Tomorrow is the beginning of Downtown Dining Week, running until Sunday, November 13. Restaurants all over Downtown run multi-course dinner specials for the low price of $20.16, in many cases offering incredible value for the money. Some restaurants also run $10.16 lunch specials.
Many restaurant owners and chefs and managers see DDW as the incredible opportunity that it is. People who would never have the restaurant on their radar will come through the door. Show those people an amazing dining experience and some of them will come back and spend money at regular prices. Or, even if they don’t come back, they will talk about their dinner, which will encourage others to check the place out.
There are also restaurants who phone it in, who think, “***Sigh*** We have to do Downtown Dining Week again, or we’ll look like ‘that one place’ that chooses not to go along with the pack.” Their menus are unimaginative, and they tend to treat people who order off the DDW menu as second-class customers. That is a mistake. Two years ago, two of my friends paid $20.14 for the fine-dining equivalent of a Banquet frozen dinner that made them both sick. I’m pleased to see that restaurant is not doing DDW this year. Either embrace the concept or don’t participate.
This morning I went through all the DDW restaurant menus to see who really embraced the concept. I have multiple recommendations which I will list below, but I wanted to pick a “winner” that had the most outstanding menu. I couldn’t. It’s a tie.
5 Spot is offering a four-course dinner for $20.16. You get an appetizer, soup or salad, entree, and dessert. You don’t see too many restaurants that offer appetizers like Gulf shrimp or bacon-wrapped jalapeños for DDW. Also, I don’t know if I have any vegetarians who read this blog, but on the off-chance that I do, I will mention that 5 Spot is one of the few restaurants offering a meatless entree for DDW – a vegetable lasagna with spinach, shitake and cremini mushrooms, ricotta, mozzarella, and pecorino cheeses.
Rizzo’s is my other winner in the DDW sweepstakes. They too offer a four-course menu, with a soup or salad followed by an appetizer, entree, and dessert. Great value. I will leave it up to you to decide on the entree or dessert, but just trust me on the first two courses… get Chef Michael Patrick’s famous cheeseburger soup to start off, then follow that up with the Lobster Pronto Pup, the menu holdover from the days of EP Delta Kitchen. There is nothing quite like it.
If you want to dine at either of the restaurants I mentioned above, or any of the ones I am about to mention, let me advise you to call TODAY and make reservations. These places will get booked up.
Here are some other restaurants that are doing some interesting stuff for Downtown Dining Week.
- Carne asada at Agave Maria
- Italian seafood stew at Capriccio
- Afternoon tea at Chez Philippe (my friend Memphis MandySue who recently got married LOVES this)
- Rustic lobster grilled cheese at Crossroads inside the Sheraton Hotel
- Shrimp & grits or Sunday Sugo at Felicia Suzanne’s
- Local – the she crab bisque as the first course is not to be missed
- Cornish game hen at Loflin Yard
- South of Beale – duck fried rice for the first course
- Shrimp stuffed tilapia or a 4 oz. sirloin with lobster mac & cheese at Tug’s
Check the fine print on the restaurants’ menus, because many of them add a 20% gratuity automatically. If you dine at one that does not, my recommended tip would be about six dollars. That’s almost thirty percent – why so much? Because I like to tip on the full value of my dinner, rather than the discounted price. Also, the servers are going to be working extra hard during DDW, so it’s nice to tip a little extra to show appreciation. Also, be kind to your servers – if a restaurant normally takes 10 minutes to get your food out to you, it may be 15 or 20 because of the DDW volume, and it isn’t your server’s fault.
There are a couple of places charging $10.16 for a burger. How is that a value?
Okay, let’s get on to the news and then I will recap yesterday. From Food & Wine: Beer golf is beer pong’s sophisticated older brother. Instead of tossing a ping-pong ball into cups on a table, you fill up full pitchers of beer and attempt to chip golf balls in.
If you missed the recent Downtown safety meeting, here’s a recap.
The Grizzlies host the Portland Trail Blazers for an afternoon game at FedExForum. Tip-off time is 2:30.
November 6th Street has its own fan page on Facebook. The alley, running north-south between Main and Second, commemorates November 6, 1934, when Memphis voters elected to build or buy an electrical system to use cheaper electricity from TVA. The next month, Maiden Lane was renamed November 6th Street.
The theme of yesterday was “plans change.” All week I had been planning to get to Max’s Sports Bar early in the day and hunker down for a full day of football watching. I was perfectly positioned in a seat with my back to the door, facing the two TVs hung from the second floor rail, with Florida-Arkansas to be on one TV and Memphis-SMU on the other. After those games were over I was going to stick around for the Alabama-LSU game at 7. (Somewhere at a bar in McAllen, Texas, people were going “Why does that woman keep saying ‘roooooooollllllllll tide?'” last night.) I had gotten some good food in me earlier and the day, and Danny poured me a PBR. I was ready to roll.
Then I looked at my phone. My friends were checking in at the chili cook-off in Overton Square. I felt bad for not being there supporting the Blind Bear team, given how well I have been treated at that bar since the day it opened. “The festival goes on until 4,” I thought. “I’ve still got time. I’ll order an Uber.” I tabbed out with Danny and requested a ride. Five minutes later, I was in a car and on my way.
The ride out there was… interesting, I guess you could say. The entire way there, the driver had his phone six inches from his face, apparently Skyping his family back home in some country in the Middle East (I didn’t get the chance to ask which country.) He and a woman were speaking in what I think was Arabic. At some point I heard children’s voices, and the woman started singing, and he started singing, and there was Middle Eastern music. “Is he paying any attention to the road at all?” I wondered. However, he was driving pretty safe, and I got there without incident. $8.06 to get from South Main to Overton Square is not bad.
I found the Blind Bear tent and the cooking team assembled inside: Colin from the Bear, Bicycle Bobby, and Chef Michael Patrick. Damn. You don’t get a three-person team in the kitchen much better than that. “Paul, have some three-bean turkey chili,” said Chef as he handed me a cup and a spoon. It was delicious!
I walked around to the back of the tent where some of the Blind Bear staff and regulars were hanging out. I took a seat on the wall and just enjoyed my surroundings. Mid 60s with a light wind, a perfect day for a light fleece jacket and shorts.
By 2:30 they were starting to break down the tent. “I can’t believe we went through that huge pot of chili,” Colin commented. “Usually we have tons of it left, that I take to people. People are going to be disappointed this year when they don’t get any chili tonight.” I am not surprised it was all gone. Word travels fast about his chili.
As they broke down the tent, I was thinking about a walk down Cooper to Slider Inn to hang out with my “DAWG” John D in his native habitat. However, before I could get to my feet and say my goodbyes, Colin’s wife Whitney and B-RAD told me, “Some of us are about to walk over to Schweinehaus and get a beer and a pretzel. Would you like to come?” Seeing that spontaneity leads to good things, I decided to join them.
It was my first time in Schweinehaus and the tap wall immediately impressed me. Of the many taps, only one was hooked-up to a mass-produced domestic beer… and that was the Cadillac of beers, PBR. Of course I ordered one.
“What size?” the bartender asked.
That’s a question I am not used to, outside of the bars on Beale where Big Ass Beers are served. “What sizes do you have?” I replied.
“We have a standard pint glass, a half-liter, and a liter glass,” she said.
A LITER of PBR????? I’ll take it!
The bartender turned the Arkansas game on for me. I like the setup they have in there, with a main bar with a TV and a rail behind it with two more TVs.
DSW brought some turkey fresh off the smoker for our group to sample. Man was that ever good! DSW, that is a fine restaurant you have there, and I have been foolishly depriving myself of delicious food by not coming out there until now.
Tony and B-RAD and I decided it was selfie time.
The picture got posted to Facebook and our friend Katie (not Mac) commented “Pure trouble.”
“Next up is the Memphis Grilled Cheese Festival,” Tony pointed out. “Grilled cheese is vegetarian. You should invite Katie from D.C. to come down.” (We need a scorecard to keep up with all the Katies I mention on the blog.) That sounded like a good idea so I texted Katie from D.C. I told her she could stay in my warm, cozy apartment if she didn’t want to stay with her friend Staci. She said she’s going to try to make it. Hmmm… don’t know about the apartment being warm and cozy actually… with the weather we’ve been having lately, I’m wondering if I’ll still have the A/C on in December.
We stayed until a little after 5 to see a friend of ours who had just started working there (and damn, she was rocking those jeans she had on), and then I caught a ride back Downtown with Colin and Whitney. I pulled up a seat at the Blind Bear bar and watched Arkansas take down #11 Florida, after earlier seeing Mississippi State put #4 Texas A&M’s playoff hopes to an end. I’m telling you, it seems like any team in the SEC West is dangerous. Bama is head and shoulders above all the other teams, that much I will admit. But if I were a head football coach, I don’t think I would be happy to see any team in our division on the upcoming schedule.
When I came home that evening, I found a present on my front door:
It was a PBR cooler! Leslie, my neighbor and apartment manager, had found it and asked if I wanted it. You better believe I want it! I will have to shop carefully, though, because there is only one brand of beer worthy of being carried in such an excellent bag!
It’s Sunday Fun Day and soon it will be time for D-RANKS with B-RAD. I’d like to extend a sincere invitation to a former regular at Sunday brunch at the Blind Bear, last seen August 2015, to come back sometime soon. Try though I might, I just can’t hate on someone with such fabulous taste in music.
All right, got a couple of hours to kill before the Blind Bear opens, so it’s time to get out my iPad and see what there is to watch on WWE Network. For fellow Network subscribers, check out the Legends show where JBL interviews Freebird Michael P.S. Hayes. It is excellent. Outta here for now, back tomorrow with more news.