paper towel roll beneath a fake window framing a large photograph of an ocean setting. The fake window views are arranged next to tables throughout the restaurant. Once again, you won't find any subtlety in the restaurant's theme. I'm not a fan of sweet barbecue sauces so I tried the bold and it ended up being good enough for me to apply a relatively generous, by my standards, amount to my meat.

The pulled pork at the old Post Office Barbecue packed in some impressive smoke penetration so I was happy to see the building, and its barbecue pit, back in use*. The term "competition barbecue" gets thrown around so much in restaurant advertising that it is as meaningless as seeing "real pit" or "hickory" in a restaurant's name. But the pulled pork at Paradise Grill was genuinely good enough to compete with some of the best I've tried.

In other barbecue related news from the same day I tried Paradise Grill: As I was traveling up Highway 51 I noticed some major work being done on the Barb-A-Rosa's B-B-Q building. Barb-A-Rosa's closed a few months ago. I pulled into the parking lot to ask one of the workers if the building was being demolished or renovated since it was impossible to tell at the time. He said they were doing renovation work and planned to have the place reopened in a few weeks. While I've been pretty underwhelmed by the barbecue at Barb-A-Rosa's in the past the staff has always been very friendly so I'll gladly give the refurbished restaurant another chance when it reopens.

*UPDATE: I assumed that the Paradise Grill was using the same barbecue pit that Post Office used when it was at the same location. It turns out I was wrong. During a return visit I spent some time talking to owner Mike Godwin. The owner of Post Office kept his smoker when he closed the restaurant. Godwin cooks his barbecue behind the restaurant in the same Cadillac Cooker rig that he used for competition with the Paradise Porkers. All his cooking is done with lump charcoal and cherry wood and he doesn't split the cherry logs until right before they go into the cooker's firebox in order to get as much flavor from them as possible.

Blight is normally a slow process, as an empty property slowly succumbs to the forces of time and nature. Maintaining any man-made structure or environment is a battle against entropy, and there is always a certain sad beauty to decay as the earth reclaims a part of itself.

Trees by Touliatos was a sprawling 20-acre plant nursery on Brooks Road next to Airways with an impressive assortment of water plants and fountains that made it seem like a perfect oasis in the desert of crumbling concrete that generally defines the area around the Memphis International Airport. The business has only been closed for two years, but as I was driving past yesterday I noticed how quickly nature was reclaiming the property.

I parked and began poking around the property, photographing the stunning speed of plant life overtaking a property that was inherently designed to nurture plant life. This post isn't being critical of the Touliatos family in any way, shape or form. The business owners spent decades operating a vibrant enterprise in an unlikely location that stayed successful long after blight had already come to define most of the surrounding area. And the son of the company's retired founders is still doing landscape design work in the Memphis area.

There isn't any barbecue in this post, but beyond the food a bigger focus of this blog is to expose readers to parts of the city they may be unfamiliar with. After some time walking around the old Trees by Touliatos grounds I decided the images I captured were worth sharing. Whenever you hear people reference "the end of the world" they actually mean an end of humanity. Nature is always quietly waiting to quickly reclaim any areas we leave behind.

Before Monday it had been years, possibly a decade, since I had eaten at the Cupboard on Union. The restaurant draws big crowds of loyal customers, but I hadn't been able to understand why. When I mentioned that in a recent post about the Commercial Appeal's Memphis Most poll, where the Cupboard was voted Best Vegetarian, I had a couple of readers comment that I needed to give it another chance and that the quality of the food there had improved dramatically over the past couple years.

After all, if I'm bashing a place I haven't been in that long I'm like the wilfully ignorant local know-nothings who say things like, "Downtown Memphis is a cesspool. I haven't been there in 15 years and I'm never going back," thus ignoring the steady revitalization Downtown has experienced.

So on Monday I stopped back in and tried the onion-topped hamburger steak with turnip greens, baked sweet potato and fried green tomatoes. I specifically ordered the fried green tomatoes because I remembered them being particularly awful in the past.

While waiting on my food my server brought me a big basket full of little bite-sized cornbread muffins. The one I sampled was good, but i wasn't looking to fill up on empty cornmeal calories so I stopped with that one.

When my order came out I could tell the fried green tomatoes had undergone a serious improvement as soon as I saw them. The ones I remembered in the past had a thick, flavorless shell of breading on them. These had a nice light, crispy coating of flavorful cornmeal batter. The juicy hamburger steak also packed plenty of exceptional flavor.

I was happy to see the baked sweet potato on the menu since so many country cooking and soul food restaurants serve candied sweet potatoes that are swimming in sugary syrup. Unfortunately there was no butter at the table, just packets of "Fresh Buttery Taste Spread" full of artery-frying vegetable oils. I asked the server if I could get any actual butter but she said the restaurant didn't have any. I don't know which is more tragic, a country cooking kitchen with no butter in it or the fact that so many customers would probably willingly choose rancid-tasting margarines over real butter out of the deluded belief that it is healthier. That isn't a specific complaint about the Cupboard. Vegetable oil is a plague in kitchens throughout the U.S. Butter rant aside, the sweet potato was great, as expected. We cook a lot of baked sweet potatoes at home since it is easy and foolproof.

The turnip greens were fairly lacking in flavor. Even with a healthy dose of Bruce's Green Hot Sauce they still didn't have any punch to them. I know that the Cupboard doesn't use animal fat in its vegetables, but that doesn't mean the greens can't be well-seasoned. Peggy's, which is around the corner from the upboard on Cleveland, and At the Bistro on Brooks both serve completely vegetarian vegetables that are still expertly seasoned.

The Cupboard has definitely improved, and I wouldn't mind visiting again in the future if someone else insisted. But I would still try to talk whoever was insisting into going around the corner to Peggy's. In the Memphis Flyer's recent Best of Memphis Poll the Cupboard came in second place behind Soulfish in the Best Southern/Soul Food category. Every year I have to write in the Four Way in South Memphis for that category, since it never even gets mentioned. Two days before my recent visit to the Cupboard I took an out-of-town friend to the Stax Museum, so we naturally stopped for dinner at the Four Way after our visit. So if my opinion of the Cupboard seems overly dismissive keep in mind I'd had truly exceptional soul food two days prior as a point of comparison.

I think a lot of praise for the Cupboard's is similar to the praise you hear for the Rendezvous. It is coming from people who haven't tried much of the competition.

Catfish Roundup - Gus's, Saigon Le and Emerald Thai

Family Tradition - Sidestreet Burgers and Evan's Cafeteria

Charles Vergos' Rendezvous vs. Latham's Meat Company

Bachelor Living for a Weekend - Venison Shoulder, Collard Greens, Corky's and Venomous Spiders

New Place in my Old Hood - Dindie's Soul Food

New Place in Wolfchase - Ty's Bar-B-Que

Great Food with Perfect Little Added Details - BluesFest House of Soulfood

Another South Memphis Roadside Smoker - Malia's

Bucketlist Sammich - Katz's Deli

Organ Meat in Manhattan - Takashi

Barbecue in Brooklyn - Little Brother

Truth in Advertising - Greens, Beans and Taters

A Contender in Brownsville - Raisin' Cain

Tacos - Chiwawa and Borolas

Barbecue and Whiskey in Memory of a Friend - Cochon Heritage BBQ

"Memphis Most" Winner - Germantown Commissary

Outside Nashville - Papa Kay Joe's

A Reborn Pit in Atoka - Paradise Grill

A Green Oasis at Brooks and Airways - Trees by Touliatos

Overrated But Improved - The Cupboard