Memphis January 2026

YEARS

TONY THOMAS | VEDA REED | MEMPHIS WEDDINGS | 901 HEALTH

MAGAZINE

VOL L NO 10 | JANUARY 2026

THE IMMIGRANTS USA $5.99

Is America Still the Land of Opportunity?

DISPLAY UNTIL FEBRUARY 10, 2026

ABOVE: DULCE MARIA SALCEDO / PHOTOGRAPH BY CARI GRIFFITH

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on the cover: Dulce Maria Salcedo PHOTOGR APH BY C ARI GRIFFIT H

V O L L N O 1 0 | J ANU A RY 2026

UP FRONT 10 F R O M T H E E D I T O R ~ b y a n n a t r a v e r s e 12 O U T A N D A B O U T ~ b y a b i g a i l m o r i c i 14 C L A S S I C D I N I N G ~ b y m i c h a e l d o n a h u e 16 A S K V A N C E ~ b y v a n c e l a u d e r d a l e 18 B O O K S ~ b y j e s s e d a v i s 20 C I T Y J O U R N A L ~ b y t o m j o n e s 23 9 0 1 H E A L T H ~ b y f r a n k m u r ta u g h

FEATURES 28 The Immigrants

The dreams, disappointments, hopes, and heartaches of families that chose to make America — and Memphis — home. ~ b y c h r i s m c c oy 46 Remembering Veda Reed Colleagues and students pay tribute to one of the city’s most remarkable artists and teachers. ~ b y a b i g a i l m o r i c i

52 “I Do”

A photo album of recent Mid-South weddings.

64 L O C A L T R E A S U R E S

Tuning in to Tony Thomas The keyboard virtuoso has played a pivotal part in local music.

28

~ by a l e x g r e e n e

70 S I P S

The Vieux Carre Tonica’s Lisa Gradinger recreates a New Orleans classic. ~ by b r u c e va n w y n g a r d e n

72 C I T Y D I N I N G

The city’s most extensive dining listings.

80 L A S T S T A N D

Remembering Cleo Silvers-Painter A life dedicated to improving healthcare equality for all. ~ by s t e p h a n i e pa i n t e r

80

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Memphis Magazine (ISSN 1622-820x) is published monthly for $18 per year by Contemporary Media, Inc., P.O. Box 1738, Memphis, TN 38101 © 2026. Telephone: 901-521-9000. For subscription info, call 901-575-9470. Subscription customer service mailing address is Memphis Magazine, P.O. Box 1738, Memphis, TN 38101. All rights reserved. • Periodicals Postage Paid at Memphis, TN. Postmasters: send address changes to Memphis Magazine, P.O. Box 1738, Memphis, TN 38101.

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64 JANUARY 2026 • MEMPHISMAGA ZINE.COM • 7

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CEO AND EDITOR-IN-CHIEF anna traverse EXECUTIVE EDITOR michael finger

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Memphis Magazine's

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FACE

STAFF WRITERS michael donahue, alex greene,

THE 2025

chris mccoy EDITORIAL INTERN jadyn cerna

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ORIENTAL RUGS

CONTRIBUTORS jesse davis,

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CREATIVE DIRECTOR brian groppe ADVERTISING ART DIRECTOR christopher myers GRAPHIC DESIGNER neil williams PHOTOGRAPHERS

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PUBLISHER EMERITUS kenneth neill

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CORRECTION: In our December "Books" column, we said that author Elaine Blanchard was a pastor of First Congregational Church in Cooper-Young. For the past eight years, she has been the pastor of First Christian Church in Union City, Tennessee, which is a Disciples of Christ congregation. We apologize for the error.

member: City and Regional Magazine Association member: Circulation Verification Council 8 • MEMPHISMAGA ZINE.COM • JANUARY 2026

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L E T T E R

F R O M

T H E

E D ITO R

The Best Years of Our Lives?!

BY ANNA TRAVERSE

M

agazine publishing is not for the faint of heart. The future is a carefully choreographed dance up to a cliff ’s edge — lots of detailed planning, no guarantees, and a never-not-present awareness of an abyss (but my, what a view!). The past is a haze — we’re so focused on the next issue, and the one after, that we don’t spend too much time with the work already completed.

When we make mistakes, or simply fall short of what might have been, the evidence is right there for all the world to see. When a story really sings, or a cover image leaves an impression, we’re already thinking about the words and photos and ideas to come.

In spite of the odds against us, this year, 2026, Memphis Magazine turns 50. Since April 1976, we have been bringing you a monthly dose of culture, ideas, profiles, reflections, curiosities, and appreciation for the city whose name we wear proudly. Throughout the coming months, you’ll notice a special anniversary logo on our cover, and nods to the past within our pages.

Looking back through our archives, it becomes apparent that the people creating this magazine were always a little gobsmacked to keep getting to do what we do. In April 1977, the cover was emblazoned with a banner: “1st Anniversary Issue!” Wow, one whole year! April 1978: “2nd Anniversary Issue!” Oh my gosh, we’re still here?! We kept our cool about the anniversary business when we turned 3 and 4.

We published in April 1981 what might still be my favorite of our anniversary issues, because it is the most ridiculous: There’s a birthday cake, a party hat, and a headline that reads: “The Best Years of Our Lives?! FIFTH ANNIVERSARY ISSUE!” This is not the behavior of a magazine that expects to see its tenth birthday, let alone its fiftieth.

But make it to ten we did — although, perplexingly, at ten, a very solid and even popular round number, we did not mark the occasion. The cover of the April 1986 issue makes absolutely no mention of any anniversary.

We were back at it by the time we turned 15, though, when we did publish an anniversary issue. (Who skips 10 and celebrates 15? English majors, that’s who.) We managed to mark the round numbers

of 20, 25, 30, 35, 40, and even 45, though by then there was no birthday cake, and no mention of “the best years of our lives.”

As we enter the year of our 50th anniversary, we have been leafing through our voluminous archives like they’re family photo albums. We’ve been looking for clues about ourselves, about our own DNA — the questions that have motivated us over the decades, the commitment that has kept us striving to produce more and more words and pictures about the city that inspires us.

Any time I open one of our many bound collections of past issues, surprises await.

We’ve published thoughtful, deeply researched, 10,000-word stories about serious topics confronting Memphis. And we’ve put ladies in bikinis on our cover. More than once. We’ll be revisiting select moments from the past 50 years over the course of 2026 (but I think we’ll leave the swimsuit photos in the past!).

To begin, we took inspiration from a cover story published in 1982, called “The Immigrants.”

For that piece, our writers spoke with people whose immigration journeys had brought them to Memphis — and sought to understand the complexities of these people’s experiences. Now, with immigration again in the headlines, we have updated and added to the account, speaking to several of the families originally interviewed in 1982 and including new names and faces, too. The questions may be similar, but the context and the answers have shifted, evolved.

A central goal of this magazine is to reflect Memphis’ culture — often in celebration, occasionally in bafflement, and always with authenticity. Thank you for sharing our fascination with this place we call home. Thank you for reading and thinking and questioning alongside us for the past five decades. We’re excited to spend the year looking back and looking ahead. Our April magazine will be the anniversary issue, but you’ll notice smaller 50threlated moments all year.

In the meantime, happy new year and happy reading.

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RAISE A GLASS TO

Unforgettable Moments

OLDDOMINICK.COM/SPECIAL-EVENTS

PHOTO BY ROB AND DEANNA PHOTOGRAPHY

Every HERO

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needs a GUIDE. memphisparent.com

OUT AND ABOUT IN MEMPHIS

JANUARY 2026 COMPILED BY ABIGAIL MORICI

THE KLEZMATICS

MEET THE AUTHOR: ALICE FAYE DUNCAN

LANTERN FESTIVAL The inaugural Lantern Festival promises a one-of-a-kind holiday light experience, featuring more than 60 larger-than-life illuminated fixtures. MEMPHIS ZOO, SELECT NIGHTS THROUGH FEBRUARY 1 AUTOZONE LIBERTY BOWL The University of Cincinnati battles the U.S. Naval Academy in this annual event. SIMMONS BANK LIBERTY STADIUM, JANUARY 2 MEMPHIS GRIZZLIES BASKETBALL Jan. 6 vs. San Antonio, Jan. 7 vs. Phoenix, Jan. 9 vs. Oklahoma City, Jan. 11 vs.

Brooklyn, Jan. 18 vs. Orlando, Jan. 21 vs. Atlanta, Jan. 23 vs. New Orleans, Jan. 25 vs. Denver, Jan. 28 vs.

Charlotte, Jan. 31 vs. Minnesota. FEDEXFORUM SEX/WORK A 30-year-old virgin, an escort, an aging conservative news anchor, and a stripper all desperately pursue what it means to be a woman on their own terms. PLAYHOUSE ON THE SQUARE, JANUARY 9-25 THE MAGIC OF MOTOWN Get ready for a night packed with Motown’s biggest hits and unforgettable energy. CANNON CENTER FOR THE PERFORMING ARTS, JANUARY 10, 7:30 P.M.

“ROGER ALLEN CLEAVES: A WORLD ON FIRE” Memphian Roger Allan Cleaves explores community, immigration, and celebratory rituals. DIXON GALLERY & GARDENS, JANUARY 11–APRIL 12

MEMPHIS TIGERS BASKETBALL Jan. 14 vs. Temple, Jan. 18 vs. UTSA, Jan. 29 vs. FAU. FEDEXFORUM MEMPHIS SONGWRITERS SERIES HOSTED BY MARK EDGAR STUART Celebrate the art of songwriting and the inspiration behind the music. HALLORAN CENTRE, JANUARY 15, 7 P.M.

THE SCIENCE OF BEER Explore Memphis’ vibrant craft beer scene with tastings from local breweries, the best food in the city, and a night of fun. PINK PALACE MUSEUM & MANSION, JANUARY 16, 6:30 P.M.

THE OUTSIDERS

THE LINDA RONSTADT EXPERIENCE Vocal powerhouse Tristan McIntosh’s stunning portrayal of Linda Ronstadt in the prime of her career. BARTLETT PERFORMING ARTS & CONFERENCE CENTER, JANUARY 16–27

MEMPHIS MUSIC HISTORY: A PRESENTATION Hear about a Big Band legend, blues singers, horn players, producers, and many more individuals who captivated the world with their original Memphis sound. ELMWOOD CEMETERY, JANUARY 17, 1 P.M.

THE OUTSIDERS A story of friendship, family, and belonging, with the realization that there is still “lots of good in the world.” ORPHEUM THEATRE, JANUARY 20–25 THE KLEZMATICS Presenting a pioneer of klezmer revival. BUCKMAN ARTS CENTER, JANUARY 22, 7 P.M. ALANIS MORISETTE’S JAGGED LITTLE PILL: THE MUSICAL A musical inspired by Alanis Morisette’s classic 1995 album. PLAYHOUSE ON THE SQUARE, JANUARY 23–FEBRUARY 22 ALWAYS A BRIDESMAID Four friends keep their high school promise to be in one another’s weddings. THEATRE MEMPHIS, JANUARY 23–FEBRUARY 8 DON WAS & THE PAN-DETROIT ENSEMBLE A concert from jazz to funk and everything in between.

MEMPHIS ZOO LANTERN FESTIVAL

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GERMANTOWN PERFORMING ARTS CENTER, JANUARY 23, 8 P.M.

PHOTOGRAPHY CREDITS: KLEZMATICS BY ADRIAN BUCKMASTER; OUTSIDERS BY MATTHEW MURPHY; OTHERS PROVIDED BY THE EVENTS

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THE BARBER OF SEVILLE Opera Memphis performs one of the most justifiably beloved operas of all time. SCHEIDT FAMILY PERFORMING ARTS CENTER, JANUARY 23–24

WENDY MOTEN Wendy Moten can do it all, no matter the genre. BARTLETT PERFORMING ARTS & CONFERENCE CENTER, JANUARY 24, 7:30 P.M.

HARLEM GLOBETROTTERS The world-famous basketball wizards return to Southaven for their centennial season. LANDERS CENTER, JANUARY 25, 3 P.M.

“BLACK ARTISTS IN AMERICA: FROM THE BICENTENNIAL TO SEPTEMBER 11” The final installment of the Dixon’s “Black Artists in America” series explores the dynamic coexistence and interplay of artistic styles and viewpoints during the last quarter of the 20th century. DIXON GALLERY & GARDENS, JANUARY 25–MARCH 29

DIXON ANNIVERSARY CELEBRATION Cake and special activities help the Dixon celebrate 50 years as one of our city’s cultural jewels. DIXON GALLERY & GARDENS, JANUARY 25, 1–5 P.M.

VIJAY GUPTA Violinist and social justice advocate Vijay Gupta makes his Iris debut. GERMANTOWN PERFORMING ARTS CENTER, JANUARY 29, 7 P.M.

SAVANNAH S. MILLER’S THE HOUSE The winner of Season 54’s Teresa Jordan Emerging Local Playwright Competition examines the Latinx identity in the U.S. GERMANTOWN COMMUNITY THEATRE, JANUARY 29–FEBRUARY 1

DREAMGIRLS Follow an all-girl Motown singing group on the path from obscurity to superstardom. HATTILOO THEATRE, JANUARY 30–MARCH 8 LIVE RICH DIE POOR, ZORA AWAKENING Experience a soul-stirring theatrical journey through the life, wit, and wisdom of Zora Neale Hurston. HALLORAN CENTRE, JANUARY 30, 7:30 P.M.

JOB A psychological thriller. PLAYHOUSE ON THE SQUARE, JANUARY 30–FEBRUARY 15

THE TAMING OF THE SHREW Shakespeare’s comedy takes to the radio during WWII. TENNESSEE SHAKESPEARE COMPANY, JANUARY 30–FEBRUARY 15

MEET THE AUTHOR: ALICE FAYE DUNCAN Novel welcomes Alice Faye Duncan to celebrate the release of her new book, Blues Boy: The B.B. King Story. NOVEL, JANUARY 31, 2 P.M.

BRAHMS SYMPHONY NO. 4 AND TRUMPET VIRTUOSO A profound and majestic work, with a showcase for the trumpet. CANNON CENTER FOR THE PERFORMING ARTS, JANUARY 31, 7:30 P.M. | SCHEIDT FAMILY PERFORMING ARTS CENTER, FEBRUARY 1, 2:30 P.M.

WITHERS TO WONDER — CELEBRATING THE SONGS OF BILL WITHERS AND STEVIE WONDER Featuring Take 6, Nnenna Freelon, and Clint Holmes. GERMANTOWN PERFORMING ARTS CENTER, JANUARY 31, 8 P.M.

To suggest an event for future editions of Out and About, email ABIGAIL@MEMPHISMAGAZINE.COM.

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J A N U A R Y 2 0 2 6 • M E M P H I S M A G A Z I N E . C O M • 13

C L AS S I C

D I N I N G

Brooklyn Bridge

Diners can enjoy an authentic Italian dining experience in the heart of East Memphis.

BY MICHAEL DONAHUE

Louis, Angela, Anthony, and Dominic Correale in front of a portrait of Louis’ mother, Bridgette Correale.

M

y first visit to Brooklyn Bridge Italian Restaurant was probably around the time it moved to its second location at Kirby and Poplar in the late 1980s. But it would take nearly 40 more years for me to learn the real meaning of the name.

I thought it was named after the suspension bridge between Manhattan and Brooklyn, New York. But, no, says owner Louis Correale. “Brooklyn Bridge” was named after his mother, the late Bridgette Correale, who was from Brooklyn. “They used to call her ‘The Bridge from Brooklyn,’” Louis says.

Bridgette and her husband, Vincent, opened their first restaurant in Memphis in 1985; Louis says it was her mother’s dream.

His parents had moved here from the little town of Dallas, Pennsylvania, after his father was offered a job with Donruss, a company best known for making Super Bubble chewing gum.

Louis, who had moved west and was the store manager of Sbarro Pizzeria on the Las Vegas Strip, got a phone call from his dad one day. He said, “Hey, they want to transfer me to Chicago and I don’t want to leave Memphis. I love Memphis.’”

So, Vincent and Bridgette decided to stay here and open a restaurant. After all, Bridgette

had dining experience. “She managed five Mark II restaurants [a regional chain] in northeastern Pennsylvania,” says Louis.

The Correales first opened “Brooklyn Bridge Italian Eatery” at Covington Pike and Stage Road. Louis soon moved back home to help, along with his brother George and sister Adele.

“Within a year,” he says, “they found the East Memphis location, where we are now. It was closer to home, and they just felt it was going to be a great area, with offices all around.”

For the new location, Bridgette went for the “outdoor Italian-style cafe” look with Cinzano umbrellas at each table. His dad, who did the ordering, was “the brains behind the operation.” And his mother ran the front-of-house.

The food was prepared from passed-down family recipes. Louis remembers, “We used to come in the morning, do prep, and serve lunch. And then we’d go fall asleep in our car for a couple of hours and come back and serve dinner.”

Vincent retired last summer,

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from calling her on the phone for news when I was a reporter.

I still recall her sense of humor, her down-to-earth personality, and her strong Brooklyn accent.

Brooklyn Bridge is now a staple at Poplar Avenue and Kirby Parkway. The interior features latticed wood ceilings with bunches of artificial grapes hanging down. Family photos, murals, and stained-glass windows are sprinkled about. A framed violin from a concert featuring “The Three Tenors” (Luciano Pavarotti, Placido Domingo, and Jose Carreras) hangs on one wall.

Servers dash out of the kitchen so Louis and his wife, Angela, carrying trays with plates of and their three children, Vinlasagna, the restaurant’s most cent Jr., Anthony, and Dompopular dish, and numerous other inic, are now the owners. items from the extensive menu.

He met his wife, Angela (née The restaurant expanded in the Frulla), at Our Lady of Permid ’90s; in 1997, they added their petual Help Catholic Church. popular “Good Fellas Lounge.”

She went to work as a server at Some Brooklyn Bridge employBrooklyn Bridge in 1987, and ees, including Chef Barry Sidie, they married two years later. have worked at the restaurant The restaurant was a hit right for decades, Louis says. away, Louis says, even among Louis left the restaurant in transplanted New Yorkers. “They 1997 to pursue other careers, but found a restaurant that was returned after his father retired authentic. It really and truly was in August 2025. In the meantime, the closest thing to Italy that they he and his wife had opened had in Memphis. And they loved Correale Builders and Realtors. my mother. Everybody loved how she would greet guests at the door. He had also joined the Germantown Fire Department, where Always a big hug and a smile.” he rose to the rank of battalion She was that way with the chief before retiring in 2018. family, too. “Until she got mad Bridgette died in 2012, at you,” he says. “Then you had and Louis remembers that to duck because something “over a thousand people was flying in your direction.” were at her funeral.”

Bridgette, who had earlier Her spirit lives on. In addition worked for the Dallas Post in Pennto adding more cocktails and sylvania, began doing Brooklyn menu items, the Correales have Bridge commercials for Memphis radio stations. “She was well-known big plans for Brooklyn Bridge.

“We’re going to renovate, expand for her accent,” Angela says. “She the bar, and redo both dining never lost her New York accent.” rooms,” says Louis. “Just a freshShe also authored two cooken-up with an updated look. But books: Eat and Laugh with the still keeping that Tuscan feel.”

Correales of the Brooklyn Bridge Italian Restaurant and Did You Eat? I remember Bridgette fondly Brooklyn Bridge Italian Restaurant, from my visits to the restaurant or 1779 Kirby Parkway, Suite 5 TOP LEFT PHOTOGRAPH BY MICHAEL DONAHUE; AUTHOR PHOTOGRAPH BY ANTHONY CORREALE

12/11/25 9:46 AM

Looks like hell.

Tastes like heaven.

Just don’t eat the shucks.

The Hot Tamale Capital of the World invites you to enjoy an eclectic collection of events and entertaining stops. » FEBRUARY « Mississippi River Marathon

» JULY « WWISCAA Food Festival

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Lake Washington’s “Straight Off The Lake” Music Festival Snake Grabbin’ Rodeo

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» SEPTEMBER « Delta Blues & Heritage Festival deltabluesms.org

Gumbo Nationals

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Monuments on Main Street Historic Greenville Cemetery Tour deltacenterstage.org/events

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» NOVEMBER « Roll’n on the River Car Show facebook.com/redwinecarshow

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AS K

VA N C E

Ruth Welting

Our history expert solves local mysteries: who, what, when, where, why, and why not. Well, sometimes.

BY VANCE L AUDERDALE

DEAR VANCE: Whatever became of the famous Memphis opera star,

Ruth Welting? — J.P., GERMANTOWN. DEAR J.P.: Your question makes

me appreciate the magic in our city that has produced so many musical legends in rock-and-roll, soul, gospel, and yes — opera. Just consider the number of Memphis women who have performed with companies around the world — Mignon Dunn, Marguerite Piazza, Gail Robinson, Patricia Welting (Ruth’s older sister), and more recently, Kallen Esperian. I remember their

names easily. Over the years, each of these singers performed at the Holiday Extravaganza in the Lauderdale Ballroom, and I often accompanied them on kettledrum and oboe, until they demanded I stop.

Born here in 1948, Ruth Lynn Welting grew up at 3651 Barron, a small house close to the Sherwood Forest neighborhood.

Her father, William Welting Jr. ran a successful commercial air-conditioning business, and

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her mother, Mary, had an even harder job: running a household that would eventually include four daughters.

Ruth attended Messick High School, her considerable talents evident at an early age. She performed in school plays, notably the 1965 holiday presentation of The Sound of Music, where she had the leading role of Maria. That year, she was also the grand-prize winner of the Mid-South Fair’s talent show, and the society pages of The Commercial Appeal often mentioned her singing at friends’ weddings, or performing for such diverse groups as Brooks Memorial Art Gallery, Memphis Better Films Council, Beethoven Club, Lausanne Mother’s Club, Tuesday Study Club, and Les Passees. That summer, she was the featured soloist at a Labor Day concert at the Overton Park Shell.

Ruth didn’t confine her talents to Memphis, in 1966 performing with the St. Louis Municipal Opera in The Student Prince. The opening-night show attracted more than 10,000, and a reviewer noted that “the petite Memphis soprano was well-received, and her voice was strong and clear even when she was the only woman on stage with 50 male performers.”

In 1967, she enrolled in the music department at Memphis State University. Once again she stood out in the school’s opera company and became a principal with the Memphis Opera Theatre, appearing before soldout crowds at Ellis Auditorium.

Ruth’s big break came in 1968.

Only 18 years old, she qualified as a coloratura soprano with the New York Metropolitan Opera and a few weeks later won the group’s Mid-South regional auditions. The Commercial Appeal noted that Ruth “was following

in the footsteps of her older sister, Patricia,” who won the regional in 1962 and later joined the Met. “Patsy’s triumphs bespoke well for the community. Ruth has also underlined the cultural tempo. But what they really did was to put the Welting name into the musical history of Memphis.”

Ruth left our city that year to receive coaching for the Met’s semi-final auditions, and then the nationals. As you’ve gathered by now, it’s not easy to join this elite organization. One wonders how much coaching she needed, because the March 30, 1968, Commercial Appeal headline was “Ruth Welting Dazzles Opera Judges.” Performing as Olympia, a wind-up mechanical doll from The Tales of Hoffman, she drew “the loudest bravos of the day ringing out for the petite brunette coloratura, the youngest of the finalists and looking every day of it in a baby pink dress.” It seems the word “petite” would follow her throughout her career, and after another round of auditions, she accepted a position with the Metropolitan Studio, a “training company” for the Met. It’s almost impossible to keep track of her burgeoning career.

While all this was going on, Ruth signed a contract with the American Opera Center, a division of the famous Julliard School of Music in New York City. Somehow, she also found time to journey to Rome for several months, where “the petite Memphis soprano” (there’s that word again) studied under Luigi Ricci, one of the famous teachers at La Scala, the world-famous opera company.

By 1971, newspapers here reported that Ruth “has chalked up her New York City Opera debut in Mozart’s Abduction from the Seraglio in Lincoln Center” in

PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY COLUMBIA ARTISTS MANAGEMENT, INC.

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addition to “a tidy repertoire of other roles.” She also renewed her contract with Julliard. Curiously, reporters still described her as “a Memphis State sophomore,” even though she left MSU to spend all her time on stage in other cities. After her performance in A Masked Ball with the New York City Opera, The New York Times praised her as “a child-sized soprano whose voice is already much too big to ride half-fare, and is probably still growing.”

Readers, I could easily fill the rest of this column with a long list of Ruth’s performances over the next decade. Instead, I’ll jump ahead and reference a Commercial Appeal story from 1977. Headlined “Busy Soprano ‘Rocks’ in Her Hometown,” columnist Alice Fulbright wrote, “Former Memphian Ruth Welting, a coloratura soprano who has made the big time in opera, has been in her hometown for a week. ‘I’m here to study, have a bit of fun, and just rock on this porch,’” she told the reporter, from the Germantown home of Jane Robertson, her former voice teacher.

She had certainly been busy.

She stopped in London long enough to record Mignon for Columbia Records. Somewhere along the way, she also married Edo de Waart, the music director of the Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra. The couple maintained homes in the Netherlands and California.

During this interview with Fulbright, “the diminutive 28-year-old soprano, dressed in a bright blue housecoat,” mentioned that the very next day she would be performing at the Kennedy Center, and four nights later would sing with the National Symphony Orchestra, with additional appearances coming up soon in

Amsterdam, San Francisco, and New York City.

According to Fulbright, “Ms. Welting made opera history in The Ballad of Baby Doe right after her marriage. The performance was broadcast live from Lincoln Center and presented a major breakthrough in live televising of the performing arts.”

For the next year, Ruth said, “I’ll record Massenet’s Cinderella in London. I’ll go to Dallas and then I’ll be in New York to do Baby Doe for the New York City Opera and Ariadne at the Met.” Although she never became an official cast member of the Met, she was a featured performer there many times over her career.

All this touring sounds tiresome (to me, anyway), but she insisted, “I’m devoted to my singing, and I’m young and able to do it well now. I still have so much to learn.” She admitted, “There’ll be no children for us right now. I don’t want to be more divided than I am between marriage and career. It’s hard to be separated so much from Edo [and] our design for living isn’t perfect. But that’s the way life is.”

Over the next several years, it seems Ruth never stopped working. Even after she broke her foot after a tumble from the stage at the Kennedy Center, that didn’t slow her down.

Wearing a cast, she performed with the Hawaii Opera Theater, Dallas Civic Opera, San Francisco Opera, and the Greater Miami Opera. She returned to Memphis (briefly) where she kicked off the inaugural concert series at Lindenwood Christian Church. A newspaper reviewer wrote: “Miss Welting sang throughout with brilliance, perfect control, and dazzling vocal production. Her dramatic projection and enrichment of each

PHOTOGRAPH BY MILTON FEINBERG / OPERA COMPANY OF BOSTON

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Welting in a 1984 production of The Tales of Hoffman with the Opera Company of Boston. selection were remarkable.”

And then, after all this success, came tragedy. In 1986, older sister Patricia, whose career Ruth had mirrored, was murdered. She had been teaching music in Fresno, California.

Ruth abruptly stopped performing as she tried to cope with this great loss. Afterwards, a friend told The Commercial Appeal that for almost three years afterwards “she lived a quiet, religious life in Maine,” no longer married to Edo. In November 1989, her many fans were surely pleased to read “Met Welcomes Miss Welting’s Return,” performing in The Tales of Hoffman as Olympia, the mechanical doll that was one of her signature roles. Noting her “comeback,” local reviewer Whitney Smith observed, “At 40, Welting retains enough command over Olympia’s highpitched tessitura and menacing character to earn comforting reviews.” The New York Times said she “can pipe impressively above high C.” Still living in Maine, Ruth

signed on for a dozen performances with the Met for its 1991-92 season. Shortly after the last show, however, health problems forced her to retire, and she moved to Fletcher, North Carolina, just outside Asheville. She passed away there in 1999 at age 51.

The “petite coloratura” was laid to rest with the rest of her family in Pleasant Hill Cemetery, outside the Brunswick community in north Shelby County. Ruth Welting’s simple tombstone makes no mention of her international stardom.

Musical notes carved into a top corner are the only clue that a remarkably talented singer is buried here.

Got a question for Vance?

EMAIL: askvance@memphismagazine.com MAIL: Vance Lauderdale,

Memphis Magazine, P.O. Box 1738, Memphis, TN 38101 ONLINE: memphismagazine.com/ask-vance Or visit him on Facebook.

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B O O KS

About Mark Mayer

About, Above, Around: Stories uses prepositions to frame moments of change, discovery, and dissolution, creating a dazzling glimpse into its characters’ literary lives.

BY JESSE DAVIS

“ Grammar is a piano I play by ear.”

— JOAN DIDION

W

hat is “up”? A preposition. What is a preposition? A part of speech, often explained to elementary-school students as “anything a frog can do to a log.” Prepositions describe the relation of a noun to time and space — the book on the shelf, the moment after the action.

Though they are necessary for (there’s another one!) any attempt at descriptive language, as elements of a sentence go, they are often overlooked. The nouns are the subjects and objects, the protagonist, as it were, of the sentence; the verbs convey the action. They make things happen. Perhaps, though, as a new book contends, prepositions are the unsung heroes of our language.

In About, Above, Around: Stories (Texas Review Press), the new short-story collection by author and former University of Memphis creative writing professor Mark Mayer, a preposition is more than a simple part of speech. Prepositions define relationships, and, as such, they are the key to describing our emotions. People are like haunted houses, Mayer contends, and their emotions are the spirits doing the haunting; the movement of emotions through a person can be best described with the use of prepositions. “The ghost went _____ the house,” Mayer writes. “When she flies through the television or smiles inside the mirror or hovers over the cradle, it’s the preposition as much as the verb that animates her apparition.”

On the surface, Mayer’s premise might sound quite academic — a short-story collection that is as exciting as a diagrammed sentence — but no: There’s visceral truth and feeling to be found here. Beyond (or throughout, beneath, behind) the postmodern approach, About, Above, Around is prose distilled to its most compelling moments.

A short story has no time or space for the slow build of a novel, and Mayer has expertly situated each of the entries in his new offering at the moment when a life is defined — when relationships crumble or solidify as a thing itself; when time runs out, in the days after a great loss. His new collection is more than a promising premise; it’s a page-turning examination of how people define themselves in relation to others, and though it is due for release this month, it has already caught the attention of the literary world.

About, Above, Around was selected by Iranian-American poet and novelist Kaveh Akbar, author of the New York Times-bestselling Martyr!, to win the 2024 George Garrett Fiction Prize. “About, Above, Around is thrillingly ambitious and deliciously readable, a remarkable vortex of place and mind and spirit illuminating how our lives are shaped, and how

we’re held within them,” Akbar wrote of the collection Mayer’s bona fides do not end there. Also in 2024, he was an artist-in-residence in our city’s own Crosstown Arts Artist Residency program, and his first novel, Aerialists (Bloomsbury), was shortlisted for the William Saroyan International Prize for Writing. He also was the recipient in 2024 of an Early Career Research Award from the University of Memphis. The awards, residencies, and book blurbs are icing on the cake, however.

About, Above, Around stands on its own merits.

WITHOUT

M

ayer measures mortality in bald spots, boxes of Christmas CDs donated to the Salvation Army, secondhand cookie-cutters, and smashed graham-cracker temples. In doing so, he makes the unknowable somewhat measurable. Under his careful tutelage, the reader understands that absence can be a thing itself, something weighty carried as an act of remembrance. The technique of writing about loss by writing about the thousand small ways it changes a life makes such an enormous change more immediate. Beyond the practical efficacy of Mayer’s approach, there exists also ways in which it forces him to convey his meaning by juxtaposition and subtle hints. As an added bonus, his economy of words also yields no end of equally gut-wrenching and witty turns of phrase.

“His wife had thought cremation would let him feel her presence anywhere, but she wasn’t in the poultry section,” Mayer writes in “Without.” In this story, the widower Victor’s grief “surrounded him on all sides, above, about, around.” His wife’s absence is with him in the grocery store, and it waits for him when he arrives home. For his readers, Mayer translates the feeling of loss, into the experience of cooking chicken for one instead of two, or the decision to box up and donate decorations instead of celebrating a holiday

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alone. From parents in rehab and missing limbs and grieving spouses, the author shows an overflow of emotion as changes in the way his characters inhabit their dramatically altered worlds.

“That was my mother’s question. What is this about? My mom didn’t insist on good behavior.

She insisted bad behavior be about something other than itself,” Mayer writes in “About II,” one of a series of “About” stories.

It’s as close as the author comes to telling the reader what his premise is all about, that as humans, our bodies are possessed by and then express emotions, often in ways that appear, at first glance, absurd.

can be evoked with little more than carefully chosen hues and swerves of shape.

The paintings separate sections of stories named after prepositions and presented alphabetically. With each painting and every preposition, the reader is made aware that they are glimpsing a whole in its constituent parts. These stories represent whole lives boiled down to their most defining moments, and the stories themselves are represented by words — “after,” “beyond,”

story acts as an excellent primer for the collection as a whole.

Prepositions, as a rule, are relational. They describe where an object exists in relation to another object. They showcase the pain of comparison, the so-called thief of joy.

“As” follows sisters Angelica Smarts, Ashleigh Smarts, and Amy Smarts, all of whom share initials that spell the titular preposition. Angelica is a middle child, and her place in the world is so often demarcated by

left: Jason Stopa, Exotic Motif, 2024, oil on canvas. right: Mark Mayer

CONSTRUCTION AND DECONSTRUCTION

A

BOUT,

ABOVE , AROUND is not only a collection of short stories. The book includes a series of reproductions of oilon-canvas paintings by Jason Stopa which complement Mayer’s work. The artist’s paintings are abstractly emotive and geometric, subtle creations crafted of colors and shapes. They recall that, at its most basic, the English language is little more than a collection of sounds represented by arrangements of a mere 26 characters. With those two-dozen characters, though, stories, wedding vows, eulogies, patriotic slogans, and more are made. Hearts can be stirred, lives joined or summed up, imaginations kindled with words made of those same letters arranged and rearranged. Similarly, emotions PHOTOGRAPHS COURTESY MARK MAYER

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“under” — which in turn define the ways Mayer’s characters relate to their partners and careers, parents and siblings, lovers and losses.

“If you wanted a non-zero vacation, you’d have to never reverse,” Mayer writes in “Aboard,” a story following recently retired high school physics teacher Mr. Memelowski. “It depended on the frame of reference,” he continues. “If your frame of reference was the Milky Way, then even standing over the white board for 37 years was a dizzy forward journey.”

As Mr. Memelowski attempts to defend his life and career by proving he has gone somewhere, achieved something lasting, his

her position to others — as tall as, as bright as, as quick as — that for her it is a relief to spend the evening of her birthday alone.

50 WAYS TO BE AROUND EACH OTHER

W

ith 50 prepositions to explore, Mayer enjoys the room to be ambitious in his storytelling. Though there are occasionally shades of George Saunders or Kurt Vonnegut in the more experimental short stories, Mayer’s voice remains distinctly his own.

“Around” is experimental, with some text written as though in a screenplay, other sections ringing around an undisclosed center pole. “Like” follows a 19-year-old

who feels alien, or almost like a human teenager, prompting the question: Is the sense of alienation a universal feeling?

In “At,” Mogo the comic book writer pays an “unscrupulous professor” to install in his brain a computer chip that causes dull thought to ignite pain. Mogo then begins his Golden Era by creating the Auditor, a withered wooden man driven to name and number everything in the world, and in so doing, to deny the existence of all the world’s mystery and magic. That is, of course, before Mogo is himself driven insane by his unceasing quest for novelty and excitement, his inability to enjoy the mundane repetition that makes up most of life’s scenes.

Most of the stories in Mayer’s collection, however, explore those small but significant personal moments of which a life is made. In “Before,” Marya watches the sunset while dangling her legs over the tailgate of a blue pickup truck on Thunkett Beach, balanced on a pale, precarious line of adolescence between childhood and adulthood. “Down” explores depression, riffing on the idea of someone feeling down, of living in a “bathtub that goes all the way down,” a smooth-sided, unclimbable well.

“Married means you are the primary witness to your husband’s story. You are with him through it, whatever bizarre or tragic twists it may take. It is a lot to ask,” Mayer writes in “With,” a story about husbands Maddock and León. The author views the men’s story through the lens of differing literary tastes, parenting duties, and the warp and weft of romance after they have adopted a child. It is intimate, emotional, at times absurd, and unquestionably beautiful.

From the symmetry of soulmates to string theory to Gertrude Stein’s steam-powered emotions, Mayer’s About, Above, Around justifies its premise by excelling at conjuring the feelings of love and loss, and the myriad emotional shades in between.

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C I T Y

J O U R N A L

Shelby County Needs a New Jail And everyone agrees on where it should go: NIMBY (“Not in My Backyard.”)

BY TOM JONES

Paint and polish can only gloss over the problems of the Shelby County Jail, which is housed in an antiquated building unfit for its present use.

T

hat’s what I wrote for a front-page story in the Memphis Press-Scimitar on July 19, 1975.

It summed up my almost-three-hour, unannounced tour of every floor and cell block in the old Shelby County Jail at 150 Washington Avenue.

The conditions of the jail were unsurprising. They had been described in a two-week federal court trial, and the facility’s squalor and oppressive atmosphere suggested the trial testimony was an understatement.

The 1975 article’s opening sentence remains accurate today in describing the Shelby County Jail. Despite persistent calls for improvements and highly critical inspections since at least 2017, the jail at 201 Poplar remains a building unfit for its present use.

The Criminal Justice Center, which includes the county jail and various courts, opened in June 21, 1977, at a cost of $58 million. That’s the equivalent of $310 million today; however, today’s projected cost for a replacement, called the “worst case” by the sheriff ’s department, is a staggering $1.4 billion.

The jail was built for 2,400 men inmates and its daily population was already edging toward 3,000, even before bookings from the federal agencies’ saturation campaign in Memphis were added this fall. It means the overcrowded Shelby County Jail now houses more people than prison systems in nine states.

The impact of the demanding 24/7 operation and neglectful maintenance are obvious: The building is functionally obsolete, plagued by mechanical

failures, broken elevators, leaky ceilings, and outdated security systems. Its flawed design — by an architect who had never designed a jail — and the present conditions defy retrofitting it to twenty-first-century safety, health, and accessibility standards.

What is needed now is a twenty-first-century jail rather than a twentieth-century warehouse.

Building a new jail, while it is the right decision, is not the first or only requirement for progress.

The most immediate and pressing need is to change the jail’s culture.

The process of creating political consensus, deciding on a new location, developing the funding plan, and constructing a new facility will take five to 10 years.

As legendary management consultant Peter Drucker said, “Culture eats strategy for breakfast.” In other words, the positive impact of a new jail will be undercut unless the jail culture — its collective attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors — is not corrected.

Sheriff ’s department officials deliver justifications and often throw up their hands as if cultural change is beyond the realm of possibility; however, it’s been done before. Mark Luttrell did it.

When Luttrell was elected sheriff in 2002, he inherited a federal class-action lawsuit that had produced scathing rulings by judges, appointment of a special

master to oversee jail operations, and even a threat by the federal government to intervene. By 2005, the federal judge removed the contempt ruling and praised Luttrell’s 14-point plan to improve the culture and operations.

Since the election in 2018 of Sheriff Floyd Bonner Jr., the facility has declined starkly, with some officials identifying the problems there as human-rights issues. After all, it is arguably the deadliest jail in the U.S. Since 2019, 65 inmates have died there, including four in just one week earlier this year.

Meanwhile, the average wait time for bookings is roughly 60 to 72 hours, and jail overcrowding contributes to the likelihood of nonviolent defendants returning to the community and reoffending.

So far, the political back-andforth has been about the location of a new jail rather than about reimagining how it can better reflect values like safety and respect for human dignity — and how it can better contribute to fighting crime. The decision isn’t just about expanding incarceration, but about acting on the commitment to replace a facility unfit for human beings.

So far, the only general consensus is that a new jail is needed.

There is less discussion about how the design must integrate better medical and mental health units, GED classrooms, job training, better family visitation areas, and new technology capable of preventing administration errors, speeding up bookings, and reducing court delays.

Three hard realities face county government: 1) If a new jail is merely a monument to incarceration and keeps the same culture, the risk is that it replicates the same harm on a larger scale; 2) Location matters politically and culturally, and putting a large-scale facility in neighborhoods already dealing

with disinvestment can’t be the answer; and 3) The fiscal math is brutal. If the cost of $1.4 billion is borne by county government, annual bond payments could be $100 million a year, the equivalent of 44 cents in property taxes.

Already, a plan by a commercial real estate executive for a campus on the former Firestone plant went down in flames when the New Chicago neighborhood rose up in opposition, citing the lack of community input from the very community that would be impacted.

Alternate locations will be hard to find, especially considering two equally bad ideas have surfaced: building a new jail next to Shelby Farms Park, or expanding the existing downtown jail. At the Shelby Farms-adjacent property, a jail would inject police sirens, traffic snarls, and more into our community’s largest locally owned park.

At the downtown site, expanding the jail defies logic. Its monolithic fortress architecture and the razor-wired employee parking lot are visual blights on downtown, and expanding a jail with as many serious deficiencies as this one is an invitation for class action lawsuits.

The answer should be a more smartly designed jail that reduces violence, emphasizes mental health and crisis response units, upgrades technology, improves working conditions and training, transforms jail culture, upholds safety and humanity, and restores credibility to an institution that has lost the public’s confidence. But where?

Tom Jones is the principal of Smart City Consulting, which specializes in strategic communications, public policy development, and strategic planning.

He tends the 20-year-old Smart City Memphis blog and is an author with experience in local government.

He can be reached at tjones@ smartcityconsulting.com

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YOU AND IMPROVED MAKE 2026 A YEAR YOU LOOK BACK ON WITH A HEALTHY SMILE.

I

BY FR A NK MURTAUG H

like the 1st of January. Closing one 12-month book and opening another.

You might consider it part of a managing editor’s circulatory system: We exist to see a project finished — and another begun — smoothly. How can the next year be navigated smoothly? How will the next 12 months impact my health, and vice versa?

Let’s start with the basics. This column could begin and end with three words for any concept of “new you” one might entertain: diet, exercise, and sleep. If you’re not giving these elements of your life proper attention, the rest may as well be sugar in your coffee. Your taste buds may benefit, but don’t expect growth elsewhere.

Below are six proposals that stretch a bit from the Big Three, easy steps you might consider in shaping your own, brand-new 2026. As for “new you,” let’s scrap that. The current you is unique, and makes the world better. A healthier, happier you is the goal.

PHOTOGR APH BY FR ANK MURTAUGH

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9 0 1 H E A LT H ◗ Find a new “third place.” If you work from home, this would be a second place. The mind and body crave variety, particularly of the spacial sort. As comfy as your home, or even your office, may feel, a familiar destination will both stiff-arm monotony and actually make the comfy first/second places more so.

I’ve recently discovered the 2.25-mile promenade around Hyde Lake at Shelby Farms.

For a decade, my visits to Shelby Farms were for hiking trails and the delightfully huge no-leash dog park. But since my dog died last June, a walk around this particular body of water — ducks here, cranes there, a paddle-boarder in the distance — has been my tranquil place. It comes with free smiles and waves from others who appreciate a getaway so close to home. And that’s the point: We need getaways. Don’t wait for your next vacation to take one.

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◗ Establish an achievable goal. This doesn’t need to be “lose 20 pounds” or “run a 10K.” But we need markers to reach, to surpass even. If there’s a thick or dense book you’ve considered intimidating, make this the year you read it. How about dining at five local restaurants you’ve yet to visit? (Once you hit five, you’ll want to make it ten.) One of my favorite achievable goals: See a friend you haven’t seen in years. Nothing will make you feel younger, and nothing will make you feel more “new” than reconnecting with someone you befriended a life stage ago. If geographic distance is a factor, we have technology that will bring that friend into your living room.

Use that cell phone for some good. ◗ Come up with a meditation mantra. “I don’t have time to meditate!” Yes. You. Do. If there’s anything everyone could use in the year 2026, it’s some quiet time, minus all screens and distractions. Even if it’s merely 10 minutes of your day (or evening), letting your mind rest on purpose will benefit the rest of your body.

I suffer middle-of-the-night thought tornadoes. Head on pillow but wide awake, the darkness more ominous than when I turned off the lights. But I’m silencing these storms, in part through visualizing places that bring me joy, but especially with a mantra I repeat, silently (based on my favorite Hawaiian beach): Sand. Sea. Sky. Makua. Makua. The fact that I don’t remember when I fall back to sleep is part of the magic. Part of the effort.

Ours is a busy world. There is scrolling to do (and it will get done). Reward yourself with true “me time,” and create the, ahem, passwords to get there. ◗ Eliminate something from your diet, and add something new. Again, if you’re not paying attention to what you eat (fruits and veggies,

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I’m betting you have multiple items in your pantry or fridge that would qualify as indulgence. Just subtract one. And it doesn’t have to be forever. Try a month without your favorite potato chips, and see how much you miss them. Instead of cheese on your favorite cracker, try some flavored hummus. (I had to be convinced, and it’s a winner.) Dramatic diets are for infomercials. Modify is the operative word.

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◗ Commit to a daily activity. And I mean daily.

Two decades ago, I decided to do 31 push-ups every day. (My lucky number, not random.) These days, I’m up to 41 and while I don’t do them daily, they are part of a larger exercise routine that I would not have envisioned in 2005.

Walk (or run) a mile. Every day. No excuses.

Write in a journal. Read ten pages of that intimidating book. Eat something that grew on a bush or tree. Listen to a favorite (but different) song, and keep a tally of your 365-tune playlist for New Year’s Eve. Whether or not you consider yourself a Type A, your mind and body crave routine, recognizable behavior that serves as a reset on a busy day, or a booster for a quiet one. Consider your daily act a gift to yourself. And you’ll enjoy adding days to this streak of self-giving. Count them, because you’re worth it. ◗ Write a letter to someone you love. This will require research (a mailing address), tools (a pen and sheet of paper), and resources (a stamp). But it will be among the most worthwhile activities of your year.

There was a time, friends, when a human being would devote anywhere from ten minutes to a few hours entirely to another human being. Thoughts and observations, personal or profound, sometimes both. There was no aim for clicks or “likes.” This was the opposite of seeking a mass audience. The aim was to “influence” precisely one other person. This can still be done. Let someone know you’re thinking of them, and make this a mailbox surprise. It will be the most distinctive part of the recipient’s day. Instead of a “new you,” you’ve helped spark a “new them.” Two human beings will be better for it.

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In July 1982, Memphis Magazine published a cover story called “The Immigrants.” Writers Margaret Sacks and Fred Groskind interviewed dozens of people who had recently come to America from elsewhere — places like the Netherlands, Laos, England, India, and the Soviet Union. “Whether they arrived by supersonic jet or rickety sailboat,” wrote Sacks and Groskind, “all share certain common experiences: The initial effort to learn English; the struggle to find a job; daily culture shock; the difficulties of reconciling the joys of a rich, free country with the grief over the loss of one’s homeland; the inevitable confrontations with ignorance, prejudice, and narrow-mindedness.”

More than four decades later, we tracked down one of the families originally spotlighted in 1982. We wanted to know how the intervening decades had treated them. We also talked to several other families whose immigrant journeys brought them to Memphis more recently.

In a cultural moment charged with nationalism and nativism, we ask the same question posed on that 1982 cover: Is America still the land of opportunity? It’s not a yes or no question, but a topographical map of endless variety and detail built of individual stories. The families we talked to, who have made their lives in Memphis, shared with us their dreams and disappointments, their hopes and heartaches.

Here, then, is “The Immigrants: 2026” — a series of vignettes that show the increasingly complex experiences of newcomers to this country (and this city).

THE IMMIGRANTS B Y

C H R I S

M C C O Y

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The Vongprachanh family

The Noordermeer family

The Tejwani family

The Jakov Terk family (all photos from the 1982 article)

Catching up with the Terks

S

acks and Groskind profiled four immigrant families: The Vongprachanh family from Laos, the Noordermeer family from the Netherlands, the Tejwani family from India, and the Terk family from the Soviet Union. We wondered what happened to the four families in the decades since, but could find no trace of the Noordermeers or the Tejwanis.

A couple of people had fond memories of Khamsene Vongprachanh, who had worked tirelessly serving his fellow immigrants for Catholic Charities, but no one knew where he or his family had ended up.

Finally, we got a lucky break with one of the families.

The name Eugene Terk, which matched the name of the eight-year-old son of Jakov and Ina Terk from the original story, surfaced in a Facebook search. When we reached out to Eugene, he confirmed: Yes, that was his family. “We arrived in Memphis on November 15, 1979,” he says.

In 1982, the writers described Jakov Terk as “one of the more than 130 Russian Jewish emigrants who have arrived in Memphis during the past few years.”

“Americans don’t know how lucky they are,” Jakov told them. “Let them live one year in the Soviet Union, let them work one year there, let them stand in line

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for food from 6 in the morning until the store opens Meanwhile, Ina, a piano teacher, found work teaching at 8. Then they’ll understand how lucky they are,” said for the Jewish Community Center and Memphis State University, now the University of Memphis.

Jakov. “You must understand. I had a very good job.

Before I left, I was chief engineer in a huge company.

“I have a very fond memory of growing up in East It was for the children’s future. That was 80 percent of Memphis, and the friends I had there,” says Eugene. the reason we left.”

“I went to Ridgeway Elementary, starting in fourth “My family is Jewish, and my family essentially left grade, and then moving on to White Station Junior the Soviet Union — or left Russia — because of the High and High School, where I graduated. My brother discrimination that was rampant under the communist graduated from Ridgeway High School. We were sort system towards Jewish people,” says Eugene Terk toof the first wave of Russian families that immigrated day. “My parents did not believe that my brother and I to Memphis, and there was a continuing wave in the would have the same opportunities with the same sort years to follow. I remember a lot of large meals in my household with other Russian families who had made of doors open for us under communist Russia, that they the same transition.” would find here in the United States.”

Leningrad has a nice synagogue, Jakov Terk said, The family found success in Memphis, but they “but the government doesn’t like that people believe missed their home. “We had the best ballet and one of the best symphonies in the world,” said Jakov in 1982. in God. They won’t let you grow in your job if you are religious. It’s the same for Christians.”

“Leningrad [formerly Saint Petersburg] is In the Soviet Union, both emigration close to Paris in its architecture. It is the most cultured city in the Soviet Union.” and immigration were notoriously diffi“My parents did not cult. The Communist regime famously “And what about American culture?” built a wall across the heart of Europe the writers asked. believe we would to keep their populations in, and WestHe pointed to his TV: “There is the ern Europe out. But with the help of American culture.” have the same the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, the Eugene says his father moved on to Terks only waited two months after Jaother things after he started at Scheropportunities, with kov resigned his position in Leningrad, ing-Plough, working in property developnow Saint Petersburg, Russia. The society the same sort of doors ment for Fogelman, Burns & McDonnell placed immigrants according to where before starting his own general contractthey had the resources and living space ing firm, JT Construction Enterprises. open for us, under available. There was an opening in MemToward the end of his career, he was a consultant for the World Bank and phis, “So we had no choice,” said Jakov in communist Russia 1982. “All we knew about Memphis was USAID, overseeing construction projects Martin Luther King and Elvis.” that we would have in in former Russian Soviet states.

“My first memory is of the airplane Eugene graduated from high school in landing in New York, where we fi rst 1992 and left Memphis to pursue higher the United States.” came,” says Eugene, who was eight at the education. He now lives in New Orleans. time. “The Jewish Federation of Memphis He has a law degree, but currently works eugene terk sort of adopted our family, or at least put in “the software space” for a company together a series of other families and donations so called A-Line Technologies, where he is a VP of busiwhen we arrived, we had a furnished apartment. I went ness development and general counsel. His brother to school. My older brother went to high school. I think Michael graduated from Ridgeway and Vanderbilt, my parents spent the first three months doing English earned a Ph.D. in engineering, and for a time was a lessons because we did not speak English, other than professor. Now, he works in the private sector. my brother, who had taken it in school in the Soviet Jakov and Ina stayed in Memphis until 2010, when Union as a second language.” they retired to South Florida. Jakov passed away in While they were settling into their modest domicile, 2020.

Sheldon and Orma Cohen, two volunteers from the Did the gamble they took in immigrating to the Jewish Service Agency, helped them learn English and United States pay off ? adapt. “It was unbelievable, how the people welcomed “Absolutely, yes,” says Eugene. “I would say it has us,” said Jakov. “They didn’t have to do it. Memphis is been a very positive experience.” very special in this respect.”

When asked if his family has experienced antisemitism in America, Eugene says, “Sure — but I think it’s In early 1980, Jakov Terk got a job at Schering-Plough, a Memphis-based pharmaceutical company which is mild in comparison to what would’ve been if we had now a subsidiary of Merck. He said his position as a stayed in Russia.”

“Russia is like a clear drinking glass, through which designer in the firm’s small construction department “was a big step down,” but “I take it like it is … I’m like you see your neighbor,” said Jakov in 1982. “America a dog — I understand, but I cannot speak.” is like a silver chalice, in which you only see yourself.”

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The Immigrants [July 1982]

Editor’s Note: The following is excerpted from a cover story that ran in Memphis Magazine over four decades ago. Then as now, our goal was to show the human experiences of immigrants striving to make their way in this city — and making our community more abundant by their presence.

BY MARGARET SACKS AND FRED GROSKIND

W

hen Julio Siguier, a young Cuban refugee, first entered a Memphis supermarket and was told he could buy whatever he liked, he wept.

In Cuba, he explained, even when he’d had money, the shelves had been bare.

Shortly after a Russian Jewish immigrant in his mid-fifties had found a job at a local meat-packing plant, his employer called the coordinating program here with a problem: The man was toting around 300-pound carcasses, and his boss was worried that he’d injure himself.

Khaeng Lim, a 24-year-old Cambodian, got his first Memphis job doing landscaping work, but he came down sick from the cold winter weather which is so different from that in his native country. His father, a professional cook, can speak no English and has no job. The 12 people in the Lim family have been forced to leave their rented house to live in a dilapidated two-room apartment.

On first arriving in Memphis, Angela Harper, a secretary from Bournemouth, England, wondered whether Memphians lived in their cars.

“No one here walks anywhere,” she says. “I used to walk my daughter in her stroller every morning to buy a newspaper. If I saw one person, I was lucky. Sometimes I’d see a street vendor and he’d ask me, ‘Are you okay?

Did your car break down?’”

as market gardeners who sold fruit and vegetables from roadside wagons.

Since the First World War, Memphis, like other U.S. cities, has enjoyed a steady influx of foreign-born residents from all over the world. The most recent large migration to Memphis has been from Southeast Asia; today, there are more than 1,500 Indo-Chinese in the city.

In 1860, over one-third of the white Memphis population was of foreign

birth. Most numerous at the time were the 4,000 Irish workers, whose numbers were severely depleted in the yellow fever epidemics of the 1870s.

The second-largest immigrant group (numbering 1,500) was the Germans, who generally enjoyed wealth and status in Memphis and had the means to flee elsewhere during the epidemics, few to return.

Only after the turn of the century was there a resurgence of immigration to Memphis.

This time, most foreign-born Memphians were Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe, many of whom were traveling tradesmen whose market was the rural MidSouth population. The other large immigrant group was the Italians, many of them visible

The perceptions and problems of new immigrants to Memphis are as diverse as their countries of origin. But whether they arrived from the Netherlands by supersonic jet or from Cuba or Laos via rickety sailboat, all share certain common experiences: the initial effort to learn English; the struggle to find a job; daily culture shock; the difficulties of reconciling the joys of a rich, free country with the grief over the loss of one’s homeland; the inevitable confrontations with ignorance, prejudice, and narrowmindedness.

“I always tell my people, ‘Your first job is English,’” says Khamsene Vongprachanh,

a leader of Memphis’ Laotian community.

“I tell them to watch TV not only for cowboy [movies] but to learn English from Channel 10. I also ask them to listen to the radio, not for the music but for the intonation of American English, even if they don’t understand the words.”

Most Memphis im mig rants could sympathize with the Russian woman, just learning the language, who asked the butcher how “language” and “tongue” are the same word; or with her children, who thought that the opposite of “nobody” was “yesbody.”

Few Memphis employers will hire workers with whom they cannot directly communicate, so for most of the foreign-born in Memphis, the various language-class offerings here, which are said to be among the best in the country, are a necessity.

Even when they have overcome the language problem, the immigrants have no guarantee that they will find jobs in Memphis, especially during a recession. “My people want to stay in Memphis and are willing to take any job to support their families,” says Vongprachanh. Adds Paulette Coburn, coordinator of the Indo-Chinese refugee resettlement program at Catholic Charities: “These people do not take jobs away from the local population, because they do work that no one else wants, like janitorial or yard work.”

This willingness to work which most immigrants display sometimes confounds their American sponsors.

“We had a welder who worked on the barges in summer,” recalls Cindy Soloway, coordinator of the Russian refugee program of the Memphis Jewish Federation.

“He would get up at 4 a.m. and work till 12 at night.”

But willingness is not always enough. Cold winters and a cool economy are not the only difficulties foreign-born Memphians must face in the job market. Jacov Terk, for example, was a well-placed engineer in a large plant in his native Leningrad but was forced to take a minor position at Plough here.

“It was a big step down,” he says, laughing about it now. “But I understand.”

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“We Are the Blessing.”

M

“They sprayed us with water and soap, because we looked like we had malnutrition.

Dark, skinny, with lice. What is the smell of freedom? It's soap. Camay soap.” doan dinh

y parents, they were born in the more extreme. When you finished your high school, if you could not make it into a university, or have a job to north of Vietnam, in different cities, but in 1945,” says Doan Dinh. support the government, you would have to join the After decades of colonial rule by the French and then Army for three years. And my mom thought, oh, this is domination by the Empire of Japan, the Vietnamese, about your age, this is about your time now. She decided under the leadership of Communist revolutionary Ho for me to escape first.”

Chi Minh, took advantage of the end of World War II to Doan would leave Saigon — now called Ho Chi Minh declare independence. When the French tried to regain City — for a small fishing village on the coast. Eventupower, Ho’s cadres fought them off. The 1954 peace ally, he moved in with relatives on the coast and waited treaty split the country into North and South Vietnam for his chance. After half a year, the chance came. Doan — a settlement reminiscent of the dueling dynasties was crammed into the hold of a fishing boat where he and dozens of other refugees sat chest-deep in a toxic which had ruled the territory along the east coast of mixture of seawater and fuel oil for three days.

Indochina for centuries. Ho’s communists presided in Once they made it to the international waters of the the North; a republic, supported by Western countries, formed in the South.

South China Sea, “We saw many commercial ships Almost immediately, the two countries went to war. moving around, but only two ships stopped to try to North Vietnam was supported by the two Communist rescue us.”

The first was a passenger ship, but once the captain powers of Asia, the Soviet Union and China. South Vietnam was supported by the United States. By 1964, that saw that he didn’t have room for the crowds of refusupport included American troops. The Vietnam War gees on the fishing vessel, he sailed away. The second raged for a decade. Doan was the Libra, an Amerwas born into it, saying, “My ican-f lagged oil tanker bound for Hong Kong. father was in the Army in the South government.”

“They turned off the enAfter fighting in the Tet gine and our small fishing Offensive of 1968, Doan’s boat got close to them,” father moved the family to says Doan. “The captain Saigon. That’s where they ordered the sailors to were when the government lower the zigzag ladder of South Vietnam collapsed down. One sailor stood in April 1975. “We lost the at the end of the ladder war, right?” says Doan. and waited for the waves “Those who had the conto heave our boat up and pull us out, one by one.” nection with the U.S. government were able to evacAbout 90 refugees uate.” made it onto the decks of Milynh and Doan Dinh But the Dinhs were not the Libra that day. “They among those evacuated by the Americans. Doan was 12 sprayed us with water and soap,” says Doan, “because years old when the war ended. “I had to live five years we looked like [we had] malnutrition: Dark, skinny, under the Communists,” he says. “My parents explained and with lice. What is the smell of freedom? It’s soap.

Camay soap.” to me, ‘Don’t believe what they say, just see what they Milynh was another of the lucky ones. “In 1978, my actually do.’ … I can compare, say, about the freedom of speech, but people were oppressed. We cannot express mother led an escape,” she recalls. “The first attempt ourselves freely, and there’s no freedom of religion. If didn’t make it, because the boat got stuck.”

On the second attempt, about 75 people dodged piyou want to go to church, you have to go before the working hour, before 7 o’clock. … And we had to get rates to find a boat waiting offshore, but it was damaged in line to buy food; there wasn’t enough.” and struggled through the South China Sea. A storm threatened to capsize the ship, but they stayed afloat.

Former soldiers of the South were required to report Doan ended up in a refugee camp outside Nagasaki, to re-education camps. Doan’s father, a low-ranking Japan, for a year. His mother had sewn the gold from officer, went for a week. Other family members left for much longer. her wedding band into his shirt, so he could use the During this period, the newly united Vietnamese money to send a telegram to her when he was safe. Doan went to war with neighboring Cambodia, where an remembers “the most painful memory, the physical even more repressive Communist government had pain, or mental pain, I don’t wish anyone to experience, taken over: The Khmer Rouge. “My mom is the one who the pain of homesickness. The loneliness as a child made the decision for me to escape,” says Doan. “I’m the from family. That time you left, you don’t know when you come back.” oldest in the family. Vietnam was invading Cambodia at Milynh ended up in Malaysia. Eventually, both were that time, in 1978 because Pol Pot is a fanatic, you know,

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sponsored by relatives to come to the United States as refugees. “I personally was looking for the American flag and the Statue of the Liberty in the West,” Doan says. “When we got here, we learn the Statue of Liberty is in the East. It’s on the other side of the country!”

After making a perilous journey halfway around the world, the couple met in Houston, Texas. Doan got accepted into a seminary, where he was studying to be a priest. He was working as a chaplain at the MD Anderson Cancer Center when, he recalls, “She was visiting one of her parents from the parish. I almost got my master’s of theology. But one year before, I was really struggling with the pain and loneliness, the homesickness.”

His spiritual crisis came to a head, and he spent a tearful night praying in the church. He prayed for the loneliness to be taken away, and ultimately decided to leave the seminary.

In 1990, Doan accepted a job in Memphis as a social worker. “I love to work with people who hit rock bottom and no one cared for them,” he says. “No one helped

them. That’s where I found my place.”

Two years later, he returned to Houston and married Milynh. They came back to Memphis where they had three children: Theresa, Pauline, and Nathan. “We work; we try to build up the good credit in order to own our own place.”

At one point, the family lived together on five mattresses in the attic. “You know, like Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs,” Doan says. “I personally really love Memphis, Tennessee. The first seven years, I really merged with the community, working with the Catholic Charites, with all the refugees and the homeless. We are very involved with the Vietnamese community at Sacred Heart Church.”

Milynh’s Vy Vy Hair Salon is a staple of the Midtown neighborhood. Their children, all grown, now work in healthcare as surgeons, nurses, and researchers. “We share with my children: What you receive, God has blessed and given us. Wherever you land, it is to serve a community, to give back. And then, we are the blessing.”

”I Am Proud of Being Vietnamese.”

Q

uynh Tran moved often when she was a child. “I think I’m very adaptive to new environment.”

She was born in Ho Chi Minh City (formerly known as Saigon), then her parents moved to another city, only 30 kilometers away. “I went from first grade all the way to seventh grade, and then I moved back to Saigon with my grandparents,” she says. “After I finished high school, I came to the United States. My parents always envisioned sending us to a different country, even Canada or the United States, to study abroad. I was probably the most obedient child in the family.”

She flew from Vietnam to Waukesha, Wisconsin, where she would take intensive English lessons at Waukesha County Technical College. Once she was on the ground, she waited for her host family, but a miscommunication meant they never materialized.

Eventually, the host family arranged a taxi ride from the airport to their home.

Tran says it was the longest 45 minutes of her life.

The girl from Saigon, population 14 million, was out of her element. “Wisconsin is not like an urban city, so you don’t see a lot of buildings and cars,” she says.

“Both sides, it was forest and nothing. I was so scared.

Where’s this guy taking me to?”

When she arrived at her host family’s house, she was greeted warmly and began to learn a bit more English.

Her next stop was the State University of New York at Stony Brook, where she flourished in math and computer engineering. There, she met her future husband, Vinhthuy Phan, who was completing his doctoral program when he got a job offer from the University of Memphis. Tran followed him here and completed her graduate work at the U of M, where she earned two master’s degrees and a Ph.D.

Today, Tran is a senior bioinformatics researcher at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, combining biostatistics, computer science, and biology to analyze data having to do with genetics and more.

In October 2022, she became the head of the Vietnamese American Community of West Tennessee. She is quick to note that she is just one success story from Memphis’ thriving Vietnamese community.

“In Memphis, the Vietnamese Community was formed by a generation of people that came in 1975,” she says. “They just wanted to create a small community so that they can help all of the Vietnamese immigrants coming in.”

Relations can be complex between her generation of immigrants, which Tran calls “generation 1.5,” who grew up in the postwar period, and the older generation, whose formative experiences were during the long conflict.

“I am proud of being Vietnamese. It took me a while to understand, to put myself in their shoes. I left behind my friends, my family. But it’s my choice. I can always go back. Now, it’s easy to go back. But back then, it was the end of it. It was starting from zero.

“They came as adults, when it’s harder to learn the language,” she continues. “Most of their jobs [here] were like restaurant, nail salon — things that don’t require you to have a higher level of writing and reading. But in Vietnam a lot of them had been doctors and lawyers. It was too hard for them to study again, to get the license.

It was a lot of sacrifice for the older generation to come here and support their family.”

For years, the Vietnamese American Community hosted an annual celebration in Memphis, with free food and community activities. Today, she says, “It’s only a hundred people or so attending, not many people.

Now, the people want something new, more energy.”

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Tran was instrumental in expanding the annual celebration into the Asian Night Market. The event has grown explosively each year since 2023, with last year’s celebration filling the Agricenter with thousands of people.

“In 1975, 1980, when people came here, they didn’t

want the Americans to know that they were not born here,” she says. “They felt embarrassed that they were Asian and didn’t speak good English, that they had accents. But nowadays the kids are different. They are so proud that they are Asians. I want us to be proud of being us.”

“There Is Nothing Like America.”

I “I can work 14 to 16 hours a day with the same motivation and drive anywhere in the world, but it is this country that gave me the opportunity. There’s nothing like America.” roumen denkov

the fundamentals for business.” am born in a small village called Senokos, which is in the northeast corner of Bulgaria,” He met and married Snejina in 1993. In 1996, Roumen says Roumen Denkov. After the end of World War II, found seasonal work on a cruise ship. He got his first taste of America when he and his co-workers stayed at Bulgaria was a part of the Soviet sphere of influence. a Miami Beach hotel waiting to board the ship. “It was “Stalin wanted to have a buffer zone between Soviet amazing,” he says.

Union and Western Europe.

Roumen learned to play trombone and got accepted Roumen spent the next few months on the high seas. into a high school that specialized in music, which was “My last week on the ship, I was waiting tables in the run by the Bulgarian military. After he graduated, he dining room. There was a table for two, this couple, spent 10 years in the Navy band. During this time, he husband and wife; we became friends.” arranged and recorded two albums, which were reAfter the cruise, he kept in touch with Skip and leased in Bulgaria. But he wasn’t satisfied.

Linda Davis, exchanging postcards and pictures of “I love jazz music,” he says. “I wanted to learn, but of his and Snejina’s growing family. By then, they had course, that was impossitwo children, Vassil and ble. Many years later, we Sissy. The family was about to get a big surmade a big band within the Navy band. We did prise. While preparing for four concerts during a cruise, Roumen and his Communist time [around co-workers went to the U.S. 1988]. The second-highEmbassy to secure a transit est-ranking officer of visa. “One of the guys saw the Communist Party this brochure for the Green Department of the BulCard lottery,” he recalls. garian Navy came to me On a lark, they entered the after four concerts which lottery — then Roumen people loved. ‘You want forgot about it. Back home to play American music? in Bulgaria, he promised Who do you think you Snejina he travel for work Roumen and Snejina Denkov are? If I hear one more again. Then, a strange entime about you playing this American music, you’re velope arrived. He had won. going to jail.’”

“I dreamed about coming to America, but I knew It was a wake-up call for Roumen. “That was not a that it’s impossible,” says Roumen. “And I would never come here illegally. But this U.S. government decision threat to me. That was a threat to my family. I don’t care about politics. Music is just music; it’s beautiful. to play this lottery is probably the second-best thing in My job is to make it as beautiful as possible, to make my life after my wife and my kids. Because it gave me a chance to come here.” the audience happy.”

But with opportunity came responsibility. “If you’re There was a growing discontent with the 40-year-old regime. “Everything was controlled by the Communist by yourself, you’ll figure out how to survive,” he says.

Party. It was a slow process of rotting.”

“Wife and two kids? You barely speak a few words of The communist system ended in Bulgaria on Novemthe language. You have absolutely no idea how the hell ber 10, 1989. “The first year or two, people didn’t know this works. How to find work, how to buy something, what to do,” he says. “Because the regime disappeared, how to feed your family — you have no idea. What do including the Bulgarian version of KGB, which is the you do? Look for help. Who do I know? Only one family secret apparatus that kept total control of the country.” that I briefly met for a week on a seven-day cruise from When Roumen’s stint in the Navy was over, he New York to Bermuda. Lucky day, Mr. and Mrs. Skip and Linda Davis.” took a job at one of the new resorts springing up along the Black Sea. His new boss, Tzany Nikolov, He reached out to his friends in the States, who prombecame a mentor. “This guy, I want to build a huge ised to help. Skip Davis was a FedEx pilot who lived monument for him. He changed my life. He gave me in Bartlett. Roumen says he owes the Davis family a

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“Memphis is no longer just a Black and white town. In fact, the only two communities in Memphis that are significantly growing are the Asian and Hispanic communities.” mauricio calvo

profound debt. “You met somebody on your vacation Sissy’s English improved so much that she won a counthat was a waiter for a few days. And this guy wants ty-wide essay writing contest. to come here [to live]. He’s asking for help and you say, Less than four years later, Roumen and the family ‘Yeah, come to my house. Be a guest in my house.’ Would were able to buy their own house. As new Bulgarian you do that? How many people will do that?” immigrants trickled into Memphis, the Denkov famOnce Roumen arrived in the States, he had three ily helped them the same way they had been helped. months to prepare before Snejina and the children Eventually, Roumen and a business partner started followed. Skip Davis helped him apply for a job at the his own transportation and logistics company, RDX, FedEx hub, but he couldn’t which continues to expand to start until he had a Social Sethis day. His son Vassil joined curity number. So Roumen the Air Force.

Sissy went to school in New found a seasonal job driving an ice-cream truck. “I’m good York, and after working on at maps, he says. “I’ve been in the Memphis film production a military!”

Brian Banks, worked with proRoumen learned the lay of the ducer Amy Baer in Hollywood. land and discovered a talent for She returned to Memphis, got sales. “I found a construction married, and wrote, produced, place. I go there, they ask me and directed a film based on for cigarettes, ask me for soda. her family’s experience as imNext day, I got all this.” migrants.

Soon, Roumen was working In Scent of Linden, Bulgarian at FedEx by night and driving actor Ivan Barnev plays Stethe ice-cream truck by day. He fan, a Bulgarian who comes to found an apartment in BartAmerica with nothing but a lett just days before Snejina and dream. He gets a job driving the children arrived. When he an ice-cream truck, and faces Mauricio Calvo went to enroll daughter Sissy in the choice of how much of his her new school, he was amazed at how well-appointed former identity to keep, versus how much he wants the classrooms were. Sissy’s teacher was Metra Reid, to assimilate into American. It is the choice faced by “a short, feisty lady, like a hurricane.” all immigrants from all countries. Their answers have shaped and created our culture.

Tears well from Roumen’s eyes when he remembers what happened next. “The teacher said, ‘We got this “A lot of people are telling me that I’ve accomlittle girl that came from Bulgaria, and she doesn’t plished a lot,” he says, “with a nice house, nice car, speak English. We start school at 8:30 every day, so I and growing a successful business. Well, it’s not me. need somebody to come here from 7:30 to 8:15 every It’s America. I can work 14 to 16 hours a day with the morning and teach Sissy how to speak English.’ Parsame motivation and drive anywhere in the world, ents came and taught my kid English on their own but it is this country that gave me the opportunity.

There’s nothing like America.” time.” By the end of her first year in American schools,

“A Mutual Leap of Faith”

M

auricio Calvo’s life was changed by a fax.

When he was a teenager, he had lived in Ohio for a year as an exchange student. Afterward, he returned to his native Mexico City for his senior year of high school. One day, his principal called him into the office and asked him to read a fax for him. It was in English, a language the principal didn’t speak, and it was from Christian Brothers University in Memphis, informing the principal of a new scholarship opportunity the school was offering to international students.

“One thing led to another,” says Calvo, “and I don’t know if nobody else wanted to come or how that happened, but somehow, I ended up getting that scholarship.”

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A year later, he arrived in Memphis as a CBU freshman. “I remember it to the day: August 18th, 1993.

It smelled like mulch. I still remember that smell every time in the summer when all the mulch in Memphis is out.”

Calvo graduated with a degree in business and went to work for Sysco, the restaurant supply company. A few years later, he started his own business, saying, “It’s a typical story of the immigrant, right? Hustling here and there. … We had our struggles, but it was manageable.”

He recalls one time a few years ago, when he was driving with his teenage daughters. “There’s this industrial park on the corner of Macon and Jackson.

When I had my business, I rented a small warehouse in the back. I was telling them stories about something

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that happened late in the night. One of my kids said, ‘Wait, why were you working so late?’ I’m like, ‘I wasn’t working that late. I actually lived here. I had lost my house, and I was literally living in the warehouse.’

When my kids said, ‘Wait, were you, like, homeless?’ I never thought about it that way. I said, ‘I wasn’t homeless! I lived in my office!’”

Despite the hardships, Calvo stayed in the United States. “I grew up in Mexico City in an upper-middle-class family, so I’m sure I could have found something there,” he says. “But I kept not only betting on Memphis, but betting on myself, and on the idea that this would work.”

One of his vendors told him about Latino Memphis.

“At the time, we were an organization that was part of MIFA. That’s how we got started. The Latino used to hold meetings at the library on Peabody.”

Calvo volunteered for a while, then became a board member. In 2008, as the Great Recession was gathering, the board offered him the position of executive director.

“The organization didn’t really have any money, and I didn’t have any money either,” he says. “It was a good match, I guess! And a mutual leap of faith.”

The organization grew under Calvo, and in 2025,

Latino Memphis celebrated its 30th anniversary. “What I like to tell people is that we are creating opportunities for Latinos and Latinas,” he says. “We do that through advocacy, through direct social and legal services. I think what is also an important part is that while we are working with the Latinx community, we are sincerely doing this for the benefit of the larger community.

“Memphis is no longer just a Black and white town, he continues. “In fact, the only two communities in Memphis that are significantly growing are the Asian and Hispanic communities. Latino communities are growing by 43 percent to be about 9 percent of the population today. Asians [are growing] about 34 percent to be maybe 4 or 5 percent of the population.”

Calvo became an American citizen in 2018, but even today it’s not an easy process. “The line does exist for those who have one or two things: a bunch of money or a bunch of education,” he says. “So if you are in academia, if you are in science, if you are in what they call ‘high-skill’ degrees, that pathway does exist. It’s limited, and certainly this current administration is making it harder with new rules.

Like, you have to pay a hundred thousand dollars to apply for this visa.”

“You Still Have Value.”

D “When you’re undocumented, you don’t have access to anything. You pay taxes, you work very, very hard, but you’re subjected to job opportunities that are so exploitative.” dulce maria salcedo

Salcedo always knew she was undocumented growulce Maria Salcedo was born in ing up. “My mom never shielded me from that reality,” Mexico City. “My family came to the U.S. back in 2001, when I was about a year old,” she says. she says. “I think a lot of parents who are in that sit“Mexico at the time was struggling through economic uation want to shield their children. I know a lot of hardship. I think, in the early 2000s, it was really difficult Mexican friends who were undocumented as well, but for business owners to maintain they didn’t realize they were a stream of income.” undocumented growing up.

Everyone in her family was They didn’t find out until later on in life as adults when their originally from Mexico, so they didn’t really want to leave. “I parents were like, ‘Oh, you know my mom shares that a can’t go to college because you lot,” she says. “She didn’t want don’t have a legal status.’ to leave her community or her It was quite the opposite family members and go into a experience for Salcedo. “My foreign country.” mom was very intentional in Her parents held down diftelling us, you’re undocumented, but you have every right to ferent jobs in Mexico. “My mom worked a lot of modeling be here, just as much as anyjobs,” says Salcedo. “She was one else. Being undocumented very much in the entertaindoesn’t make you any less of ment industry. My dad was a a person. You still have value.

Dulce Maria Salcedo business owner and worked in You still have goals that you the chandelier business. But he unfortunately passed can achieve. And so I think that is what shaped me as a person.” here in the United States. He was diagnosed with colon She admits she was never embarrassed by that situcancer in 2003. I don’t remember him at all.” ation. “Maybe I shared this openly with way too many The family, which included Salcedo’s older sister, settled in Jackson, Tennessee, where her mother suppeople, but that was my identity, and I was just like, ported the family by cleaning houses. “When my dad ‘Hi, my name is Dolce Maria. I’m undocumented.’ I was dying, she promised him that she would stay in the was very open about this, but it directly impacted our quality of life in the United States. The level of poverty United States for me and my sister to grow up. I think she wanted to go back many, many times, but it was just that undocumented immigrants live in is astronomical. that loyalty to my dad that kept her here.”

I grew up with close to nothing.”

CONTI N U ED

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She finishes saying this through tears. “When you’re undocumented, you don’t have access to anything in the country. You pay taxes, you work very, very hard, but you’re subjected to job opportunities that are so exploitative. I saw my mom cleaning houses, doing all these things that didn’t provide any source of stability in our lives, and that was very difficult growing up.

“One thing my mom always instilled in me was to focus on my studies and to succeed in school,” she continues. “Because that was going to be one of the ways that I would be able to succeed in life. And that would really be one of the only ways that people could respect me, given our situation as not only Mexican undocumented immigrants, but as a woman as well.”

Salcedo says school was a place where she felt safe. But afterwards it would present a challenge. “When I was applying for college, I realized that it was going to be so difficult because I did not have a permanent legal status that would allow me to obtain scholarships or even federal student aid. I remember taking the ACT, doing well on that, having a high GPA, and all my peers were so excited to apply for college.”

For her, she just felt “this impending sense of doom that I was not going to be able to go, despite all of my hard work in school, because I didn’t have a permanent resident card that would qualify me for federal student aid. School counselors helped as much as they could, but they didn’t understand truly how complex my situation was.”

Salcedo took it upon herself to find financial assistance, and finally got it, thanks to a program called Golden Door Scholars, which provided a four-year scholarship for undocumented students. “It was a very competitive scholarship,” she says. “I think only about 80 students got it per year, and thousands of undocumented students apply. So everything just aligned for me to apply for the scholarship at this time. I did apply, and I got it. Then I applied for admission to Rhodes College because it was one of their partner schools, and it was the closest school to Jackson. (The Golden Door Scholarship is now closed to students in Tennessee.)

“Looking back on everything in my life, I think Rhodes is 100 percent the highlight of my existence,” she says. “I think being in college opened so many doors for me, and it taught me so many valuable lessons, and I was able to meet so many people that truly inspired me.”

Taking a history course from Professor Michael LaRosa at Rhodes inspired her to change her major from pre-med to international studies. “I obtained permanent legal status my sophomore year in college,” she says. “That lifted a lot of burden from me and allowed me to open my views of the world because I was like, okay, I can graduate. I

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The Economic Impact of Immigration Reform Michael LaRosa is a professor of history at Rhodes College who recently co-authored a book on immigration in the United States, Immigration, Policy, and the People of Latin America. “I study the history of Latin America, so I look at mostly Latin American immigration,” he says.

No one knows for sure, but LaRosa estimates there may be as many as 100,000 immigrants in Memphis.

“People want to come here,” he says. “It’s open, there’s a lot of land. The public schools are not bad, [especially] if you’re comparing them to Latin America, which a lot of these people are. You come to Memphis, you put your kids in school, and that’s when the change starts to happen. The kids learn to read and write, and they become excited by education, they get enthused about life in general. In nearly all cases, these kids and their parents come here to thrive.”

LaRosa says that for most of this country’s history, there were no restrictions on immigration, and border controls were nonexistent. In the late 1800s, the first effort to restrict immigration applied only to Chinese laborers who had flocked to the West Coast to help build railroads.

“In 1924, something went on the books called Reed Johnson, which was the first immigration bill.

It completely ignored the American hemisphere from Canada on down. Because who were the enemies back then? The Italians. The Russians, who had just gone through a horrible revolution that they [Congress] didn’t like. Austria and Hungary, they were all in World War I with Germany. They were on the side of the Hun, right? Those were our enemies.”

LaRosa says the issue in those days wasn’t about Mexicans, not about Colombians. “There was no problem with them at all,” he says. “So they weren’t even mentioned in that legislation, and then we put together this immigration system, which became unpopular by the 1960s. Then we changed it.”

The professor says the only other change to the immigration laws took place during Reagan’s time, “ in 1986, when we gave amnesty to 2.3 million immigrants, and we decided to go after the employers and say, ‘You’re the ones who are going to pay.’ So they [the employers] invested in machines to create fake IDs for people. That was the solution, really, because they needed the workforce. It’s all a bit of a game.

“The economic backbone of the United States is cheap labor from undocumented immigrants,” continues LaRosa. “I don’t think we’re going to be in this situation forever, where we are a hostile nation to our immigrant brothers and sisters. This country would collapse without immigration, without immigrants. We go through these phases and push away the immigrants, and then we invite them back.

They never say no.”

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can get a job, and then I can even go to law school if I want to.”

Salcedo is now a law student at the University of Memphis. When she’s not studying, she works at a Jackson nonprofit as an accredited legal representative for immigrants. Her group is the only nonprofit between Nashville and Memphis to provide legal services for immigrants, focusing on survivors of crime, survivors of domestic violence, and special immigrant juveniles who have been in the United States without their parents, or one or both of their parents have abandoned, abused, or neglected them.

“We need immigration reform, and we need it now. I think we needed it like 20 years ago,” says Salcedo. “Our immigration system operates under the Immigration and Nationality Act, and that has not been updated since the Sixties. So we are operating on an extremely outdated system when conditions have changed.

“I often hear Americans say, ‘You have to do it the right way and you have to get in line because we have to have a system. The line does not exist in immigration law. We have somehow made up this imaginary line, and that is not real.

In her work, Salcedo knows there are very narrow avenues that you have to be eligible for.

“And then if you are eligible, you have to wait 20, 30 years for something to be available,” she says. “We need to provide permanent legal pathways for individuals who are already here so we can avoid having this huge undocumented population.”

Salcedo says the current administration’s crackdown on immigration has caused much pain in the immigrant communities she serves. “Friends reach out to me because their family members have been detained and they don’t know where they are. A lot of these family members had legal status or had something pending before the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, yet they were still detained.”

This creates a lot of fear. “A lot of my clients are so scared right now because they have a legal status, but this doesn’t protect them from being detained by ICE because ICE is engaging in racial profiling and tactics to detain immigrants and immigrants that look Mexican or look Latin American. So a lot of clients have expressed their fears, and I’ve been able to hear that firsthand.”

Salcedo still has faith in her country. “America is a really good country. America has people who are good people, and we have to be able to stand up when we see injustice happening to our neighbors. And I do still have hope that Americans are going to do that.”

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REMEMBERING

VEDA REED In two separate exhibitions, colleagues and students pay tribute to one of the city’s most remarkable artists and teachers.

B Y

A B I G A I L

Carroll Todd has never forgotten his first class at the Memphis Academy of Arts in 1972. It was two-dimensional design with Veda Reed, a woman small in stature but intimidating nonetheless.

“I was so nervous,” he says.

For their first assignment, Reed gave each student a word to express in a drawing. Todd’s was “suspension.” “I struggled and ended up drawing a fat man suspended by one of his suspenders,” he says.

“I worked and worked on that drawing and even with all my mediocre attempts, she taught me with grace.

During critique she kindly expressed

M O R I C I

RIGHT: Rain Over Crow Butte, Ft. Robinson, Neb, 1994, oil on canvas, 28x36” the successful aspects of my labor.”

Reed, who passed away in June 2025, went on to encourage Todd and many other students like him throughout their careers. She knew good art when she saw it. “She didn’t suffer fools very well at all,” says David Lusk, who represented her since the ’90s at his gallery, “and she would very easily say that this painting is not very good, or

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A R T

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LEFT: Spoleto, 1962, oil on canvas, 42x50”

this exhibition is not very good — both about herself and about other people.”

When Lusk met Reed, he saw her as the “grand old woman of Memphis,” he says. He admits that makes her seem older than she actually was, “but she had such an illustrious and important career.”

Over the course of that long career, Reed was nationally renowned, her work displayed in galleries and museums across the United States. The Memphis Brooks Museum of Art houses 12 of her pieces in its permanent collection and hosted three solo exhibitions of her work: “Veda Reed: Houses and Things” in 1967, “Veda Reed: Paintings and Drawings 1955-1980” in 1980, and “Veda Reed: Day into Night” in 2016.

This month, Reed’s work will be featured in a show at David Lusk Gallery memorializing her, and in February, she will feature in a group exhibit at Memphis Brooks Museum of Art dedicated to the artists of Memphis College of Art. For Reed, much of her art was dedicated to the prairies of her native Granite, Oklahoma — first landscapes, then skycapes — subjects she told Memphis Magazine in 2016 (“Young at Art,” by Shara Clark) that gave her “a warm, safe feeling.”

She’d travel between Granite and Memphis and bring back inspiration, but eventually, when the traveling became too much, she painted the clouds from her Memphis backyard.

The resulting works were less expansive but more intimate, she realized.

“I don’t intend to give up the sky,” she told Clark, “but I’ve got to put it in a new place.” At an artist talk for a 2019 show at David Lusk Gallery, she said, “It was quite beautiful. It was just smaller.”

She studied the sky, the clouds, read everything she could, and even joined the Cloud Appreciation Society. She was meticulous, too, in the way she painted, technical with a process of hand-cut stencils, rulers, and layers of pigment that she wiped away and reapplied to capture the colors of the clouds bouncing and hiding light seemingly beyond the horizon.

“Especially when I started painting the sky more so than the land, I began to want a very particular kind of surface, one that had no brush marks, one that could be defined as air,” she said. “In the sunrise and the sunset — that’s what

I was concentrating on when I began to think in these terms — I couldn’t paint the sky and then paint the sun over it. I couldn’t even paint them one at a time and edge to edge because I wanted the color to appear to come from beneath the cloud or the sky.”

And so, the clouds hang on the canvas dramatically, yet seamlessly, almost in a “broad panorama-like CinemaScope,” Lusk says. “I frequently find her pieces to have a cinematic viewpoint.”

Reed was never afraid to move beyond simple reality in favor of something more atmospheric, more luminous. “She said not to worry about realism,” Todd says of their time in the classroom. “It’s about the expressive qualities of line.”

The story goes that Reed moved to Memphis from Oklahoma in 1952 to stay with her father, a pipeliner who worked for natural gas companies across the country. New to the city, and with nothing else to do, she drove around town before coming across a Victorian mansion on Adams Avenue that then housed the art academy. She walked inside and emerged having registered for the fall semester. She hadn’t even been asked to prove her talent; at that point, she had taken only one drawing class at the behest of her aunt, who painted watercolors. “I promised [the registrar] that my father would write a check,” she said, “and he did, but he took away my driving privileges.”

Reed graduated in 1956. After travels through New York and England, she returned to the school in 1961, this time as a teacher of painting, drawing, lettering, design, still life, and landscape painting. The academy moved to a modern campus in Overton Park and changed its name to Memphis College of Art, and Reed continued to teach there for 34 years, retiring in 1995.

Reed would later reflect, “Anybody can learn how to paint. It’s a skill that you can develop — the creative part is in addition to learning the skill, and sometimes that part can’t really be taught in the same way the skill can. But people should never give up trying to make something. Creating something is really the most wonderful thing one can do.”

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A R T right: Untitled temple with star, c1960, oil on paper, 8x5”

in 2024, Lusk hosted a show, her last, of new works. Marina Pacini, former chief curator for the Brooks, facilitated a conversation at the opening. The two had previously worked together for Reed’s 2016 exhibition at the Brooks.

“As she was nervous about [the 2024 talk], we practiced,” Pacini says. “That evening she was phenomenal. I was worried she’d get tired, and asked her if she was ready to go after a good 20 minutes talking to friends and fans following the talk. I had to laugh when she told me to get lost.”

“People from far and wide — we had some from down in South Louisiana — came up for the show, and we had folks in from the Minneapolis area,” Lusk adds.

Asked what brought people to her show from hundreds of miles away, Lusk says, “I think it’s that authority, from which she spoke, her feeling about art and her ability to say what she really firmly believed worked well or didn’t work so well.”

There was a certain gravitas to Veda,” concurs Remy Miller, former dean of MCA, who worked alongside Reed. “She was very calm, but very firm, and she believed in the college, and she had been there long enough and was well known enough that people took what she said very seriously. But she was definitely a quiet type of leader. … She could be intimidating, but down deep, she was very, very sweet. She was so kind to me.”

After Reed retired from the school in 1995, she and Miller stayed connected. “She continued to work on the board and so she was super supportive and extremely helpful,” he says. She even taught classes here and there, and encouraged her colleagues and students well after they graduated, filling her home with their works. In Miller’s case, they traded pieces. “Even after the college closed [in 2020], we just kept right on going,” he says.

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And she kept going. “Veda continued to develop and grow into her later years. And it is not common that painters get better with age,” Miller says. “[Her paintings] became more abstract and more beautiful in their color.”

Pacini agrees, adding, “Her paintings continued to get better and better over the course of her career. Her late works are luminous celebrations of the beauty of nature. People who look at her paintings are transformed and see the sky in an entirely different way. I’m speaking from personal experience. I couldn’t possibly calculate how often I look at the clouds and think of her, which keeps her close.”

Over the summer, Lusk began archiving her work, going through her studio and uncovering all that Reed left behind. “It feels like another beautiful life,” he says. “She was very private in many ways, but she kept a lot of stuff — good notes, writings and letters, and a bunch of show cards. So the archives

itself will be really awesome to have collected somewhere.”

Yet Lusk knew her to be an eliminator rather than a keeper. “She was the best editor of herself of any artist,” he says.

“She would destroy more than she kept.” Even so, Reed’s output was prolific. “I’m going to miss not having a new body of work from her every two or three years — I liked what she made and I liked seeing her new ideas.”

For January, in honor once again of her birthday, Lusk has planned a show in memory of Reed, called simply “In Memoriam,” featuring works from her estate. From February through September, her work will also be featured in an exhibit at Brooks: “Memphis College of Art, 1936-2020: An Enduring Legacy,” which Pacini, the museum’s former chief curator, helped organize to celebrate and remember the school’s legacy in Memphis.

“To find artists to consider

for the exhibition, I developed a questionnaire asking graduates who important mentors were,” Pacini says. “Not surprisingly, Veda was mentioned innumerable times.

The exhibition pairs faculty and students, and she was thrilled to be hanging next to James Little [who graduated in 1974]. To this day, James acknowledges Veda’s importance to his practice.”

“Veda’s legacy can be seen all over the world and especially Memphis because of the students she encouraged and enabled to attend the college,” says Christine Todd, Carroll Todd’s wife and director of admissions for seven years at MCA. Reed, along with artists like Dolph Smith and John McIntyre, helped select artists for scholarships at the school. “She was an inspirational teacher and artist,” Christine says.

“When I catch myself looking at the sky into the clouds,” Carroll says, “I often think of Veda and say, ‘Wow, that’s a perfect Veda Reed sky.’”

ABOVE: Taos Mountain Sky: 6-26-97, 1998, oil on canvas, 36x51”

“In Memoriam” will be on display at David Lusk Gallery in January, and “Memphis College of Art, 1936-2020: An Enduring Legacy” opens at Brooks in February.

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FAITH MCCOSKEY & ADAM DEMPSEY

Brass Door – 0 3 . 1 9 . 2 0 2 5 PHOTOGRAPH BY ASHLEY BENHAM

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MEMPHIS WEDDINGS IN PICTURES

W

hat better way to ring in a new year than to celebrate a few Mid-South marriages that began in 2025? From

rooftops to riversides, from stately homes to expansive fields, Memphis punches beyond its weight class when it comes to wedding style and variety. It’s become a January tradition of ours to highlight nuptial bliss as captured by local photographers. Here’s wishing every 2025 couple — and those with plans for 2026 — a lifetime of health and joy.

If y o u ’d l i k e t o b e p a r t o f o u r 2 0 2 6 wedding album , email yo ur photo to : LETTER S@MEMPHISMAGAZINE .COM

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MEMPHIS WEDDINGS IN PICTURES

MEISEN & FELIPE TELLEZ

Memphis Botanic Garden – 0 8 . 3 0 . 2 0 2 5 PHOTOGRAPH BY ALLY PERKINS @ALLYPERKINS

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MEMPHIS WEDDINGS IN PICTURES

REBEKAH & KYLE HOUGHTON

Woodruff-Fontaine House – 0 6 . 1 4 . 2 0 2 5 PHOTOGRAPH BY ERICA HASKETT STUDIO @ERICAHASKETTSTUDIO

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Memphis Magazine’s

THE 2025

FACE OF

Taylopr Square

Haze Photography

Haze Photography

Taylopr Square

THEENNEYS

CATERING

It’s Your day so make it all about You JAY ADKINS

901.619.1196 • 870 Vance, Memphis, TN 38126 • www.paradoxcuisine.com

Chef Jimmy Gentry offers a unique culinary experience, specializing in customized menus tailored to your needs.

MEMPHIS WEDDINGS IN PICTURES

KAYLA & LOGAN BRAUER

O rion Hill Wedding & Events – 1 0 . 1 0 . 2 0 2 5 PHOTOGRAPH BY ERICA HASKETT STUDIO @ERICAHASKETTSTUDIO

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Elevate Your Wedding with

Live Musicians

JoDarling Photography

Soloists | Duos | Trios | Quartets violin - viola - cello - bass - piano - harp - guitar flute - saxophone - trumpet - vocals www.sweetharmonymusic.com

(501) 804-6084 | frances@sweetharmonymusic.com

Photography by Kelly Ginn Photography

Step into timeless elegance at The Kent, Memphis's premier industrial-chic wedding venue. Housed in a meticulously restored 1883 warehouse, The Kent blends historic character with modern sophistication. Towering ceilings, original brick walls, steel beams, and expansive open floor plans create a striking backdrop that transforms effortlessly to match any wedding vision — from romantic and refined to bold and contemporary.

Photography by Mary Kate Steele

Couples enjoy luxurious, light-filled wedding suites, thoughtful amenities, and a seamless layout designed for stress-free flow throughout the celebration. With space to accommodate intimate gatherings or grand receptions, The Kent offers flexibility, style, and unmatched atmosphere in the heart of the city.

Let your love story unfold in a venue where history meets modern elegance — an unforgettable setting for an unforgettable day.

Contact Toni Williams for more information, at 901.569.6611 or email Toni@thekentmemphis.com. www.thekentmemphis.com

MEMPHIS WEDDINGS IN PICTURES

MALLORY & BISHOP RHODES

Southern Grace – 0 3 . 2 8 . 2 0 2 5 PHOTOGRAPH BY ALYSSA JEANES

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A Wandering Creative

CELEBRATE YOUR DAY

JoLaura Photography

WHERE NATURE’S BEAUTY MEETS YOUR LOVE STORY Memphis Botanic Garden 750 Cherry Road | Memphis, TN, 38117 901-636-4121 | rentals@membg.org Membg.org/Rentals

Scan to view our rental spaces

MEMPHIS WEDDING VENUES 409 SOUTH MAIN EVENTS Corporate events and meetings. Up to 330 guests, 220 seated. 901-300-7942; events@409southmain.com.

409 S. Main St. 409southmain.com

ANNESDALE MANSION Corporate events. Up to 17,000 available sq. ft., 250-300 guests. Val Bledsoe: 901-490-9460; val@ annesdalemansion.com. 1325 Lamar Ave. annesdalemansion.com

THE ATRIUM AT OVERTON SQUARE Corporate events and meetings. Space for 175 seated guests, up to 250 standing. In-house catering and bar services available. 901-213-4514; events@memphiseventgroup.com.

2105 Madison Ave. theatriummemphis.com

ESPLANADE

MINGLEWOOD HALL

Corporate events and conferences. 14,000 available sq. ft., 10-700 guests. 901-753-3333; info@esplanadememphis. com. 901 Cordova Station Ave. esplanadememphis.com

Corporate events and fundraisers. Up to 13,000 sq. ft. available. Up to 1,600 guests. 901-312-6058, ext. 1107; info@ minglewoodhall.com. 1555 Madison Ave. minglewoodhall.com

GRACELAND'S CHAPEL IN THE WOODS

NEW DAISY

901-473-6005; toll-free 866-757-7007; 3600 Elvis Presley Blvd. graceland.com/chapel

Corporate and special events, fundraisers, and trade shows.

Full theater setup for 500-1,100 guests. 901-525-8981; info@ newdaisy.com. 330 Beale St. newdaisy.com

FEDEX EVENT CENTER

NO. 2 VANCE

Corporate events. From 272-7,700 sq. ft., 20-800 guests.

901-222-7280; events@shelbyfarmspark.org.

6903 Great View Dr. N. shelbyfarmspark.org

Corporate events and meetings. Indoor and outdoor space for up to 75 seated guests, 100 total. 901-237-2786; no2vance@ gmail.com. 325 Wagner St. no2vance.com

FOGELMAN EXECUTIVE CONFERENCE CENTER & HOTEL

PREMIERE PALACE BALLROOM

Corporate events and conferences. 35,000 available sq. ft., 15-1,500 guests. 901-678-5410; conferences@memphis.edu.

330 Innovation Dr. (Conference Center); 3700 Central Ave. (Hotel). memphis.edu/conferences

THE GREAT HALL & CONFERENCE CENTER

THE KENT

THE ROBINSHAW WEDDING AND EVENTS

BING ON BROAD

LA PLACE BALLROOM

THE BLACKBERRY PINES rachel@theblackberrypines.com, 622-216-0073; 31 Chewalla Lake Road, Holly Springs, MS 38635 theblackberrypines.com

CADRE BUILDING Corporate, formal, and nonprofit events. 36,000 sq. ft., Space for 350 seated guests, 1,000 standing. 901-779-1501; betsy.mckay@cadrebuilding.com. 149 Monroe Ave. cadrebuilding.com

THE COLUMNS Corporate events. Up to 20,000 sq. ft., 200-800 guests. 901552-4732; catie@resourceentertainment.com. 40 S. Main St. resourceentertainment.com

THE ELLIOT 901-741-1800. Somerville, TN. Allie@theelliotevents.com theelliotevents.com

Corporate events. Versatile warehouse space for up to 100 guests. 901-654-6737; hello@propcellar.com.

2585 Summer Ave. propcellar.com

REIGN EVENT VENUE

Corporate events. Room for up to 150 guests. 901-488-8730; info@avenuedowntown.com. 10 N. Second St. avenuedowntown.com Corporate events and meetings. Room for up to 100 guests.

901-407-2214; info@bingonbroad.com. 2531 Broad Ave. bingonbroad.com

PROPCELLAR

Corporate events and conferences. Up to 8,675 sq. ft. available. 60-800 guests. 901-757-7373; ianslinger@ germantown-tn.gov. 1900 S. Germantown Rd. thegreathallevents.com Meetings, events, and conferences. Up to 27,000 sq. ft. available. 934 standing guests, 600 seated, plus outdoor patio area. 901-569-6611; toni@thekentmemphis. com. 61 Keel Ave. thekentmemphis.com

THE AVENUE DOWNTOWN

Corporate events. 2,500 sq. ft. ballroom for up to 400 guests.

901-527-5660; info@premierepalace.com. 629 Monroe Ave. premierepalace.com

Corporate and special events. Up to 5,500 sq. ft. available. 10-650 guests. Catering available. Tarmeckla Douglas: 901-340-0144; tarmeckladouglas@yahoo.com.

4798 Summer Ave. laplaceballroom.com

THE MEETING CENTER OF COLLIERVILLE Meetings and conferences. Variety of room options. Seating for up to 15 guests. 901-861-6304; info@tmccollierville.com.

340 Poplar View Ln. E. #1 tmccollierville.com

MEMPHIS BOTANIC GARDEN 750 Cherry Road, 901-636-4100. membg.org • rentals@membg.org

MEMPHIS BROOKS MUSEUM OF ART 901-544-6200, Overton Park. brooksmuseum.org

Meetings and large corporate events. Indoor and outdoor spaces for up to 250 guests. 901-748-5148; info@ reigneventsmemphis.com. 3243 Players Club Circle.

2335 Jenkins Dr., Piperton, TN 38066 joanie@memphisweddingsvenue.com memphisweddingsvenue.com

RUMBA ROOM Small corporate events. Tables and private rooms available on a limited basis. 901-523-0020; edgarmendez71@gmail.com.

303 S. Main St. memphisrumba.com

STOP 345 Corporate events and meetings. 6,000 total sq. ft. for up to 750 guests. 901-725-5625; info@stop345.com.

345 Madison Ave. stop345.com

TOWER CENTER Conferences, meetings, and events. Up to 10,000 available sq. ft., 6-600 guests. 901-767-8776. 5100 Poplar Ave. #3300. towercentermemphis.com

WOODLAND HILLS EVENT CENTER Corporate events. Multiple room options, with 50-1,000 guests. 901-754-2000. 10000 Woodland Hills Dr., Cordova. woodlandhillseventcenter.com

WOODRUFF-FONTAINE HOUSE Weddings and special and corporate events. Variety of room options for 30-200 guests. 901-526-1469; j.cooper@woodrufffontaine.org. 680 Adams Ave. woodruff-fontaine.org

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“At the Memphis Brooks Museum of Art, your wedding becomes more than a celebration — it becomes a work of art. Set within one of Memphis’ most iconic cultural spaces, the museum offers a breathtaking blend of architecture, history, and creative energy that transforms your special day into something unforgettable.

Imagine exchanging vows in the serene Holly Court, framed by classic columns, lush greenery, and soft natural light — an elegant outdoor setting that feels pulled from a timeless portrait. Or choose one of the museum’s refined indoor spaces, where galleries and sculptural details create a sophisticated atmosphere your guests will never forget. Every corner of the museum offers a stunning backdrop, perfect for photographs that feel cinematic and uniquely you.

But beauty is only the beginning. The Memphis Brooks Museum of Art makes planning effortless with customizable bar and furniture packages, thoughtful guidance, and a professional team dedicated to bringing your vision to life. From intimate ceremonies to lively receptions, the museum provides an elevated experience without the stress — allowing you to focus fully on what matters most: celebrating your love with the people who mean the most to you.

Whether you’re dreaming of a classic, modern, or art-inspired celebration, the Memphis Brooks Museum of Art enhances every moment with an atmosphere of creativity, romance, and refined Memphis charm. Your love story deserves a setting as meaningful as the commitment you’re making — and at Memphis’ art museum, your wedding becomes a masterpiece.” thebrooks.org/wedding

LOCAL TREASURES

TUNING IN TO TONY THOMAS

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PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY ORPHEUM THEATRE GROUP; OPPOSITE PAGE COURTESY OF TOM LONARDO

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The keyboard virtuoso has played a pivotal part in local music.

B Y

A L E X

G R E E N E

I

f you live in Memphis and own a piano, you may already know Tony Thomas. He’s been making house calls to tune pianos for a quarter-century, though he started the practice back

in his college years. As I can vouch from his having tuned my own pianos, he loves the process. Thomas’ enthusiasm is contagious, and you might find yourself contemplating learning the trade as well, so lucid are his explanations of the instrument’s inner workings, and so personable is his disposition.

But the best part comes when he’s done. Once he’s turned the last peg on the last troublesome key and deems his work nearly complete, he’ll set aside his socket wrench and pull the bench up to the keyboard like it’s a table set for a luxurious meal. And then he begins to play.

Suddenly a jazz standard — “Stairway to the Stars,” say — is ringing out from your dusty behemoth of wood and wire, Thomas’ right hand playing chords and melody simultaneously, Oscar Peterson-style, while his left hand meanders through the bass lines, until it seems like the black and white keys themselves form a stairway, lifting you to heaven.

“As I often joke with my customers,” he tells me, “I think I got into this business just so I can play freshly tuned pianos.”

All playing aside, it’s clear that Thomas is also drawn to the sheer acoustic majesty of the piano. “Even as a kid,” he says, “the sound of the instrument was my main thing. My father was a very good amateur pianist. He played the music of his day by ear, and he knew the right chords. Not always the right key, but always the right chords. And he had the piano tuned regularly.

So by the time I was one, I knew what it sounded like when it was in tune. After that, I almost couldn’t stand playing instruments that weren’t tuned.”

opposite: Tony Thomas at the Orpheum’s Mighty Wurlitzer, originally built in 1928. above: The Tony Thomas Trio in 1979, with Sam Shoup, Thomas, and Tom Lonardo.

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LOCAL TREASURES

Thomas playing the Lowrey spinet organ his parents bought him, and (far right), trying out his first harmonium.

The Tony Thomas Trio playing the Bombay Bicycle Club, which Shoup called “the coolest place in Memphis to play music.

Nothing comes close to it now.”

“MECHANICALLY INCLINED”

T

homas’ father, George, worked for the Bendix Corporation, but sang tenor and had serious vocal instruction in his younger days in New Jersey. He was determined to pass on his ear-training to his son. “My father was showing me stuff,” he says.

“And to this day, on most days, I have perfect pitch. I can pull an A or a C or an F sharp out of thin air, because he trained me. It was a fun game! I would stand in front of the piano and he would play a note and ask me to guess what it was. And then after a while, I knew what an F sharp sounded like, or a D. It’s made the pursuit of music as a profession much easier.”

Meanwhile, Thomas’ mother, Helen, “was a music lover of the first order. Up until her teen years, she took piano lessons. She’d had one of those teachers that slapped a child on the wrist when they played a wrong note. As a result, she was very into playing classical pieces accurately. I remember practicing the piano in the rec room in our house.

If she knew the piece, she would know if I was faking it [as opposed to sight-reading the music]. I played by ear, and could get it close, but she could tell and would say, ‘Do that again!’ She was remarkable.”

When Thomas was around 4 or 5, at the dawn of the 1950s, Bendix transferred his father from New Jersey to Davenport, Iowa, and that’s where Thomas grew up with his older brother and sister. From a young age, he was a tinkerer. “I was mechanically inclined,” he notes. That, combined with his budding piano talents, played into his growing fascination with another, more modern instrument: the electric organ.

Something about organs struck a chord with him, to the point where he’d claim decades later that “I’ve always been an organ player that plays piano,” despite having first learned to play on the latter.

Those childhood piano lessons, in Thomas’ mind, were but a precursor to his true musical love. “Because I had an early knack for it, by the time I was 9, I’d gotten involved with spinet organs and thought they were really cool. My father and mother purchased a Lowrey spinet organ for me, so I had a piano that I was taking lessons on and an organ to play. I got used to playing bass with my foot [on the organ pedals] at a very early age. It was really a great path for me.”

His first gig, he recalls, was playing Easter hymns in the front window of Schmidt Music Store in Davenport, wearing a gown and a surplice. “I looked like a little angel, showing folks that even a 9-year-old could play a Lowrey organ, because a lot of people didn’t want to spend that money. My folks had to finance it. They couldn’t pay cash for this thing, but they bought it for me. My first gig was with that dealership, and then I demonstrated organs for a couple of other dealerships.”

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Before long, he was playing the ultimate in electric organs — a Hammond — and fine-tuning his mastery of tempo. “My first steady, paying gig was in a roller rink that had a Hammond, an early model, which was great training, because you had to play with a very, very good metronomic sense. People that dance-skate make their moves, and if you rush the beat, that is not welcome! I was 13 on that gig, and realized I could not deviate. I practiced with a metronome, so when I played at the roller rink I wouldn’t piss anybody off.”

Not only did the gig improve his chops, it was lucrative. “That would have been around 1959, and I would make 25 to 30 bucks a week,” he says. “One thing about my mother: She would always say, ‘Never give it away.’ She thought that I had a talent, and if I was going to be professional, I should be paid in a professional manner.”

At that age, he surely never guessed that one day he would be playing (and carting, repairing, or selling) Hammonds in Memphis for most of his adult life, and making bank doing it.

“THE FIRST TIME I EVER SAW HIM PLAY”

M

any adventures awaited him before that, as he came to play in various combos through his teens. Thomas savored the raw power of the Hammond, playing rock-and-roll with a Davenport band, even as his older sister’s boyfriend turned him on to jazz pianist Bill Evans. He ultimately studied with the renowned organist and composer Gerhard Krapf at the University of Iowa in Iowa City, but a couple of fellow students really prefigured his life in jazz, as he continued gigging in the area.

“There was a club up in Cedar Rapids called The Tender Trap,” says Thomas, “and the featured vocalist was Al Jarreau — with David Sanborn on saxophone. Sanborn was a master’s candidate at Iowa, learning orchestration and other things, and Jarreau was a psychology

PHOTOGRAPH CREDITS: TOP COURTESY TONY THOMAS; GROUP COURTESY SAM SHOUP; OPPOSITE PAGE BY CODY FLETCHER

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LOCAL TREASURES

major. So I met those guys and started playing in that band, I would say, for a year and a half. It was way before either of them had record deals.”

He played all kinds of gigs in the region, even a brief hotel residency with a combo in Kearney, Nebraska, all of which helped him develop his organ-hauling skills. “Complaining was the fun part,” he says. “Moving in and out of clubs, not so much.” But when a touring guitarist told Thomas about a band he was forming in Memphis and invited him to play keys, Thomas decided to move south. It was 1972, and Thomas was still in his mid-twenties.

Having been a member of the American Federation of Musicians since he was 13, Thomas duly changed his registration from Davenport’s Local 67 to Memphis’ Local 71 (where he’s now a board member) and began playing around the Bluff City. The band that had lured him here fizzled out after a few gigs, but he soon found work at the William B. Tanner Company, a Memphis studio specializ-

ing in jingles. That would not only be his very lucrative primary gig for the next 16 years (continuing after Tanner was bought out by Media General Broadcast Services), it would be a proving ground for the legendary bond he forged with two other Memphis greats: drummer Tom Lonardo and bassist Sam Shoup.

Shoup, now the director of commercial music at the University of Memphis, recalls Thomas’ penchant for playing multiple keyboards, and pioneering the use of synthesizers in the 1970s.

“I remember the first time I ever saw him play,” Shoup says. “I was doing a gig at the Whitehaven Hilton, and he was playing in the band that was in the little bar area.

He had a Hammond B3 with a Fender Rhodes [electric piano] stacked on top of that. And a synthesizer on top of that! Just an unbelievable stack of keyboards. He was playing the “Maple Leaf Rag” on all of them. He looked like the wizard in The Wizard of Oz.” Meanwhile, Lonardo and Thomas were performing in a band at the Bombay Bicycle Club, one of the first clubs in Overton Square. Eventually, all three ended up at Tanner. As Lonardo recalls, “it was not just the three of us, but a conductor, rhythm section, guitar, singers, somebody leading the sessions, and they had written out all the music. Tony showed me that reading [music] was

an asset. Until I met him and got in that studio, I could read just a little bit. But he showed me that was a valuable skill, and I got to where I could read those jingle charts.”

There was also room for more creative music at Tanner. “We were doing a lot of film service music, what they call ‘needle drops’ in the business,” says Thomas. “Those are songs that sound like something but are not [the hits].” The players would conjure whole genres out of thin air, creating libraries of works that fit specific moods. “They had six or seven different libraries in different styles, all of which were overseen by really well-qualified arrangers. Sam had a library, kind of progressive rock.”

Around that time, the Tony Thomas Trio emerged as a live band, featuring Lonardo, Shoup, and Thomas, and holding court at the Bombay Bicycle Club. “We were there five nights a week,” Lonardo recalls. “Between that and the jingle gig, we were always playing somebody else’s music. So after the Bombay gigs were over, we’d go and record our own stuff.”

One little-known album of those recordings, 1979’s LST, self-released by the Tony Thomas Trio, documents their originals and

The Tony Thomas Three tracking live to tape at Southern Grooves studio, with producer Matt Ross-Spang (far left), Thomas, guitarist Charlton Johnson (below), and drummer Ken Coomer (below left). The three had never played together before and “were flying by the seat of their pants,” says Ross-Spang.

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LOCAL TREASURES

left: The newly minted Tony Thomas Three. below: Thomas at the Mighty Wurlitzer, with a detail of its marvelous craftsmanship.

the remarkable chemistry they’d developed.

Delving into rock-inflected jazz instrumentals, it marks some of the most inventive synth work happening in Memphis at the time, and, of course, some of Thomas’ trademark work on the Hammond.

“That was recorded in my house over on Jefferson,” says Lonardo, “and there are some organ parts where Tony just pulled his truck up with the organ in it, we ran the cables inside, and he sat and played organ in the truck while we recorded!”

Lonardo still marvels at the chemistry between his more harmonic band mates. “Tony and Shoup really hit it off,” he says. “They both hear things when I don’t know what the hell’s going on. I keep a beat going. We all do that. But he has the ability to — if Sam changes the bass note, Tony immediately changes the chord to fit, and it happens in real time.”

“COOL AND GRACIOUS AND KIND”

B

y 1981, Thomas had met Tonda, his wife to this day, and together they would raise two kids. Then, not long after, the trio reached the zenith of their fame. Thomas’ gift for invention and genre studies played a major role in the trio’s one hit single, a novelty number cooked up on the spot in one of those freewheeling, after-hours recording sessions.

“Sam and I just made up the dumbest shit we could,” says Lonardo, “put a beat to it, and then Tony would come along and put the magic on it and make it sound like something that we’d studied.”

Thus was the legendary “Dog Police” born, a goofy pop tale of romantic allure and mysterious canine law enforcement that blended techno synth licks, barking sounds, and a pseudo-operatic chorus.

Once a suitably ridiculous video was filmed to illustrate the song, starring Lonardo, it became something of a hit on the then-fledgling MTV in 1983. To this day, it’s a celebrated slice of ’80s kitsch, much beloved in Memphis’ underground music scene.

The trio tried to run with it, taking the song title as their new band name and releasing other comically demented videos like “1-800.” But their hearts weren’t really in it, preferring their more swinging or jazz fusion-leaning material, and they have carried on as the Tony Thomas Trio to this day. Indeed, only last month they made their usual musical contribution to the Presbyterian Day School’s Christmas pageant, an annual tradition for the trio.

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regrouping, and can be heard as in-demand session men on hundreds of recordings, both individually and together, even backing the legendary George Coleman at one point.

As for Thomas, perhaps some of the finest jazz this city has produced were the recordings made by Herman Green, Calvin Newborn, Samarai Celestial, and Thomas in the ’90s, released under Green’s name.

And many a festive fan has thrilled to Thomas’ inventive solo arrangements for the century-old Wurlitzer theater organ in the Orpheum Theatre. Seeing him seated on the huge instrument, dwarfed by its dimensions, while he elicits entire orchestral arrangements from the beast’s three keyboards, has become an annual tradition, recently captured on the album, A Very Mighty Christmas — Tony Thomas Plays the Mighty Wurlitzer Organ.

Finally, just last year, in a move that surprised many, Thomas emerged with an album in the classic organ trio tradition, Get With This!, working with an entirely new set of players, the Tony Thomas Three. Oddly enough, the album had its origins in his piano-tuning work a quarter-century ago.

Matt Ross-Spang, a Grammy-winning engineer and producer with his own Southern Grooves imprint and studio, where he produced Get With This!, got his start working as a teenager at the Sun Studio tourist destination, which he steadfastly helped transform into a functioning studio again, replete with vintage gear.

“I’ve known Tony since I was about 16,” he says. “He’d always tune the piano at Sun, and we’d have to meet early, early in the morning, before the studio opened up for tours, to tune it. You know, it’s hard to tune and talk, but I would bug him the whole time, to pick his brain.

He was always so cool and gracious and kind. And then he’d always play a little bit.”

“ALL THINGS GOOD”

T

hough he’ll turn 80 this year, Thomas shows no signs of slowing. Perhaps his youthful knack for improvisation comes down to his rather holistic view of music, ranging from being “mechanically inclined” to his deep sensitivity to the sheer sound of the instruments he plays. He’s delighted at every turn, if not a little awestruck, and that inspires him to new, playful heights.

As he puts it, “We don’t have to get into a bunch of metaphysics, but as a Christian, we credit all things good to God. And really, if you take a closer look at how things are made, how they’re designed, how things are in nature, how things are in the world, and you start looking at the elegance of nature and sound, for people who are audio artists — and that’s what a musician is — wow, there is so much to appreciate as godly gifts.”

GROUP PHOTOGRAPH BY JAMIE HARMON; OTHERS COURTESY ORPHEUM THEATRE GROUP

12/15/25 2:57 PM

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S I P S

The Vieux Carré

Tonica’s Lisa Gradinger recreates a New Orleans classic.

BY BRUCE VANW YNGARDEN

A

fter moving to Memphis from Springfield, Missouri, in 1997, Lisa Gradinger soon found herself making drinks for Elvis Presley. Sort of.

“I’d been waiting tables at the Dixie Cafe when I first got to Memphis,” she remembers. “Then I ended up working downtown at Elvis Presley’s Memphis, and that’s where I started bartending. I just watched and picked up on what everybody was doing behind the bar. It looked like more fun than waiting tables.”

Lisa Gradinger with a “Vieux Carré.”

After her stint at Elvis Presley’s, Gradinger moved a few blocks north, to Swig Martini Bar, where she worked for a couple years before landing a job bartending at the Majestic Grille, where she happily stayed from 2006 to 2021. That’s when the great Covid diaspora took her away from the business for a bit, as it did so many others

in the restaurant trade.

“I took a couple months off,” she says, “and asked myself, ‘Do I still want to be doing this?’ And I decided I did. I enjoy restaurants, and I enjoy taking care of people, watching them have a great experience with food and drink. And you meet so many amazing people in this job.”

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Gradinger’s next stop was Ecco, in Midtown, and when owners Sabine Bachman and her son, John Paul Gagliano, opened Tonica in March 2022, Gradinger became the bar manager there. It’s a flourishing tapas restaurant with an extensive and creative cocktail menu, and it’s a good fit, she says.

“I love making tinctures and syrups, and you never stop learning in this job, whether it’s new spirits, new wines, or new techniques.”

— Lisa Gradinger “The neighborhood has responded well,” she says, “and we’ve had a lot of fun times here.

I like trying new things. There are a couple of guys who know that, and they’ll come in and just randomly go, ‘Have you heard of this drink?’ It will usually be something strange or obscure, like ‘the Suburban.’ It usually makes me look something up and then I’ll think about how I could make it better. I love making tinctures and syrups, and you never stop learning in this job, whether it’s new spirits, new wines, or new techniques.”

When she’s not behind the bar, Gradinger and her husband, Joel, are members of a competitive barbecue team, named — wait for it — the Porkcrastinators. It’s become a real passion, she says: “You never realize how competitive it is until you do it. It’s a fun group of people from all around the Memphis area. We cook on Weber grills — our little R2D2s.

My husband specializes in ribs but we both try other things. We had a big ‘bean-off ’ at our house a couple of years ago — mine against his — and his won the

competition that weekend. So he has bean-bragging rights.”

Speaking of bragging rights, Lisa is also quite proud of their family cat, Tony Allen. “Tony is definitely ‘First-Team All Defense’ at our house,” she says.

I find myself wanting to know more about Tony Allen, but duty compels me to ask Lisa what kind of cocktail she plans to serve me.

“I’d like to make you a ‘Vieux Carré,’” she says. “It’s one of the great classic cocktails.”

“That sounds good to me. Let’s go for it.”

And it is indeed a classic drink, created at the Hotel Monteleone in New Orleans in the 1930s, in honor of that city’s own Vieux Carré, the French Quarter district.

“Remind me what’s in it,” I say.

“It’s got rye whiskey, brandy, sweet vermouth, Benedictine, and two bitters — Angostura and Peychaud’s,” Gradinger says.

“That sounds like a rather stout-ass drink.”

“Oh, yes,” she says, smiling, “it’s all booze.”

This is not a job for sissies, I remind myself, even if it is only 3:30 in the afternoon.

Hey, I’m a professional.

The drink arrives in a clear tumbler a minute or so later — short, dark, and handsome, and capped with a jaunty lemonrind spiral. After one sip, you know this thing means business, but it goes about its work very nicely. It’s a smooth operator, and one that will take time to get to know better. But I’ve got time, so there’s no problem.

And if you’ve got time, you should visit Lisa Gradinger at Tonica and let her make you one of her splendid cocktails. And tell you about Tony Allen.

Tonica, 1545 Overton Park Avenue

PHOTOGRAPH BY BRUCE VANWYNGARDEN

12/5/25 11:53 AM

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COCOZZA AMERICAN ITALIAN—”The red sauce joint of your dreams” serves up classic Italian-American fare from the owners of Majestic Grille. Closed Sun. 110 Harbor Town Sq., 609-1111. D, $-$$ COZY CORNER—Serving up ribs, pork sandwiches, chicken, spaghetti, and more; also homemade banana pudding. Closed Mon. 735 N. Parkway, 527-9158. L, D, $ CURFEW—An elevated sports bar/American tavern concept by Top Chef contestant Fabio Viviani at the Canopy Memphis Downtown hotel. 164 Union, 467-0308. B, L, D, $-$$ ESCO RESTAURANT AND TAPAS—Shareable dishes, turkey ribs, and seafood mac’n’cheese at this 2 Chainz franchise. 156 Lt. George W. Lee, 808-3726. L, D, $$-$$$ FELICIA SUZANNE’S—Elevated down-home farmhouse food, using locally sourced ingredients, served in an atmoshere of classic Southern charm. 383 S. Main, 623-7883. L, D, $$$-$$$$.

FERRARO’S CHEESY CORNER & PIZZERIA—Plenty of pizzas, along with a whole new cheese-inspired menu (fancy grilled cheeses and build-your-own mac and cheese bowls). 111 Jackson, 522-2033. L, D, $ FISHBOWL AT THE PYRAMID—Burgers, fish dishes, sandwiches, and more served in a unique “underwater” setting. Bass Pro, 1 Bass Pro Drive, 291-8000. B, L, D, $-$$ FLAME RAMEN—Traditional Japanese ramen restaurant serving up bowls of noodles. 61 S. Second, 441-6686. L, D, wheelchair accessible, Chef Terrence Whitley at INSPIRE Community Café in Binghampton. $-$$ FLIGHT RESTAURANT & WINE BAR—Steaks and seafood, with such specialties as bison ribeye and Muscovy duck, all emphis Magazine offers this curated restaurant listing matched with appropriate wines. 39 S. Main, 521-8005. D, SB, MRA, as a service to our readers. Broken down alphabetically by neighborhoods, $-$$$ GARDEN BRUNCH CAFÉ—Fish and grits, steak and eggs, and this directory does not list every restaurant in town. It does, however, other upscale takes on Southern brunch classics. 492 S. Main, include the magazine’s “Top 50” choices of must-try restaurants in Memphis, 249-7450.

B, L, $$ a group that is updated every August. Establishments open less than a year THE GENRE—Burgers, tenders, catfish, and plenty of vegan options are not eligible for “Top 50” but are noted as “New.” This guide also includes a made to order at this music-themed restaurant/lounge. 200 Poplar, Suite 105, 410-8169. B, L, D, $-$$ representative sampling of other Bluff City eating establishments. No fast-food GOOD FORTUNE CO.—Authentic handcrafted noodles, ramen, and dumplings. 361 S. Main, 561-306-4711. L, D, $-$$ facilities or cafeterias are listed. Restaurants are included regardless of whether GOURMET GALLERY—A variety of elevated comfort dishes, like they advertise in Memphis Magazine; those that operate in multiple locations are listed THE fried ribs and waffles, shrimp and grits, grilled salmon, and more. Closed under the neighborhood of their original location. This guide is updated regularly, Mon. 412 S. Main, 848-4691. L, D, $-$$$ but we recommend that you call ahead to check on hours, prices, or other details. GROOVY GRATITUDE—Offers a vibrant selection of cold-pressed juices, handcrafted smoothies, and healthy eats like paninis and acai Suggestions from readers are welcome: dining@memphismagazine.com. bowls. Closed Sun. 605 N. Second, 417-8007. B, L, WB, $ GUS’S WORLD FAMOUS FRIED CHICKEN—Serves chicken with signature spicy batter, along with homemade beans, slaw, and DOWNTOWN BRASS DOOR IRISH PUB—Irish and New-American cuisine includes pies. 310 S. Front, 527-4877; 3100 Forest Hill Irene (Germantown), such entrees as fish and chips, burgers, shepherd’s pie, all-day Irish ALDO’S PIZZA PIES—Serving gourmet pizzas — including Mr. 853-6005; 2965 N. Germantown Pkwy. (Cordova), 373-9111; 730 S. breakfast, and more. 152 Madison, 572-1813. L, D, SB, $-$$ T Rex — salads, and more. Also 30 beers, bottled or on tap. 100 S. Mendenhall, 767-2323; 505 Highway 70 W., Mason, TN, 901-294-2028.

BY THE BREWERY—Breakfast and lunch café, with a focus on Main, 577-7743; 752 S. Cooper, 725-7437. L, D, $-$$ L, D, MRA, $ Southern-style biscuits, salads, and soups.

496 Tennessee, 310-4341.

AMELIA GENE’S—Globally inspired fine-dining cuisine at the HIVE BAGEL & DELI—Bagels, bagels, and more bagels at B, L, $ One Beale project, including Rohan duck, Wagyu filet, and an this new downtown deli offering baked goods, sandwiches, CAPRICCIO GRILL ITALIAN STEAKHOUSE—Offers prime steaks, extensive cheese cart. 255 S. Front, 730-7650. D, $$-$$$ and salads. Closed Mon./Tue. 276 S. Front, 509-2946. B, L, $ fresh seafood (lobster tails, grouper, mahi mahi), pasta, and several THE ARCADE—Memphis’ oldest cafe. Specialties include sweet HU. ROOF—Rooftop cocktail bar serves toasts with a variety of toppings Northern Italian specialties.

149 Union, The Peabody, 529-4199.

B, L, D, potato pancakes, a fried peanut butter and banana sandwich, and including beef tartare with cured egg, cognac, and capers or riced SB, MRA, $-$$$$ breakfast served all day. 540 S. Main, 526-5757. B, L, MRA, $ cauliflower with yellow curry, currants, and almonds. Also salads, fish CAROLINA WATERSHED—This indoor/outdoor eatery, set around ARNOLD’S SMOKEHOUSE—A classic smokehouse with vegan tacos, and boiled peanut hummus. 79 Madison, 333-1229. D, $ silos, features reimagined down-home classics, including fried green and nonvegan options seasoned to perfection. Closed Mon. 2019 E. HUSTLE & DOUGH BAKERY & CAFE—Flaky, baked breakfast tomatoes with smoked catfi sh, a buttermilk fried chicken sandwich, Person, 922-5950. L, D, SB, $-$$$ goodness every day with fresh pastries, sandwiches, and more at burgers, and more.

Closed Mon.-Thurs.

141 E. Carolina, 321-5553.

L, D, AUTOMATIC SLIM’S—Longtime downtown favorite specializes in Arrive Hotel. 477 S. Main, 701-7577. B, L, $ WB, $-$$ contemporary American cuisine emphasizing local ingredients; also DINING SYMBOLS ITTA BENA—Southern and Cajun-American cuisine CATHERINE & MARY’S—A variety of pastas, extensive martini list. 83 S. Second, 525-7948. L, D, WB, MRA, $-$$$ served here, located above B.B. King’s Blues Club on grilled quail, pâté, razor clams, and monkfish are B — breakfast BARDOG TAVERN—Classic American grill with Italian influence, Beale St.; specialties are duck and waffles and shrimp among the dishes served at this Italian restaurant in the Bardog offers pasta specialties such as Grandma’s NJ Meatballs, as well L — lunch and grits, along with steaks, chops, seafood, and pasta.

Chisca.

272 S. Main, 254-8600.

D, SB, MRA, $-$$$ as salads, sliders, sandwiches, and daily specials. 73 Monroe, 275-8752.

D — dinner 145 Beale, 578-3031. D, MRA, $$-$$$ CHEZ PHILIPPE—Classical/contemporary B (Mon.-Fri.), L, D, WB, MRA, $-$$ SB — Sunday brunch JEM DINING—Chef Josh Mutchnick offers a French cuisine with Asian and Nordic infl uences, BELLE TAVERN—Serving elevated bar food, including a butcher board dining experience that’s memorable, refined, WB — weekend brunch presented in a luxurious atmosphere with seasonal with a variety of meats and cheeses, as well as daily specials. 117 Barboro unpretentious, and welcoming with dishes from around MRA — member, Memphis tasting menus from chef Keith Clinton. Afternoon tea Alley, 249-6580. L (Sun.), D, MRA, $ the world. Closed Sun./Mon./Tue. 644 Madison, 286served Thu.-Sun., noon-3:30 p.m. (reservations Restaurant Association BEN YAY’S GUMBO SHOP—Spiritual successor to DejaVu, offering 1635. D, $$-$$$ required). Closed Sun.-Tues. The Peabody, 149 Union, $ — under $15 per person fresh and authentic Creole staples. 150 Peabody Place, Suite 111, KING & UNION BAR GROCERY—Classic Southern 529-4188. D, MRA, $$$$ without drinks or desserts 779-4125. L, D, $-$$ favorites including catfish plate, pimento cheese, CIMAS—It’s breakfast tacos, shrimp and grits, $$ — under $25 BISCUITS & JAMS—Offering sweet and savory brunch with a Cajun po-boys, chicken & waffles. Open for breakfast, lunch, chilaquiles verdes, and plenty of other Southern and $$$ — $26-$50 flare. Specialties include smoked sausage or spicy fried chicken on and dinner with cocktails served with flair and favorite Latin-American twists at the Hyatt Centric. 33 Beale, biscuits, lemon blueberry waffles, and rum custard French toast. No $$$$ — over $50 Memphis beers. Locally made confections available in 444-3232. B, L, D, $-$$$ walk-ins on weekends. 24 N. B.B. King Blvd., 672-7905. B, L, WB, $-$$ the grocery. 185 Union, 523-8500. B, L, D, $-$$

M E M PH I S

D I N I N G

G U I D E

We celebrate our city’s community table and the people who grow, cook, and eat the best Memphis food at M E M P H I S M A G A Z I N E . C O M / F O O D 72 • M E M P H I S M A G A Z I N E . C O M • J A N U A R Y 2 0 2 6

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(This guide, compiled by our editors, includes editorial picks and advertisers.)

PHOTOGRAPH BY JUSTIN FOX BURKS

M

12/5/25 11:54 AM

MEMPHIS DINING GUIDE

KOOKY CANUCK—Home of the four-pound Kookamonga Burger (no charge to anyone who can eat it in less than 60 minutes), plus other (smaller) burgers, sandwiches, wings, soups, and salads. 57 S. Second, 901-578-9800. L,D, MRA, $-$$ LITTLE BETTIE—New Haven-style pizzas and snacks from the Andrew-Michael team at Wiseacre’s Downtown location. 398 S. B.B. King Blvd, 334-9411. L, D, $-$$ THE LOBBYIST AT THE CHISCA—Chef Jimmy Gentry brings his farm-to-table ideas downtown, with seasonal, and sometimes weekly, new menus, and an emphasis on creative vegetable dishes. Closed Sun. 272 S. Main St., Suite 101, 249-2170. D, $$-$$$$ LOFLIN YARD—Beer garden and restaurant serves vegetarian fare and smoked-meat dishes, including beef brisket and pork tenderloin, cooked on a custom-made grill. Closed Mon.-Tues. 7 W. Carolina, 249-3046. L (Sat. and Sun.), D, MRA, $-$$ THE LOOKOUT AT THE PYRAMID—Serves seafood and Southern fare, including cornmeal-fried oysters, sweet tea brined chicken, and elk chops. 1 Bass Pro Dr, 620-4600/291-8200. L, D, $-$$$ LUNA RESTAURANT & LOUNGE—Serving a limited menu of breakfast and lunch items. Dinner entrees include citrus glaze salmon and Cajun stuffed chicken. 179 Madison (Hotel Napoleon), 526-0002. B, D (Mon.-Sat.), $-$$$ MACIEL’S—Entrees include tortas, fried taco plates, quesadillas, chorizo and pastor soft tacos, salads, and more. Closed Sun. 45 S. Main, 526-0037; 820 S. Cooper, 443-4356. MRA, $ MAHOGANY RIVER TERRACE—Upscale Southern restaurant offers such dishes as coffee-rubbed lamb chops and baked Cajun Cornish hen. Closed for dinner Sun. and all day Mon.-Tues. 280 Island Drive, 249-9774. L, D, SB, $-$$$ THE MAJESTIC GRILLE—Features aged steaks, fresh seafood, and such specialties as roasted chicken and grilled pork tenderloin; offers a pre-theater menu and classic cocktails. Well-stocked bar. 145 S. Main, 522-8555. L, D, WB, MRA, $-$$$ McEWEN’S—Southern/American cuisine with international flavors; specialties include steak and seafood, sweet potato-crusted catfish with macaroni and cheese, and more. Closed Sun., Monroe location. 120 Monroe, 527-7085; 1110 Van Buren (Oxford), 662-234-7003. L, D, SB (Oxford only), MRA, $$-$$$ MESQUITE CHOP HOUSE—The focus here is on steaks, including prime fillet, rib-eyes, and prime-aged New York strip; also, some seafood options. 88 Union, 527-5337; 5960 Getwell (Southaven), 662-8902467. D, SB, $$-$$$ MOLLIE FONTAINE LOUNGE—Specializes in tapas (small plates) featuring global cuisine. Closed Sun.-Tues. 679 Adams, 524-1886.

D, MRA, $ MOMMA’S ROADHOUSE—This diner and dive at Highway 55 serves up smoked wings, burgers, and beer, among other solid bar-food options.

855 Kentucky, 207-5111. L, D, MRA, $ PAULETTE’S—Presents fine dining with a Continental flair, including such entrees as filet Paulette with butter cream sauce and crabmeat and spinach crepes; also changing daily specials and great views. River Inn, 50 Harbor Town Square, 260-3300. B, L, D, WB, MRA, $-$$$ RENDEZVOUS, CHARLES VERGOS’—Menu items include barbecued ribs, cheese plates, skillet shrimp, red beans and rice, and Greek salads. Closed Sun.-Mon. 52 S. Second, 523-2746. L (Fri.Sat.), D, $-$$ ROCK’N DOUGH—A blend of Italian and American foods like artisan pizza, salads, pasta, burgers, and house-brewed beers. 704 Madison, 587-6256. L, D, $-$$ SABOR CARIBE—Serving up “Caribbean flavors” with dishes from Colombia, Venezuela, Puerto Rico, and Cuba. Closed Sunday. 662 Madison, 949-8100. L, D, $ SAGE—Restaurant and lounge features daily lunch specials and tapas with such dishes as braised short ribs, teriyaki pulled pork, and the Sage burger made with Angus beef, avocado mash, fried egg, and flash-fried sage. 94 S. Main, 672-7902. L, D, WB, $-$$ SILLY GOOSE LOUNGE—Gourmet, wood-fired pizzas and handcrafted cocktails at this downtown restaurant and lounge. 150 Peabody Place, Suite 111, 435-6915. L, D, $ SOUTH MAIN SUSHI & GRILL—Serving sushi, nigiri, and more. 520 S. Main, 249-2194. L, D, $ SOB—Elevated gastropub that serves favorites like general Tso’s cauliflower or duck fried rice. 345 S. Main, 526-0388; 5040 Sanderlin (East Memphis), 818-0821; 1329 W. Poplar, 286-1360. L, D, WB, $-$$

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MEMPHIS DINING GUIDE

SOUTH POINT GROCERY—Fresh and delicious sandwiches made to order at Downtown’s new grocery market. 136 Webster. B, L, D, $ SUGAR GRITS—Who said breakfast has to be in the morning? The Westmorelands offer grits and other breakfast goodness all day long, in addition to other Southern-style lunch and dinner options. 150 Peabody Place, Suite 111, 249-5206. B, L, D, $-$$ SUNRISE MEMPHIS—Serves breakfast all day, including house-made biscuits, frittatas, kielbasa or boudin plates, and breakfast platters. 670 Jefferson, 552-3144; 5469 Poplar Ave. (East Memphis), 844-6117. B, L, MRA, $ TERRACE—Creative American and Continental cuisine includes such dishes as filet mignon, beef or lamb sliders, chicken satay, and mushroom pizzetta. Rooftop, River Inn of Harbor Town, 50 Harbor Town Square, 260-3366. D, MRA, $$ TEXAS DE BRAZIL—Serves beef, pork, lamb, and chicken dishes, and Brazilian sausage; also a salad bar with extensive toppings. 150 Peabody Place, Suite 103, 526-7600. L (Wed.-Fri.), D, WB, $$-$$$ TUG’S—Famous for New Orleans gumbo, fabulous burgers, fried thin catfish, and specialty pancakes. Now serving Grisanti Crafted Pizza. 51 Harbor Town Square, 260-3344. B, L, D, WB, $$-$$$ WAHLBURGERS WILD—Wahlburgers brings its classic menu, but with a few gamey twists at the Bass Pro Pyramid. 1 Bass Pro Drive, 291-8000. B, L, D, $-$$ WESTY’S—Extensive menu includes a variety of wild rice dishes, sandwiches, plate lunches, and hot fudge pie. 346 N. Main, 543-3278.

L, D, $ WINGMAN—Downtown lounge and hookah bar offering wings galore with ten signature sauces, and plenty of other goodies. 143 Madison, 907-0586. D, WB, $-$$ MIDTOWN (INCLUDES THE MEDICAL CENTER) ABNER’S FAMOUS CHICKEN—Fried chicken tenders and dipping sauces galore at this Mid-South staple. 1350 Concourse Ave., Suite 137, 425-2597; 1100 N. Germantown Pkwy., 754-5355 (Cordova). L, D, $-$$ ABYSSINIA RESTAURANT—Ethiopian/Mediterranean menu includes beef, chicken, lamb, fish entrees, and vegetarian dishes; also a lunch buffet. 2600 Poplar, 321-0082. L, D, $-$$ ART BAR—Inventive cocktails feature locally foraged ingredients; snacks include house-cured salt & vinegar potato chips and herb-roasted olives. Closed Mon. 1350 Concourse Ave., Suite 280, 507-8030. D, $ ASHTAR GARDEN—Southern twists on classic brunch dishes, and plenty of cocktails. Closed Mon.-Wed. 898 S. Cooper, 4431514. L, D, $-$$ BABALU TACOS & TAPAS—Spanish-style tapas with Southern flair; also taco and enchilada of the day; specials change daily. 2115 Madison, 274-0100; 6450 Poplar, 410-8909. L, D, SB, MRA, $-$$ BAIN BARBECUE & BAKERY—Brian Bain’s popular Texas-style barbecue is back, alongside an assortment of baked goods. 993 S. Cooper, 310-4141. B, L, $-$$ BAO TOAN—Traditional Vietnamese restaurant offering small bites and home-style plates, plus creative versions of street-food favorites. 1350 Concourse Avenue. 695-1265. L, D, WB. Closed Tues. $-$$ BAR DKDC—Features an ever-changing menu of international “street food,” from Thai to Mexican, Israeli to Indian, along with specialty cocktails. 964 S. Cooper, 272-0830. D, MRA, $ BAR KEOUGH—It’s old-school eats and cocktails at the new Cooper-Young neighborhood corner bar by Kevin Keough. 247 S. Cooper, 654-3851. D, $ BAR-B-Q SHOP—Dishes up barbecued ribs, spaghetti, bologna, other classics. Closed Sun. 1782 Madison, 272-1277. L, D, MRA, $-$$ BARI RISTORANTE ENOTECA—Authentic Southeastern Italian cuisine (Puglia) emphasizes lighter entrees. Serves fresh fish and beef dishes and a homemade soup of the day. 524 S. Cooper, 722-2244. D, SB, MRA, $-$$$ BARKSDALE RESTAURANT—Old-school diner serving breakfast and Southern plate lunches. 237 S. Cooper, 722-2193. B, L, D, $ BAYOU BAR & GRILL—New Orleans fare at this Overton Square eatery includes jambalaya, gumbo, catfish Acadian, shrimp dishes, red beans and rice, and muffalettas. 2094 Madison, 278-8626. L, D, WB, MRA, $-$$ BEAUTY SHOP—Modern American cuisine with international flair served in a former beauty shop. Serves steaks, salads, pasta, and seafood, including pecan-crusted golden sea bass. Perennial “Best Brunch” winner. Closed for dinner Sunday. 966 S. Cooper, 272-7111. L, D, SB, MRA, $-$$$

BOSCOS—Tennessee’s first craft brewery serves a variety of freshly brewed beers as well as wood-fired oven pizzas, pasta, seafood, steaks, and sandwiches. 2120 Madison, 432-2222. L, D, SB (with live jazz), MRA, $-$$ BROADWAY PIZZA—Serving a variety of pizzas, including the Broadway Special, as well as sandwiches, salads, wings, and soul-food specials. 2581 Broad, 454-7930; 627 S. Mendenhall, 207-1546. L, D, $-$$ CAFE 1912—French/American bistro owned by culinary pioneer Glenn Hays serving such seafood entrees as seared sea scallops with charred cauliflower purée and chorizo cumin sauce; also crepes, salads, and onion soup gratinée. 243 S. Cooper, 722-2700. D, SB, MRA, $-$$$ CAFE ECLECTIC—Omelets and chicken and waffles are among menu items, along with quesadillas, sandwiches, wraps, and burgers. Menu varies by location. 603 N. McLean, 725-1718; 111 Harbor Town Square, 590-4645. B, L, D, SB, MRA, $ CAMEO—Three longtime Memphis bartenders join forces for creative cocktails, cheese boards, snacks, and Sunday brunch. 1835 Union, Suite 3. 305-6511. D, SB, $-$$ CELTIC CROSSING—Specializes in Irish and American pub fare.

Entrees include shepherd’s pie, shrimp and sausage coddle, and fish and chips. 903 S. Cooper, 274-5151. L, D, WB, MRA, $-$$ CENTRAL BBQ—Serves ribs, smoked hot wings, pulled pork sandwiches, chicken, turkey, nachos, and portobello sandwiches.

Offers both pork and beef barbecue. 2249 Central, 272-9377; 4375 Summer, 767-4672; 147 E. Butler, 672-7760 ; 6201 Poplar, 417-7962. L, D, MRA, $-$$ COMPLICATED PILGRIM—Quick-serve coffee shop, bar, and restaurant all in one at The Memphian hotel. 21 S. Cooper, 538-7309.

B, L, D, $-$$ COOPER’S—“A charming experience for all ages,“ with po-boys, wraps, wings, fettucini. 959 S. Cooper, 343-0103. L, D, $-$$ THE COVE—Nautical-themed restaurant and bar serving oysters, pizzas, and more. The Stoner Pie, with tamales and fritos, is a popular dish. 2559 Broad, 730-0719. L, D, $ THE CRAZY NOODLE—Korean noodle dishes range from bibam beef noodle with cabbage, carrots, and other vegetables, to curry chicken noodle; also rice cakes served in a flavorful sauce. Closed for lunch Sat.-Sun. 2015 Madison, 272-0928. L, D, $ ECCO—Mediterranean-inspired specialties range from rib-eye steak to seared scallops to housemade pastas and a grilled vegetable plate; also a Saturday brunch. Closed Sun.-Mon. 1585 Overton Park, 410-8200. B, L, D, $-$$ EVERGREEN GRILL—Serving classic American cuisine like patty melts, burgers, phillies, and more to bring you the comforting taste of home. Closed Mon./Tue. 212 N. Evergreen, 779-7065. L, D, X,$$-$$$ FARM BURGER—Serves grass-fed, freshly ground, locally sourced burgers; also available with chicken, pork, or veggie quinoa patties, with such toppings as aged white cheddar, kale coleslaw, and roasted beets.

1350 Concourse Avenue, Suite 175, 800-1851. L, D, $ FAWN—Seasonal, tapas-style dishes (don’t miss the sourdough bread and butter) in a chic setting. Closed Mon. 937 S. Cooper, 310-4890. D, SB, $$ FEAST & GRAZE—Whipped goat toast, open-faced grilled cheese, and other local pantry snacks and charcuterie boards. Closed Sun./Mon. Inside Brooks Museum of Art, 1934 Poplar, 654-5926. L, $ FINO’S FROM THE HILL—Italian deli offers old favorites such as the Acquisto as well as a new breakfast menu. Germantown location paired with Happy Glaze Donuts. 1853 Madison, 272-FINO; 7781 Farmington (Germantown), B, L, D, $ FLAME RAMEN—Traditional Japanese ramen restaurant serving up bowls of noodles in Midtown. 1838 Union Ave. 779-8666, 61 S. Second St., Suite 160 (downtown). D, $-$$ FLIP SIDE—Pinball meets pub in the Crosstown neighborhood, with plenty of games alongside a Caribbean- and Latin-inspired menu. Closed Mon. 1349 Autumn, 207-6193. L, D, $-$$ FRIDA’S—Mexican cuisine and Tex-Mex standards, including chimichangas, enchiladas, and fajitas; seafood includes shrimp and tilapia.

1718 Madison, 244-6196. L, D, $-$$ GLOBAL CAFÉ—This international food hall hosts three immigrant/refugee food entrepreneurs serving Venezuelan, Sudanese, and Syrian cuisines. Samosas, shawarma, and kabobs are among the menu items. Closed Mon. 1350 Concourse Avenue, Suite 157. L, D, MRA, $ GOLDEN INDIA—Northern Indian specialties include tandoori chicken as well as lamb, beef, shrimp, and vegetarian dishes. 2097 Madison, 728-5111. L, D, $-$$

GOOD GROCERIES MARKET & CAFÉ—Providing fresh, healthy, cruelty-free meals, Good Groceries offers a classic American menu with a twist: instead of pork, they use duck for their BBQ. They also sell quesadillas, mac-and-cheese, sandwiches, and more. Closed Sun. 585 S. Cooper, 325-1269. B, L, D, $ GROWLERS—Sports bar and eatery serves standard bar fare in addition to pasta, tacos, chicken and waffles, and light options. 1911 Poplar, 244-7904. L, D, $-$$ GUAC FRESH MEX—Authentic Mexican cuisine and four types of guacamole. Closed Sun. 782 Washington, 587-4100. L, D, $ HATTIE B’S—Fried chicken spot features “hot chicken” with a variety of heat levels; from no heat to “shut the cluck up” sauce. Sides include greens, pimento mac-and-cheese, and black-eyed pea salad. 596 S. Cooper, 424-5900. L, D, $ HUEY’S—This family-friendly restaurant offers 13 different burgers, a variety of sandwiches, and delicious soups and salads. 1927 Madison, 726-4372; 1771 N. Germantown Pkwy. (Cordova), 754-3885; 77 S. Second (downtown), 527-2700; 2130 W. Poplar (Collierville), 8544455; 7090 Malco Blvd. (Southaven), 662-349-7097; 7825 Winchester, 624-8911; 4872 Poplar, 682-7729; 7677 Farmington Blvd. (Germantown), 318-3030; 8570 Highway 51 N. (Millington), 873-5025. L, D, MRA, $ IMAGINE VEGAN CAFE—Dishes at this fully vegan restaurant range from salads and sandwiches to full dinners, including eggplant parmesan and “beef” tips and rice; breakfast all day Sat. and Sun. 2158 Young, 654-3455. L, D, WB, $ INDIA PALACE—Tandoori chicken, lamb shish kabobs, and chicken tikka masala are among the entrees; also, vegetarian options and a daily all-you-can-eat lunch buffet. 1720 Poplar. 278-1199. L, D, $-$$ INSPIRE COMMUNITY CAFE—Serving breakfast all day, in addition to quesadillas, rice bowls, and more for lunch and dinner. 510 Tillman, Suite 110, 509-8640. B, L, D, $ JACK BROWN’S BEER AND BURGER JOINT—Another spot to satisfy your burger craving, this time with 100% American Wagyu beef. 2197 Central, 512-6957. L, D, $-$$$ THE JUICE JOINT—Locally owned purveyor of cold-pressed juices, smoothies, açai bowls, and snacks. 1350 Concourse Ave., 572-1127; 3139 Poplar Ave. (East Memphis), 207-2535. B, L, $-$$ LAFAYETTE’S MUSIC ROOM—Serves such Southern cuisine as po’boys, shrimp and grits, and wood-fired pizzas. 2119 Madison, 2075097. L, D, WB, MRA, $-$$ LOS COMALES—Authentic Mexican cuisine, daily specials, and strong margaritas. 1322 Madison, 440-8393; 345 Madison Ave. (downtown), 590-4524; 2860 S. Perkins (East Memphis), 369-0528. L, D, $-$$ LOUIS CONNELLY’S BAR FOR FUN TIMES & FRIENDSHIP—An upgraded dive bar with a neighborhood feel and a rockin’ SMASH burger. Closed Sun. and Mon. 322 S. Cleveland, 4339582. L, D, $-$$ MADISON TAVERN—Indoor and outdoor seating available, plus a full menu with a range of comfort foods and drinks on tap. 2126 Madison, 417-8029. L, D, $-$$$ MARY’S B.O.T.E.—This bar of tropical escapism offers over 30 specialty drinks, pizzas, bar snacks, and a cozy interior that transports customers to the beach. 21+ only. Closed Mon. 588 S. Cooper. D, $ MEMPHIS JAMAICAN KITCHEN—Authentic Jamaican specialties, including jerk chicken and oxtails. 1354 Madison, L, D, $$ MEMPHIS PIZZA CAFE—Homemade pizzas are specialties; also serves sandwiches, calzones, and salads. 2087 Madison, 726-5343; 5061 Park, 684-1306; 7604 W. Farmington (Germantown), 753-2218; 797 W. Poplar (Collierville), 861-7800; 5627 Getwell (Southaven), 662-5361364. L, D, $-$$ MEMPHIS TOAST—Provides authentic Memphian breakfast cuisine and features themed rooms to honor iconic Memphis figures. Specialties include French toast, shrimp and grits, and their little Lucille breakfast burrito. 954 Jackson, 417-7817. B, L, WB, $-$$ MEMPHIS WHISTLE—Cocktails, cocktails, and even more delicious cocktails alongside burgers, sandwiches, and other tasty snacks. 2299 Young, 236-7136. Closed Mon.-Tue. D, $-$$ MOLLY’S LA CASITA—Homemade tamales, fish tacos, a vegetarian combo, and bacon-wrapped shrimp are a few of the specialties. 2006 Madison, 726-1873. L, D, MRA, $-$$ PAYNE’S BAR-B-QUE—Opened in 1972, this family-owned barbecue joint serves ribs, smoked sausage, and chopped pork sandwiches with a standout mustard slaw and homemade sauce. About as down-to-earth as it gets. 1762 Lamar, 272-1523. L, D, $-$$

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PETALS OF A PEONY—Authentic Chinese restaurant serving chicken, fish, tofu, and more, smothered in spicy sauces. 2110 Madison, 207-6680. L, D, $-$$$ SALTWATER CRAB—Offers an array of seafood dishes including boils with blue crab, crab legs, lobster tails, and more, and specialty sushi like the Dynamite or Royal King rolls, in addition to signature sangrias and cocktails.

2059 Madison, 922-5202. L, D, $$ THE SECOND LINE—Kelly English brings “relaxed Creole cuisine” to his newest eatery; serves a variety of po’boys and such specialties as barbecue shrimp, andouille shrimp, and pimento cheese fries. 2144 Monroe, 590-2829. L, D, WB, $-$$ SEKISUI—Japanese fusion cuisine, fresh sushi bar, grilled meats and seafood, California rolls, and vegetarian entrees. Poplar/ Perkins location’s emphasis is on Pacific Rim cuisine. Menu and hours vary at each location. 25 Belvedere, 725-0005; 1884 N. Germantown Pkwy. (Cordova), 309-8800; 4724 Poplar, 767-7770; 2130 W. Poplar (Collierville), 854-0622; 2990 Kirby-Whitten (Bartlett), 377-2727; 6696 Poplar, 747-0001. L, D, $-$$$ SEN TRANG—Serving a wide variety of Chinese and Vietnamese soups, stir-fries, and noodles. 1615 Madison, 276-0006. L, D, $-$$ SLICE MIDTOWN—Serving New York-style pizza as well as subs and pasta dishes (formerly known as Little Italy). 1495 Union 725-0280; L, D, $-$$ SMOKY CITY BBQ—Serving authentic Memphis barbeque, including burgers, ribs, wings, and daily specials. Closed Sun. 1023 Jackson, 425-3115. L, D, $-$$$ SOUL FISH CAFE—Serving Southern-style soul food, tacos, and po’boys, including catfish, crawfish, oyster, shrimp, chicken, and smoked pork tenderloin. 862 S. Cooper, 725-0722; 3160 Village Shops Dr. (Germantown), 755-6988; 4720 Poplar, 590-0323. L, D, MRA, $-$$ STICKEM—Brick-and-mortar location for the popular food truck, which offers grilled meat on a stick. 1788 Madison, 474-7214. Closed Sunday.

L, D, $ TEKILA MEXICAN CUISINE—Mexican cuisine with a modern twist.

Specialties include chicken mole, enchiladas verde, and the trio special.

1433 Union, 510-5734. L, D, WB, $-$$$ TAMBOLI’S PASTA & PIZZA—Pasta-maker Miles Tamboli whips up Italian soul food with seasonal menus featuring dishes like crispy fried chicken or creamy bucatini with pecorino cheese. Serves dinner Tues.-Sat. 1761 Madison, 410-8866. D, $-$$ TAKASHI BISTRO—Fusion restaurant with an open kitchen that lets customers watch chefs prepare a variety of Japanese and Thai cuisine.

1680 Union, Suite 109, 800-2936. L, D, $-$$ TONICA—Paella and other Spanish-inspired dishes with an Italian touch, alongside an extensive list of gin and tonics. 1545 Overton Park, Closed Mon.-Wed. D, $-$$ TSUNAMI—Features Pacific Rim cuisine (Asia, Australia, South Pacific, etc.); also a changing “small plate” menu. Chef Ben Smith is a Cooper-Young pioneer. Specialties include Asian nachos and roasted sea bass. Closed Sunday. 928 S. Cooper, 274-2556. D, MRA, $$-$$$ TUYEN’S ASIAN BISTRO—A variety of Asian dishes from the minds and chefs behind Saigon Le. Closed Sun. 288 N. Cleveland, L, D, $-$$ ZINNIE’S—Dive bar classic reopens with a makeover and signature Zinnaloni sandwich. 1688 Madison, 726-5004. L, D, $ SOUTH MEMPHIS (INCLUDES PARKWAY VILLAGE, FOX MEADOWS, SOUTH MEMPHIS, WINCHESTER, AND WHITEHAVEN)

BALA’S BISTRO—Authentic West African cuisine available to order or by the pound, alongside traditional American dishes and an extensive vegan menu. 4571 Elvis Presley, 509-3024. L, D, $-$$ CACHE 42 KITCHEN & COCKTAILS—Elevated fine dining (think golden rack of lamb or lobster queso) and cocktail lounge at MoneyBagg Yo’s restaurant; menu by chef Daris Leatherwood. Brunch and lunch options. 4202 Hacks Cross, Suite 121. 494-5458. D, $-$$ COLETTA’S—Longtime eatery serves such specialties as homemade ravioli, lasagna, and pizza with barbecue or traditional toppings. 1063 S. Parkway E., 948-7652; 2850 Appling Rd. (Bartlett), 383-1122. L, D, $-$$ CURRY BOWL—Specializes in Southern Indian cuisine, serving Tandoori chicken, biryani, tikka masala, and more. Weekend buffet. 4141 Hacks Cross, 207-6051. L, D, $ DELTA’S KITCHEN—The premier restaurant at The Guest House at Graceland serves Elvis-inspired dishes — like Nutella and Peanut Butter Crepes for breakfast — and upscale Southern cuisine — including lamb chops and shrimp and grits — for dinner. 3600 Elvis Presley, 443-3000.

B, D, $-$$$

DWJ KOREAN BARBECUE—This authentic Korean eatery serves kimbap, barbecued beef short ribs, rice and noodles dishes, and hot pots and stews. 3750 Hacks Cross, Suite 101. 746-8057; 2156 Young.

207-6204. L, D, $-$$ FABULOUS FLAVORS & FRIENDS—”The Candy Lady” Precious Thompson Jones comes up with a little bit of everything: omelettes, quesadillas, t-bones and waffles, and plenty of soul food. 2063 E. Brooks, 314-0735. L, D, $ THE FOUR WAY—Legendary soul-food establishment dishing up such entrees as fried and baked catfish, chicken, and turkey and dressing, along with a host of vegetables and desserts. Around the corner from the legendary Stax Studio. Closed Mon. 998 Mississippi, 507-1519.

L, D, $ HERNANDO’S HIDEAWAY—No one cares how late it gets; not at Hernando’s Hideaway. Live music, killer happy hour, and plenty of bar fare at this South Memphis hang. 3210 Old Hernando, 917-982-1829. L, D, $ INTERSTATE BAR-B-Q—Specialties include chopped pork-shoulder sandwiches, ribs, hot wings, spaghetti, chicken, and turkey. 2265 S. Third, 775-2304; 150 W. Stateline (Southaven), 662-393-5699. L, D, $-$$ JIM & SAMELLA’S—It’s a revolving menu of soul food delight from Chef Talbert Fleming, with anything from Southern ribs to fried tamales.

841 Bullington, 265-8761. L, D, $ LEONARD’S—Serves wet and dry ribs, barbecue sandwiches, spaghetti, catfish, homemade onion rings, and lemon icebox pie; also a lunch buffet. 5465 Fox Plaza, 360-1963. L, $-$$ MARLOWE’S—In addition to its signature barbecue and ribs, Marlowe’s serves Southern-style steaks, chops, lasagna, and more. 4381 Elvis Presley, 332-4159. D, MRA, $-$$ UNCLE LOU’S FRIED CHICKEN—Featured on Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives for good reason: fried chicken (mild, hot, or home-style); jumbo burgers four patties high; strawberry shortcake, and assorted fruit pies.

3633 Millbranch, 332-2367. L, D, MRA, $ SUMMER / BERCLAIR / RALEIGH / BARTLETT 901 HOT POT & KOREAN BBQ—All-you-can-eat hot pot and Korean BBQ, from short ribs to garlic shrimp. 2965 N. Germantown Pkwy., 512-4963. L, D, $$-$$$ BISCUITS & JAMS—Biscuits, waffles, French toast, and plenty of sharables at this Bartlett breakfast spot. Closed Mon./Tue. 5806 Stage, 672-7905. B, L, $ BRYANT’S BREAKFAST—Three-egg omelets, pancakes, and The Sampler Platter are among the popular entrees here. Possibly the best biscuits in town. Closed Mon. and Tues. 3965 Summer, 324-7494. B, L, $ CEVICHERIA AND GRILL CHILEMON—Ceviche, of course, but also plenty of other postres, aperitivos, and mixed grilled meat and seafood feasts. Closed Sun. 4509 Summer, 672-7905. L, D, $ CHEF FLAVAS AND BARTLETT BREAKFAST FACTORY— ”Flavaful” sandwiches, soups, pastas, and more from the makers of the popular local spinach artichoke dip. Traditional breakfast options served by Bartlett Breakfast Factory. Closed Sun./Mon. 6301 Stage, 779-2200. B, L, D, $-$$ DIM SUM KING—All the best from a selection of authentic Chinese dishes: roasted duck, sizzling hot plate, Cantonese BBQ, and plenty more.

5266 Summer, Suite 65, 766-0831. L, D, $-$$ ELWOOD’S SHACK—Casual comfort food includes tacos, pizza, and sandwiches. Specialties include meats smoked in-house (chicken, turkey, brisket, pork), barbecue pizza, and steelhead trout tacos. 4523 Summer, 761-9898. B, L, D, $ EXLINES’ BEST PIZZA—Serves pizza, Italian dinners, sandwiches, and salads. 6250 Stage, 382-3433; 2935 Austin Peay, 388-4711; 2801 Kirby Parkway, 754-0202; 7730 Wolf River Blvd. (Germantown), 753-4545; 531 W. Stateline, 662-342-4544.

L, D, MRA, $ HABANA CLUB RESTAURANT, BAR & GRILLE—Offering authentic Cuban fare. 6110 Macon, 480-8173. L, D, $-$$ LA TAQUERIA GUADALUPANA—Fajitas and quesadillas are just a few of the authentic Mexican entrees offered here. A bonafide Memphis institution. 4818 Summer, 685-6857; 5848 Winchester, 365-4992. L, D, $ LOTUS—Authentic Vietnamese-Asian fare, including lemon-grass chicken and shrimp, egg rolls, Pho soup, and spicy Vietnamese vermicelli. 4970 Summer, 682-1151. D, $

MORTIMER’S—Contemporary American entrees include trout almondine, chicken dishes, and hand-cut steaks; also sandwiches, salads, and daily/nightly specials. A Memphis landmark since the Knickerbocker closed. Closed for lunch Sat.-Sun. 590 N. Perkins, 7619321. L, D, $-$$ NAGASAKI INN—Chicken, steak, and lobster are among the main courses; meal is cooked at your table. 3951 Summer, 454-0320. D, $$ NAM KING—General Tso’s chicken, hot and sour soup, and homemade chicken wings are back at the longtime Raleigh Chinese eatery. 3624 Austin Peay, Suite 3, 373-4411. L, D, $-$$ PANCAKE SHOP—Classic breakfast items plus meat-and-three lunches, sandwiches, soups, salads. Open 6 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. every day except Wednesday. 4838 Summer, 767-0206. B, L, $ ÓRALE TACOS & BAKERY—Tacos, enchiladas, and other traditional Southern Mexican dishes alongside baked pan dulces. 2204 Whitten, 571-1786. B, L, D, $-$$ PANDA GARDEN—Sesame chicken and broccoli beef are among the Mandarin and Cantonese entrees; also seafood specials and fried rice.

Closed for lunch Saturday. 3735 Summer, 323-4819. L, D, $-$$ QUEEN OF SHEBA—Featuring Middle Eastern favorites and Yemeni dishes such as lamb haneeth and saltah. 4792 Summer, 207-4174. L, D, $ SIDE PORCH STEAK HOUSE—In addition to steak, the menu includes chicken, pork chops, and fish entrees; homemade rolls are a specialty.

Closed Sun./Mon. 5689 Stage, 377-2484. D, $-$$ TACO PRIME—Modern taqueria where bold Mexican dishes meet Southern hospitality. 8222 U.S. 64, 585-0858. Closed Sunday. L,D, $-$$ TORTILLERIA LA UNICA—Individual helping of Mexican street food, including hefty tamales, burritos, tortas, and sopes. 5015 Summer, 685-0097. B, L, D, $ UNIVERSITY NEIGHBORHOOD DISTRICT (INCLUDES CHICKASAW GARDENS AND HIGHLAND STRIP)

A-TAN—Serves Chinese and Japanese hibachi cuisine, complete with sushi bar. A specialty is Four Treasures with garlic sauce. 3445 Poplar, Suite 17, University Center, 452-4477. L, D, $-$$$ BROTHER JUNIPER’S—This little cottage is a breakfast mecca, offering specialty omelets, including the open-faced San Diegan omelet; also daily specials, and homemade breads and pastries. Closed Mon. 3519 Walker, 324-0144. B, $ CHAR RESTAURANT—Specializing in modern Southern cuisine, this eatery offers homestyle sides, charbroiled steaks, and fresh seafood. 431 S. Highland, Suite 120, 249-3533. L, D, WB, MRA, $-$$$ EL PORTON—Fajitas, quesadillas, and steak ranchero are just a few of the menu items. 2095 Merchants Row (Germantown), 754-4268; 8361 Highway 64, 380-7877; 3448 Poplar (Poplar Plaza), 452-7330; 1805 N. Germantown Parkway (Cordova), 624-9358; 1016 W. Poplar (Collierville), 854-5770. L, D, MRA, $-$$ PLANT BASED HEAT—All of your favorite Southern-style recipes, but deliciously transformed into a vegan format. Specialties include the spicy fye junt burger, or the chopped ‘n’ smoked BBQ jackfruit sandwich.

Closed Sun. 669 S. Highland St.; 363 S. Front St. (downtown). L, D, $ EAST MEMPHIS (INCLUDES POPLAR / I-240) ACRE—Features seasonal modern American cuisine in an avantegarde setting using locally sourced products; also small plates and enclosed garden patio. Closed for lunch Sat. and all day Sun. 690 S. Perkins, 818-2273. L, D, $$-$$$ AGAVOS COCINA & TEQUILA—Camaron de Tequila, tamales, kabobs, and burgers made with a blend of beef and chorizo are among the offerings at this tequila-centric restaurant and bar. 2924 Walnut Grove, 433-9345.

L, D, $-$$ AMERIGO—Traditional and contemporary Italian cuisine includes pasta, wood-fired pizza, steaks, and cedarwood-roasted fish. 1239 Ridgeway, Park Place Mall, 761-4000. L, D, SB, MRA, $-$$$ ANDALUSIA— Authentic Moroccan cuisine, including tagines, brochettes, and briouates. 5101 Sanderlin Ave., Suite 103, 236-7784. L, D, $-$$ ANDREW MICHAEL ITALIAN KITCHEN—Traditional Italian cuisine with a menu from two of the city’s top chefs that changes seasonally with such entrees as Maw Maw’s ravioli. Closed Sun.Mon. 712 W. Brookhaven Circle, 347-3569. D, MRA, $$-$$$ ANOTHER BROKEN EGG CAFE—Offering several varieties of eggs Benedict, waffles, omelets, pancakes, beignets, and other breakfast fare; also burgers, sandwiches, and salads. 6063 Park, 729-7020; 65 S. Highland, 623-7122. B, L, WB, $ J A N U A R Y 2 0 2 6 • M E M P H I S M A G A Z I N E . C O M • 75

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BANGKOK ALLEY—Thai fusion cuisine includes noodle and curry dishes, chef-specialty sushi rolls, coconut soup, and duck and seafood entrees. Closed for lunch Sat. and all day Sun. at Brookhaven location; call for hours. 715 W. Brookhaven Circle, 590-2585; 2150 W. Poplar at Houston Levee (Collierville), 854-8748. L, D, $-$$ BELLE MEADE SOCIAL—Upscale Americana cuisine including lamb lollipops, spicy tuna stack, and steak & noodle salad. 518 Perkins Extd., 480-7054. L, D, $-$$$ BELMONT GRILL—Burgers, steak sandwiches, and other classic American fare at one of Memphis’ longstanding bars. 4970 Poplar, 767-0305. L, D, $-$$ BENIHANA—This Japanese steakhouse serves beef, chicken, and seafood grilled at the table; some menu items change monthly; sushi bar also featured. 912 Ridge Lake Blvd., 767-8980. L, D, $$-$$$ BIG BAD BREAKFAST—Fresh biscuits, house-made cured meats, jams, jellies, and more for the most important meal of the day. 6450 Poplar, 881-3346. B, L, $-$$ BOG & BARLEY—An all-Irish fine dining experience by the owners of Celtic Crossing, and a full bar with plenty of beer and 25-year-old Macallan. 6150 Poplar, Suite 124, 805-2262. L, D, WB, $-$$ BROOKLYN BRIDGE ITALIAN RESTAURANT—Specializing in such homemade entrees as spinach lasagna and lobster ravioli; a seafood specialty is horseradish-crusted salmon. Closed Sun. 1779 Kirby Pkwy., 755-7413. D, $-$$$ CAPITAL GRILLE—Known for its dry-aged, hand-carved steaks; among the specialties are bone-in sirloin and porcini-rubbed Delmonico; also seafood entrees and seasonal lunch plates. Closed for lunch Sat.Sun. Crescent Center, 6065 Poplar, 683-9291. L, D, $$$-$$$$ CASABLANCA—Lamb shawarma is one of the fresh, homemade specialties served at this Mediterranean/Moroccan restaurant; fish entrees and vegetarian options also available. 5030 Poplar, 725-8557; 1707 Madison, 421-6949. L, D, $-$$ CHIPOTLE MEXICAN GRILL—Burritos, quesadillas, tacos, salads, and bowls made to order while customers watch. 5865 Poplar, 416-1944; 2046 Union, 729-2640; 4726 Summer, 590-1839; 2110 West St., 2566202; 695 N. Germantown Parkway (Germantown), 416-1944. L, D, $-$$ CHUKIS TACOS 2—Traditional homestyle Mexican recipes.

3445 Poplar Ave., Suite 1, 888-4139. B, L, D, $-$$ CIAO BELLA—Among the Italian and Greek specialties are lasagna, seafood pasta, gourmet pizzas, and vegetarian options. 5101 Sanderlin, 205-2500. D, MRA, $-$$$ CITY SILO TABLE + PANTRY—With a focus on clean eating, this establishment offers fresh juices, as well as comfort foods re-imagined with wholesome ingredients. 5101 Sanderlin, 729-7687; 7605 W. Farmington, Suite 2, 236-7223 (Germantown). B, L, D, $ COASTAL FISH COMPANY—Upscale offerings of international fish varieties utilizing styles ranging from the Carribbean, East Coast, West Coast, China, Philippines, and more. 415 Great View Dr. E., Suite 101, 266-9000 (Shelby Farms Park). D, $$-$$$ CORKY’S—Popular barbecue emporium offers both wet and dry ribs, plus a full menu of other barbecue entrees. Wed. lunch buffets, Cordova and Collierville. 5259 Poplar, 685-9744; 1740 N. Germantown Pkwy.

(Cordova), 737-1911; 743 W. Poplar (Collierville), 405-4999; 6434 Goodman Rd., (Olive Branch), 662-893-3663. L, D, MRA, $-$$ THE CRAZY COOP—Plenty of hot wings and sauces, plus sandwiches and other dinner plates. 1315 Ridgeway, 748-5325; 7199 Stage (Bartlett), 433-9212. L, D, $-$$ DAN MCGUINNESS PUB—Serves fish and chips, shepherd’s pie, burgers, and other Irish and American fare; also lunch and dinner specials. 4694 Spottswood, 761-3711; 3964 Goodman (Southaven), 662-890-7611. L, D, $ ERLING JENSEN—For decades, Chef Erling has presented “globally inspired” cuisine to die for. Specialties are rack of lamb, big-game entrees, and fresh fish dishes. 1044 S. Yates, 763-3700.

D, MRA, $$-$$$ ERLING JENSEN SMALL BITES—Enjoy Erling Jensen’s specialty dishes in a sharable, small-plate format alongside TopGolf Swing suites.

5069 Sanderlin, 587-9464. L, D, $-$$$ FLEMING’S PRIME STEAKHOUSE—Serves wet-aged and dry-aged steaks, prime beef, chops, and seafood, including salmon, Australian lobster tails, and a catch of the day. 6245 Poplar, 761-6200. D, MRA, $$$-$$$$ FOLK’S FOLLY ORIGINAL PRIME STEAK HOUSE— Specializes in prime steaks, as well as lobster, grilled Scottish salmon, Alaskan king crab legs, rack of lamb, and weekly specials. 551 S. Mendenhall, 762-8200. D, MRA, $$$-$$$$

FORMOSA—Offers Mandarin cuisine, including broccoli beef, hotand-sour soup, and spring rolls. Closed Mon. 6685 Quince, 753-9898.

L, D, $-$$ FOX RIDGE PIZZA & GRILL—Pizzas, calzones, sub sandwiches, burgers, and meat-and-two plate lunches are among the dishes served at this eatery, which opened in 1979. 711 W. Brookhaven Circle, 758-6500.

L, D, $ FRATELLI’S—Serves hot and cold sandwiches, salads, soups, and desserts, all with an Italian/Mediterranean flair. Closed Sun. 750 Cherry Rd., Memphis Botanic Garden, 766-9900. L, $ HALF SHELL—Specializes in seafood, such as king crab legs; also serves steaks, chicken, pastas, salads, sandwiches, and a ”voodoo menu.” 688 S. Mendenhall, 682-3966; 9091 Poplar (Germantown), 590-4304. L, D, WB, MRA, $-$$$ HEN HOUSE—Hybrid wine/cocktail bar and tasting room with plenty of cosmopolitan eats. 679 S. Mendenhall, 499-5436. D, SB, $-$$$ HIGH POINT PIZZA—Serves a variety of pizzas, subs, salads, and sides. Closed Mon. A neighborhood fixture. 477 High Point Terrace, 452-3339. L, D, $-$$ HOG & HOMINY—The casual sister to Andrew Michael Italian Kitchen serves brick-oven-baked pizzas, including the Red-Eye with pork belly, and small plates with everything from meatballs to beef and cheddar hot dogs; and local veggies. Closed for lunch Mon. 707 W. Brookhaven Circle, 207-7396. L, D, SB, MRA. $-$$$ LA BAGUETTE—An almond croissant and chicken salad are among specialties at this French-style bistro. Closed for dinner Sun. 3088 Poplar, 458-0900. B, L, D (closes at 7), MRA, $ LAS DELICIAS—Popular for its guacamole, house-made tortilla chips, and margaritas, this restaurant draws diners with its chicken enchiladas, meat-stuffed flautas, and Cuban torta with spicy pork. Closed Sun. 4002 Park, 458-9264; 5689 Quince, 800-2873. L, D, $ LIBRO AT LAURELWOOD—Bookstore eatery features a variety of sandwiches, salads, and homemade pasta dishes, with Italian-inspired options such as carbonara and potato gnocchi. Closed for dinner Sun. 387 Perkins Ext. (inside Novel), 800-2656. B, L, D, SB, $-$$ THE LIQUOR STORE—All-day breakfast, sandwiches, and entrees such as Salisbury steak and smothered pork chops. 669 S. Mendenhall, B, L, D, $-$$ LITTLE ITALY EAST—New York-style pizzas galore and homemade pasta. Closed Sun. 6300 Poplar, Suite 113. 729-7432. L, $-$$ MAGNOLIA & MAY—Southern-inspired, family-owned, casual dining restaurant serving up a variety of sandwiches, chef-inspired dishes, and craft cocktails. Popular items include shrimp and grits and the double cheeseburger. Closed Mon. 718 Mt. Moriah, 676-8100. L, D, WB, MRA. $$-$$$ MANDE DIBI WEST AFRICAN BBQ GRILL—Pairs traditional West African BBQ with Memphis BBQ for a menu that offers a wide variety of flavors, including daily specials and vegan-friendly options. 6825 Winchester, 672-8995. L, D, $-$$$ MARCIANO MEDITERRANEAN AND ITALIAN CUISINE—Veal Saltimbocca with angel-hair pasta and white wine sauce is among the entrees; also steaks, seafood, and gourmet pizza. 780 E. Brookhaven Circle, 682-1660. D, $-$$ MAYURI INDIAN CUISINE—Serves tandoori chicken, masala dosa, tikka masala, as well as lamb and shrimp entrees; also a daily lunch buffet, and dinner buffet on Fri.-Sat. 6524 Quince, 753-8755. L, D, $-$$ MOSA ASIAN BISTRO—Specialties include sesame chicken, Thai calamari, rainbow panang curry with grouper fish, and other Pan Asian/ fusion entrees. Closed Mon. 850 S. White Station, 683-8889. L, D, MRA, $ MULAN ASIAN BISTRO—Pan-Asian fare includes sushi and Sichuan dishes. 4598 Spottwood, 347-3965. L, D, $-$$ NAM KING—Offers luncheon and dinner buffets, dim sum, and such specialties as fried dumplings, pepper steak, and orange chicken. 4594 Yale, 373-4411. L, D, $ NAPA CAFE—Among the specialties are miso-marinated salmon over black rice with garlic spinach and shiitake mushrooms. Closed Sun. 5101 Sanderlin, Suite 122, 683-0441. L, D, MRA, $$-$$$ ONE & ONLY BBQ—On the menu are pork barbecue sandwiches, platters, wet and dry ribs, smoked chicken and turkey platters, a smoked meat salad, barbecue quesadillas, Brunswick Stew, and Millie’s homemade desserts. 1779 Kirby Pkwy., 751-3615; 567 Perkins Extd., 249-4227. L, D, $ ONO POKÉ—This eatery specializes in poké — a Hawaiian dish of fresh fish salad served over rice. Menu includes a variety of poké bowls, like the Kimchi Tuna bowl, or customers can build their own

by choosing a base, protein, veggies, and toppings. 3145 Poplar, 618-2955. L, D, $ OWEN BRENNAN’S—New Orleans-style menu of beef, chicken, pasta, and seafood; jambalaya, shrimp and grits, and crawfish etouffee are specialties. Closed for dinner Sun. The Regalia, 6150 Poplar, 761-0990. L, D, SB, MRA, $-$$$ PARK + CHERRY—The Dixon offers casual dining within the museum. Seasonal menu features sandwiches, like rustic chicken salad on croissant, as well as salads, snacks, and sweets. Closed for breakfast Sun. and all day Mon. 4339 Park (Dixon Gallery and Gardens), 761-5250. L, $ PATRICK’S—Serves barbecue nachos, burgers, and entrees such as fish and chips; also plate lunches and daily specials. 4972 Park, 682-2852. L, D, MRA, $ PETE & SAM’S—Serving Memphis for 60-plus years; offers steaks, seafood, and traditional Italian dishes, including homemade ravioli, lasagna, and chicken marsala. 3886 Park, 458-0694. D, $-$$$ PF CHANG’S CHINA BISTRO—Specialties are orange peel shrimp, Mongolian beef, and chicken in lettuce wraps; also vegetarian dishes, including spicy eggplant. 1181 Ridgeway, Park Place Mall, 818-3889. L, D, $-$$ PHO SAIGON—Vietnamese fare includes beef teriyaki, roasted quail, curry ginger chicken, vegetarian options, and a variety of soups. 2946 Poplar, 458-1644. L, D, $ PYRO’S FIRE-FRESH PIZZA—Serving gourmet pizzas cooked in an open-fire oven, wide choice of toppings, and large local and craft beer selection. 1199 Ridgeway, 379-8294; 2035 Union, 208-8857; 2286 N. Germantown Pkwy. (Cordova), 207-1198; 3592 S. Houston Levee (Collierville), 221-8109. L, D, MRA, $ RED HOOK CAJUN SEAFOOD & BAR—Cajun-style array of seafood including shrimp, mussels, clams, crawfish, and oysters. 3295 Poplar, 207-1960. L, D, $-$$ RED KOI—Classic Japanese cuisine offered at this family-run restaurant; hibachi steaks, sushi, seafood, chicken, and vegetables.

5847 Poplar, 767-3456. L, D, $-$$ RED PIER CAJUN SEAFOOD & BAR—Owners of Red Hook bring more Cajun-style seafood dishes. 5901 Poplar, 512-5923. L, D, $-$$$ RESTAURANT IRIS—French Creole-inspired classics, such as Gulf shrimp and rice grits congee served with lap chong sausage and boiled peanuts, are served at this newly remodeled restaurant owned by Chef Kelly English, a Food and Wine “Top Ten.” 4550 Poplar, 590-2828. L, D, $$-$$$ RIVER OAKS—Chef Jose Gutierrez’s French-style bistro serves seafood and steaks, with an emphasis on fresh local ingredients. Closed for lunch Sat. and all day Sun. 5871 Poplar, 6839305. L, D, $$$ RONNIE GRISANTI’S ITALIAN RESTAURANT—This Memphis institution serves family classics such as Elfo’s Special and handmade ravioli, along with house-made pizza and fresh oysters. Closed Sun. 6150 Poplar, Suite 122, 850-0191. D, $-$$$ ROTOLO’S CRAFT & CRUST—Louisiana-based pizza company’s first Memphis location, whipping up pizza pies with homemade sauces and fresh ingredients, pasta, wings, and other shareables. 681 S. White Station, 454-3352. L, D, $-$$ RUTH’S CHRIS STEAK HOUSE—Offers prime steaks cut and aged in-house, as well as lamb, chicken, and fresh seafood, including lobster. 6120 Poplar, 761-0055. D, $$$-$$$$ SALSA COCINA MEXICANA—Mexican-Southern California specialties include carnitas, enchiladas verde, and fajitas; also Southwestern seafood dishes such as snapper verde. Closed Sun. Regalia Shopping Center, 6150 Poplar, Suite 129, 683-6325. L, D, $-$$ SEASONS 52—This elegant fresh grill and wine bar offers a seasonally changing menu using fresh ingredients, wood-fire grilling, and brick-oven cooking; also a large international wine list and nightly piano bar. Crescent Center, 6085 Poplar, 682-9952. L, D, $$-$$$ STAKS—Offering pancakes, including birthday cake and lemon ricotta. Menu includes other breakfast items such as beignets and French toast, as well as soups and sandwiches for lunch. 4615 Poplar, 509-2367; 3660 S. Houston Levee Road, Suite 104 (Collierville), 286-4335; 7704 Poplar (Germantown), 800-1951; 2902 May, (Southaven). B, L, WB, $ SWANKY’S TACO SHOP—Taco-centric eatery offers tortas, flatbreads, quesadillas, chimichangas, burgers, and more. 4770 Poplar, 730-0763; 6641 Poplar (Germantown), 737-2088; 272 S. Main.

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THREE LITTLE PIGS—Pork-shoulder-style barbecue with tangy mild or hot sauce, freshly made coleslaw, and baked beans. 5145 Quince, 685-7094. B, L, D, $ TJ MULLIGAN’S—Cold drinks, comfort food, and plenty of live entertainment. 1817 Kirby Pkwy. (East Memphis), 755-2481; 8070 Trinity, Suite 1 (Cordova), 756-4480; 2821 N. Houston Levee, (Lakeland), 377-9997. L, D, $-$$ TOPS BAR-B-Q—Specializes in pork barbecue sandwiches and sandwich plates with beans and slaw; also serves ribs, beef brisket, and burgers. 1286 Union.,725-7527; 4183 Summer, 324-4325; 5391 Winchester.,794-7936; 3970 Rhodes, 323-9865; 6130 Macon, 371-0580. For more locations, go online. L, D, $ TORCHY’S TACOS—Plenty of Tex-Mex variety, with creative monthly special tacos. 719 S. Mendenhall, 343-8880. B, L, D, $ VENICE KITCHEN—Specializes in “eclectic Italian” and Southern Creole, from pastas, including the “Godfather,” to hand-tossed pizzas, including the “John Wayne”; choose from 50 toppings. 368 Perkins Ext., 767-6872. L, D, SB, $-$$ WANG’S MANDARIN HOUSE—Offers Mandarin, Cantonese, Szechuan, and spicy Hunan entrees, including the golden-sesame chicken; next door is East Tapas, serving small plates with an Asian twist. 6065 Park Ave., Park Place Mall, 763-0676. L, D, $-$$ WASABI—Serving traditional Japanese offerings, hibachi, sashimi, and sushi. The Sweet Heart roll, wrapped — in the shape of a heart — with tuna and filled with spicy salmon, yellowtail, and avocado, is a specialty. 5101 Sanderlin Rd., Suite 105, 421-6399.

L, D, $-$$ THE WING GURU—A staple of the Memphis wing scene, featuring everything from classic buffalo to exquisite lemon pepper.

5699 Mt. Moriah, 509-2405; 875 W. Poplar, Suite 6 (Collierville), 221-7488; 8253 Highway 51 North, Suite 103 (Millington), 8720849; 4130 Elvis Presley (Whitehaven), 791-4726; 5224 Airline, Suite 107 (Arlington), 209-0349. L, D, $-$$ WOMAN’S EXCHANGE TEA ROOM—Chicken-salad plate, beef tenderloin, soups-and-sandwiches, vegetable plates, and homemade desserts are specialties. Closed Sat.-Sun. 88 Racine, 327-5681. L, $ CORDOVA THE BLUE ROOM RESTAURANT—An elevated take on traditional Southern recipes, located in the U of M Kemmons Wilson Culinary Institute. Closed Mon. 1245 N. Germantown Pkwy., Suite 101, 249-7512. D, SB, $$-$$$ BOMBAY HOUSE—Indian fare includes lamb korma and chicken tikka; also, a daily luncheon buffet. 1727 N. Germantown Pkwy., 755-4114. L, D, $-$$ THE BUTCHER SHOP—Serves steaks ranging from 8-oz. filets to a 20-oz. porterhouse; also chicken, pork chops, fresh seafood.

107 S. Germantown, 757-4244. L (Fri. and Sun.), D, $$-$$$ GREEN BAMBOO—Pineapple tilapia, pork vermicelli, and the soft egg noodle combo are Vietnamese specialties here. 990 N. Germantown Pkwy., Suite 104, 753-5488. L, D, $-$$ JIM ’N NICK’S BAR-B-Q—Serves barbecued pork, ribs, chicken, brisket, and fish, along with other homemade Southern specialties. 2359 N. Germantown Pkwy., 388-0998. L, D, $-$$ EL MERO TACO—This food truck turned restaurant serves up Mexican and Southern-style fusion dishes, including fried chicken tacos, chorizo con papas tacos, and brisket quesadillas. 8100 Macon Station, Suite 102, 308-1661. Closed Sun.-Mon. L, D, WB, $ POKÉ WORLD—Serves up Hawaiian poké bowls filled with rice and diced, raw fish. Also offers Taiwanese bubble tea and rolled ice cream for dessert. 1605 N. Germantown Pkwy., Suite 111, 623-7986. East Memphis: 575 Erin, 779-4971. L, D, $ PETALS OF A PEONY—Authentic Sichuan cuisine, from crispy duck to peony fried chicken. Be prepared for spice! 1250 N. Germantown Pkwy., 787-8886. L, D, $-$$ SHOGUN JAPANESE RESTAURANT—Entrees include tempura, teriyaki, and sushi, as well as grilled fish and chicken entrees. 2324 N. Germantown Pkwy., 384-4122. L, D, $-$$ TANNOOR GRILL—Brazilian-style steakhouse with skewers served tableside, along with Middle Eastern specialties; vegetarian options also available. 830 N. Germantown Pkwy., 443-5222. L, D, $-$$$ VILLA CASTRIOTI—From traditional pasta dishes and family concoctions to hand-tossed brick oven NY pizza. 714 N. Germantown Pkwy., 753-3894. L, D, MRA, $$$

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MEMPHIS DINING GUIDE

GERMANTOWN BLUE HONEY BISTRO—Entrees at this upscale eatery include brown butter scallops served with Mississippi blue rice and herbcrusted beef tenderloin with vegetables and truffle butter. Closed Sun. 9155 Poplar, Suite 17, 552-3041. D, $-$$$ FIRST WATCH—Fresh, made-to-order breakfast, brunch, and lunch creations. 7810 Poplar, 665-5590. B, WB, L, $-$$ GERMANTOWN COMMISSARY—Serves barbecue sandwiches, sliders, ribs, shrimp, and nachos, as well as smoked barbecued bologna sandwiches; Mon.-night all-you-can-eat ribs. 2290 S. Germantown Rd., 754-5540. L, D, MRA, $-$$ LAS TORTUGAS DELI MEXICANA—Authentic Mexican food prepared from local food sources; specializes in tortugas — grilled bread scooped out to hold such powerfully popular fillings as brisket, pork, and shrimp; also tingas, tostados. Closed Sun. 1215 S. Germantown Rd., 751-1200; 6300 Poplar. 623-3882. L, D, $-$$ LIMELIGHT—Wolf River Hospitality Group brings Wagyu beef, duck gnocchi, and other fine dining dishes on a rotating seasonal menu. Closed Mon./Tue. 7724 Poplar Pike, 791-2328. D, $-$$$ LOCAL LIME—Tacos and margaritas in a casual environment, plus other goodies like the Mexican caramel apple crisp skillet. Closed Mon. 7605 W. Farmington, Suite 1, 224-2204. L, D, $-$$$ MELLOW MUSHROOM—Large menu includes assortment of pizzas, salads, calzones, hoagies, vegetarian options, and 50 beers on tap. 9155 Poplar, Shops of Forest Hill (Germantown), 907-0243. L, D, $-$$ MOONDANCE GRILL—From the owners of Itta Bena and Lafayette’s.

Serves steak cooked sous vide and seafood dishes including Abita-barbecued shrimp and pan-seared sand dab, in addition to an extensive wine and cocktail list. 1730 S. Germantown Road, Suite 117, 755-1471. L, D, $$-$$$ MR. P’S WINGS—Casual eatery featuring hot wings, burgers, fried fish, and other American food. 2075 Exeter, Suite 35, 587-6777. L, D, $$ NOODLES ASIAN BISTRO—Serves a variety of traditional Asian cuisine, with emphasis on noodle dishes, such as Singapore Street Noodles and Hong Kong Chow Fun. 7850 Poplar, Suite 12, 755-1117. L, D, $ RIO LOBO CANTINA—Mexican and Latin-American cuisine.

3165 Forest Hill Irene Rd., 310-3432. L,D, $-$$ ROCK’N DOUGH PIZZA CO.—Specialty and custom pizzas made from fresh ingredients; wide variety of toppings. 7850 Poplar, Suite 6, 779-2008. L, D, SB, MRA, $$ ROYAL PANDA—Hunan fish, Peking duck, Royal Panda chicken and shrimp, and a seafood combo are among the specialties. 3120 Village Shops, 756-9697. L, D, $-$$ SAKURA—Sushi, tempura, and teriyaki are Japanese specialties here.

2060 West, 758-8181; 4840 Poplar (Memphis), 572-1002; 255 New Byhalia (Collierville), 316-5638. L, D, $-$$ SOUTHERN SOCIAL—Shrimp and grits, stuffed quail, and Aunt Thelma’s Fried Chicken are among the dishes served at this upscale Southern establishment. 2285 S. Germantown Rd., 754-5555. D, SB, MRA, $-$$$ STONEY RIVER STEAKHOUSE AND GRILL—Specializes in handcut steaks, a fresh seafood selection, and plenty of house specials. 7515 Poplar, Suite 101, 207-1100. L, D, $$-$$$$ SUFI’S MEDITERRANEAN GRILL & BAR—Offers authentic Mediterranean and Persian cuisine, from hummus shawarma to traditional moussaka. Closed Mon. 7609 Poplar Pike, 779-2200. L, D, $-$$$ TAZIKI’S—Mediterranean-inspired dishes all made from scratch. 7850 Poplar, Suite 26, 612-2713; 540 S. Mendenhall Rd. (Memphis), 290-1091; 7974 U.S. 64 (Bartlett), 203-0083. L, D, $ THE TOASTED YOLK CAFE—Churro donuts, signature Eggs Benedict, and plenty other boozy brunch options at this franchise’s first Tennessee location. 9087 Poplar, Suite 11. B, L, $-$$ UNCLE GOYO’S—More than 30 dishes with a focus on authentic Mexican cuisine, from the brains behind TacoNganas. 1730 S. Germantown Rd., 310-4855. L, D, $-$$ WEST STREET DINER—This home-style eatery offers breakfast, burgers, po’boys, and more. 2076 West, 757-2191. B, L, D (Mon.-Fri.), $ ZEN JAPANESE FINE CUISINE—A full sushi bar and plenty of authentic Japanese dishes, like Hibachi or Wagyu beef. 1730 S. Germantown Rd., 779-2796. L, D, $-$$$ COLLIERVILLE BELLY ACRES—Upscale burger restaurant, featuring creative combos such as the Cowboy (fried onion strings, pickled jalapeños, and BBQ saucer, or the Hot Pow with pepper jack and spinach. 3660 S. Houston Levee, 209-0168; 6130 Poplar (Memphis), 707-7638. L, D, $-$$

CAFE PIAZZA BY PAT LUCCHESI—Specializes in gourmet pizzas (including create-your-own), panini sandwiches, and pasta. Closed Sun. 139 S. Rowlett, 861-1999. L, D, $-$$ CIAO BABY—Specializing in Neapolitan-style pizza made in a woodfired oven. Also serves house-made mozzarella, pasta, appetizers, and salads. 890 W. Poplar, Suite 1, 457-7457. L, D, $ COLLIERVILLE COMMISSARY—Serves barbecue sandwiches, sliders, ribs, shrimp, and nachos, as well as smoked barbecued bologna sandwiches. 3573 S. Houston Levee, 979-5540. L, D, MRA, $-$$ DAVID GRISANTI’S ON MAIN—Serving Northern Italian cuisine and traditional Grisanti family recipes. Closed Sun./Mon. 148 N. Main, 861-1777. L, D, $-$$$ DYER’S CAFE—Juicy hamburgers, split dogs, and milkshakes at the historic Collierville restaurant. 101 N. Center, 850-7750. L, D, $-$$ EL MEZCAL—Serves burritos, chimichangas, fajitas, and other Mexican cuisine, as well as shrimp dinners and steak. 9947 Wolf River Pkwy., 853-7922; 402 Perkins Extd., 761-7710; 694 N. Germantown Pkwy.

(Cordova), 755-1447; 1492 Union, 274-4264; 11615 Airline (Arlington), 867-1883; 9045 Highway 64 (Lakeland), 383-4219; 7164 Hacks Cross, (Olive Branch). 662-890-3337; 8834 Highway 51 N. (Millington), 8723220; 7424 Highway 64 (Bartlett), 417-6026. L, D, $ CASINO TABLES CHICAGO STEAKHOUSE AT THE GOLDSTRIKE—1010 Casino Center, Robinsonville, MS, 1-888-24KSTAY / 662-357-1225 FAIRBANKS AT THE HOLLYWOOD—1150 Casino Strip, Robinsonville, MS, 1-800-871-0711 IGNITE STEAKHOUSE AT SOUTHLAND CASINO HOTEL—1550 N. Ingram, West Memphis, AR, 1-800-467-6182 JACK BINION’S STEAK HOUSE AT HORSESHOE—1021 Casino Center, Robinsonville, MS, 1-800-303-SHOE LUCKY 8 ASIAN BISTRO AT HORSESHOE—1021 Casino Center, Robinsonville, MS, 1-800-303-SHOE SOUTHLAND CASINO HOTEL’S THE KITCHENS—1550 N. Ingram, West Memphis, AR, 1-800-467-6182 THE STEAKHOUSE AT THE FITZ—711 Lucky Lane, Robinsonville, MS, 1-888-766-LUCK, Ext. 8213 TWAIN’S STEAKHOUSE AT SAM’S TOWN TUNICA—1477 Casino Strip Resorts, Robinsonville, MS, 1-800-456-0711

EMERALD THAI RESTAURANT—Spicy shrimp, pad khing, lemongrass chicken, and several noodle, rice, and vegetarian dishes are offered at this family restaurant. Closed Sunday. 8950 Highway 64 (Lakeland), 384-0540. L, D, $-$$ FIREBIRDS—Specialties are hand-cut steaks, slow-roasted prime rib, and wood-grilled salmon and other seafood, as well as seasonal entrees.

4600 Merchants Circle, Carriage Crossing, 850-1637; 8470 Highway 64 (Bartlett), 379-1300. L, D, $-$$$ JIM’S PLACE GRILLE—Features American, Greek, and Continental cuisine. Closed for lunch Sat. and all day Sun. 3660 Houston Levee, 861-5000. L, D, MRA, $-$$$ MAUVE’S TAVERN—An Irish-themed eatery with elevated tavern classics, from signature burgers to hearty entrees featuring locally sourced ingredients. 78 N. Main on the Town Square, 403-5100. L, D, SB, $-$$$ MAROON BREW CO.—Family-friendly restaurant serving up gourmet hot dogs, smash burgers, chicken, and shareables, all made to pair with beers brewed on-site. Closed Mon. 642 W. Poplar, 799-0354. L, D, $-$$ MULAN ASIAN BISTRO—Hunan Chicken, tofu dishes, and orange beef served here; sushi and Thai food, too. 2059 Houston Levee, 8505288; 2149 Young, 347-3965; 4698 Spottswood, 609-8680. L, D, $-$$ NASHOBA—Offers live music, sports games, and pub classics.

Specialties are hot honey flatbread pizza, brisket fried rice, and the Nashoba burger. 4600 Merchants Park Circle, Suite 111, 630-4683. L, D, $-$$ OSAKA JAPANESE CUISINE—Featuring an extensive sushi menu as well as traditional Japanese and hibachi dining. Hours vary for lunch; call.

3670 Houston Levee, 861-4309; 3402 Poplar (Memphis), 249-4690; 7164 Hacks Cross (Olive Branch), 662-890-9312; 2200 N. Germantown Pkwy. (Cordova), 425-4901. L, D, $-$$$

RAVEN & LILY—Eatery offers innovative Southern-inspired cuisine with such dishes as crispy shrimp and cauliflower salad, spiced lamb sausage and parmesan risotto, and bananas foster pain perdu. Closed Mon. 120 E. Mulberry, 286-4575. L, D, SB, $-$$ STIX—Hibachi steakhouse with Asian cuisine features steak, chicken, and a fillet and lobster combination, also sushi. A specialty is Dynamite Chicken with fried rice. 4680 Merchants Park Circle, Avenue Carriage Crossing; 854-3399; 150 Peabody Place, Suite 115 (Downtown Memphis), 207-7638 L, D, $-$$ WOLF RIVER BRISKET CO.—From the owners of Pyro’s Fire Fresh Pizza, highlights include house-smoked meats: prime beef brisket, chicken, and salmon. Closed Sun. 9947 Wolf River, Suite 101, 316-5590; 1350 Concourse Ave., Suite 165, 791-4389. L, D, $-$$ ZOPITA’S ON THE SQUARE—Cafe offers sandwiches, including smoked salmon and pork tenderloin, as well as salads and desserts.

Closed Sun. 114 N. Main, 457-7526. L, D, $ ARLINGTON / LAKELAND BRENDALAY GRILLE—Wide variety of steaks, flatbreads, pasta, soups, sandwiches. Favorites: Brendalay BBQ Shrimp and Cajun Rosemary Shrimp. 6259 Quintard (Arlington), 317-6998. L, D, SB, $$$$ KITCHEN TABLE—“Crafted comfort food that makes you feel right at home.” Steaks, seafood, catfish, chicken, chops, soups, salad, even hand-spun cotton candy. 12062 Forrest (Arlington), 317-6402. L,D, SB. $-$$ VILLA CASTRIOTI—From traditional family dishes and pasta concoctions to hand-tossed brick-oven NY pizza. 9861 W. Lake District Dr., (Lakeland), 466-8288. L,D, MRA, $$$ OUT-OF-TOWN BOZO’S HOT PIT BAR-B-Q—Barbecue, burgers, sandwiches, and subs. 342 Highway 70 (Mason, TN).,901-294-3400. L, D, $-$$ CITY GROCERY—Southern eclectic cuisine; shrimp and grits is a specialty. Closed for dinner Sun. 152 Courthouse Square (Oxford, MS), 662-232-8080. L, D, SB, $$-$$$ COMO STEAKHOUSE—Steaks cooked on a hickory charcoal grill are a specialty here. Upstairs is an oyster bar. Closed Sun. 203 Main, (Como, MS). 662-526-9529. D, $-$$$ ELFO GRISANTI’S NORTHERN ITALIAN CUISINE—Grisanti family classics like lasagna, homemade ravioli, garlic bread, and Northern Italian pizza. Closed Sun. 5627 Getwell (Southaven, MS), 662-4704497. L, D, $-$$ HARRY’S ITALIAN—Authentic Italian dishes using traditional recipes made from scratch, plus steaks and other entrees. 8472 U.S. Highway 51, (Millington, TN), 872-0056. L, D, $-$$$ MANILA FILIPINO RESTAURANT—Entrees include pork belly cutlet with lechon sauce, and shrimp and vegetables in tamarind broth; also daily combos, rice dishes, and chef specials. Closed Sun.-Mon. 7849 Rockford (Millington, TN), 209-8525. L, D, $ MARSHALL STEAKHOUSE—Rustic steakhouse serves premium Angus beef steaks, seafood dishes, rack of lamb, and more. 2379 Highway 178 (Holly Springs, MS), 628-3556. B, L, D, $-$$$ MEMPHIS BARBECUE COMPANY—Offers spare ribs, baby backs, and pulled pork and brisket. 709 Desoto Cove (Horn Lake, MS), 662-536-3762. L, D, $-$$ PIG-N-WHISTLE—Offers pork shoulder sandwiches, wet and dry ribs, catfish, nachos, and stuffed barbecue potatoes. 6084 Kerr-Rosemark Rd. (Millington, TN). 872-2455. L, D, $ SAINT LEO—Offering sophisticated pizzas, pastas, sandwiches, and salads. A James Beard nominee for Best New Restaurant in 2017. 1101 Jackson (Oxford, MS), 662-234-4555. D, L, WB, $-$$ SIMON’S—A unique dining experience situated on Court Square in a charming small town, offering Angus steaks, catfish, BBQ brisket. Closed Mon./Tue. 201 N. Main (Bolivar, TN), 731-403-3474. L, D, $$-$$$ SNACKBAR—An intriguing mix of “French Bistro with North Mississippi Cafe.” Serving a confit duck Croque Monsieur, watermelon-cucumber chaat, pan-fried quail, plus a daily plate special and a raw bar. 721 N. Lamar (Oxford, MS), 662-236-6363. D, $-$$$ TEKILA MODERN MEXICAN—Modern interpretations of classic dishes from all over Mexico. 6343 Getwell, (Southaven, MS), 662-510-5734. B, L, D, $-$$ WALK-ON’S SPORTS BISTREAUX. Cajun classics: fried alligator, pepperjack boudin, shrimp, gumbo, along with unique specialties. 2715 Snowden Lane (Southaven, MS), 662-870-8379. L, D, $$ WILSON CAFE—An impressive culinary destination in the heart of the Arkansas Delta. Serving jambalaya, Waygu flatiron, butternut ravioli, swordfish & shrimp kabobs, burgers. 2 N. Jefferson (Wilson, AR), 870655-0222. L, D, WB, $-$$$

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12/5/25 11:54 AM

L AS T

S TA N D

Remembering Cleo Silvers-Painter A life dedicated to improving healthcare equality for all.

BY STEPHANIE PAINTER

T

he cars in the funeral procession carried Black, brown, and white mourners, all bonded in an unwelcome mission. As the melody of “Bridge over Troubled Water” softly played, local activists, medical school students, and family members dropped delicate flowers on my sister-in-law’s casket. An activist and educator, Cleo Silvers-Painter constructed many bridges over troubled water, lifting up others and bringing them closer together. “Our time here on this earth is short,” she often said. “There is not time to hate.”

Cleo Silvers-Painter

The casket was bright blue, a fitting selection for a vibrant woman who worked hard but also appreciated laughter and great jazz. Her generous smile attracted children and launched friendships. Elmwood Cemetery draws the living to honor the dead, but also to learn about figures in Memphis history or explore gardens, and in my imagination, she is not isolated there. This is a small measure of comfort — a bridge over turbulent water — that makes death less troubling. In life, Cleo would have had rich discussions with former NAACP executive director Benjamin L. Hooks and local activist Maxine A. Smith, both buried at Elmwood.

Cleo dedicated her life to the goal of “free, quality, preventative healthcare for all.” Asked the key to creating change, she advised listening to others to discover their needs. UCLA medical students flew in to pay tribute to a mentor who illuminated healthcare disparities, and out of dedication to Cleo’s legacies, local fair housing and labor activist Jayanni Webster helped her husband Ron plan the funeral.

Cleo’s fellow Black Panther Party (BPP) and Young Lords Organization (YLO) Veterans and Elders sent flowers to the Celebration of Life service, while others viewed it livestream. They remembered working alongside Cleo to provide free breakfasts to lowincome schoolchildren in 1969. The following year, she collaborated with YLO, a socialist organization of Puerto Rican youth, African Americans, and Latinx New Yorkers. BPP and YLO pushed for better health resources for all working-class communities, but especially those of color in New York, campaigning for testing for tuberculosis and sickle-cell anemia and safe reproductive rights for women.

YLO and BPP helped Cleo and her Lincoln Hospital co-workers set up what became the Lincoln Hospital Drug Detoxification Center, still serving the South Bronx. As its acting director, Cleo hired Dr. Mutulu Shakur, whose team introduced acupuncture as a substitute for methadone. She broke new ground by co-founding the NYC-wide Health Revolutionary Unity Movement and helping compose its Patient Bill of Rights, the first in the United States. Before retiring, she served as director of outreach at Mount Sinai’s

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Irving J. Selikoff Center for Occupational and Environmental Medicine. In 2022, City University of New York/Lehman College awarded Cleo an honorary doctorate in Humane Letters for her social activism in the South Bronx.

After meeting my intellectual, white brother-in-law in the ’90s, Cleo embraced and became part of our family, folding in with the smoothness of meringue meeting cake batter. She gave us a deeper understanding of the meaning of reconciliation, removing barriers that hinder authentic relationships and building community through storytelling and restorative justice. Growing up, my daughters heard Aunt Cleo’s stories, giving them wider lenses on inequities as adults. At a Juneteenth unity service at Germantown United Methodist Church in 2019, our family sang hymns associated with the Civil Rights Movement in a multicultural experience with other churches. Communion was in Spanish, and people who may not often connect in daily life sang “Bind Us Together.”

Until the month before she died at 78, Cleo kept a full schedule of Zoom meetings. Regrettably, she did not finish her memoir, though others have written extensively about her work. In youth, she faced stormy waters of racism. In 1959, she entered a Daughters of the American Revolution essay contest at her Philadelphia school, writing about her family’s conviction that everyone has the duty to vote. When she won, DAR committee members were reluctant to present the award to a Black student, and while teachers defended her right to the prize, Cleo decided to use her intellect to fight for social justice.

As an energetic teen, she participated in the struggle that desegregated the program American Bandstand and after high school became the first Black woman participant in the Volunteers in Service to America (VISTA) program, working on tenant rights issues.

Locally, she enjoyed catching the Joe Restivo 4 jazz band and judging entries in the Indie Memphis Film Festival. Still, she mourned the city’s segregated social environment, engaging with the Living Wage/ Fight for $15 movement and guiding a high-school program commemorating the 60th anniversary of sit-ins by Black students enrolled at LeMoyne College and Owens College who integrated public libraries, museums, and pools.

“Cleo wasn’t finished yet,” said friend Emily Marks.

Her work will continue because she inspired a new generation. These young people will not let Ron grieve alone, and he has joined them in Free the 901. He learned from Cleo, as we all did. “Make life an adventure where you meet and change other people,” she once said. “Then you break the walls of segregation.

PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY STEPHANIE PAINTER

12/15/25 2:06 PM

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