Wed update: Best chef vote, nutty hot dog, Peabody rooftop parties, Tastin’ Round Town, trampoline park, chicken fight and more

The Memphis Business Journal has started a new “vote for the best chef” competition that is creating some controversy. Rather than voting for your favorite in all of Memphis, the chefs are pitted off one versus the other, bracket style, single elimination. At least two prominent Downtown chefs have expressed their displeasure on Twitter. They see themselves as a community and don’t want to be pitted off against one another as adversaries. One chef who is in the competition has asked to be removed. I kind of see their point. This isn’t the NBA playoffs where ultimately there can be only one winner; rather, it’s Memphis where we’re ALL winners because these chefs are here. Anyway, if you want to take a look, here it is.

Bardog is taking their creativity with the Dog of the Day to new levels. Today’s Dog is the “Nutty Joe Young,” with crunchy peanut butter, fried bananas & roasted peanut crumbles.

The Peabody has announced that their rooftop parties will start April 19.

Good article on the Memphis Daily News site about Tastin’ Round Town, a company that conducts food tours of Memphis. Several Downtown restaurants are on the tours.

Also in the Daily News: This isn’t Downtown, but Memphis is getting a trampoline park and it opens next week. That’s pretty cool. How many cities can say they have a trampoline park? Maybe I should hold a Tube Top Month event there in June. That could be fun.

Only in Memphis: A fight over chicken at a bus stop at Poplar and Danny Thomas led to a knife assault. The victim grabbed away the knife and knocked several of the suspect’s teeth out. More info here.

Fun night playing poker at the Blind Bear last night. Less than 30 minutes into the game, I was running on fumes with barely 2 big blinds left in my stack… I made a comeback, though, and got to the final table. Congratulations to last night’s winner Bobby. Even though I didn’t take home a prize, I was quite happy with my second-place finish, considering how poorly I was doing early on. If you want to play some Texas Hold’em, the place to go tonight is the Underdog Room of Bardog, 7:30 game.

Plans for tonight: Due to the bad weather currently moving through, I’m going to switch things up tonight. Panda Manda Hour at Bardog to start off the evening. I’ll decide whether I feel like going downstairs for a third consecutive night of poker. After that, Saucer and maybe Blind Bear.