eatvancouver.net

Eat Vancouver in Memphis

By Jason Chin
Eat Vancouver staff
Jan 24th – Jan 28th 2007
Memphis, TN

The hardest part about writing a quick recap of my recent culinary adventures in Memphis is not titling it something along the lines of Eatin’ in Memphis. Not humming the tune to Walking in Memphis during my four days in this historic city also proved a challenge. But seriously, I can’t think of a popular song that has more successfully promoted a city than Marc Cohn’s version of Walking in Memphis. It’s had such significant airplay and creates such a mystique about the city that I could barely get it out of my head for the entirety of the trip.

After getting into Memphis at around eight, my first meal was fairly late Wednesday night – around ten o’clock – and honestly, I was getting worried about finding anything open at that time. My hotel was in the downtown area, but most eateries I could see were either closed or shutting down and there was almost no one on the streets. As I learned later, if I had ventured a few blocks down to the Beale Street area, I would have found several eateries and bars featuring decent food and terrific live music.

What I did find that night was a restaurant/bar next to the hotel called McEwen’s, which bills itself as a purveyor of modern Southern food. The interior was decorated like the inside of a southern grandma’s house, complete with a little black furnace in one corner of the room. The place was pretty much empty except for a few people sitting in the bar area and one group in the dining room.

We sat down in the dining room and ordered a few beers, the restaurant having a nice selection of many of my favorite US brands. I ordered a Dogfish Head IPA, which turned out to be a refreshing start to my trip. I realized quickly after perusing the menu that the price point here was slightly higher than I expected from the milieu. Entrees were $20-35 and appetizers were $10-15. I had a whole five days to eat in Memphis, so I decided for just an entrée. Perhaps implicitly driven by the lyric “there’s catfish on the table and gospel in the air,” I opted for the sweet potato crusted catfish with macaroni and cheese, and green beans. And what a choice is was. The mac and cheese was extraordinary, the cheese blend was rich and creamy but with tartness from a cheese I didn’t jot down at the time. The catfish, a bit of an unsung hero among fish in my book, was moist and well, just good. I wouldn’t have minded a bit more cripiness from the sweet potato crust, which turned out to be shredded sweet potato, but that’s a minor complaint. As it turns out, I wish I had had time to eat a full meal at McEwen’s.

McEwen’s is also the first place I observed something of an unusual practice. Waiters and waitresses in Memphis, when IDing customers, took all of the ids into another room to examine. I guess this helps in dark rooms, but when they do it without asking first, and it’s your passport, it can be a little troubling.

After a pretty boring boxed lunch at the conference, my next meal out was Mexican, at a huge warehouse of a place on Union Avenue unfortunately named Happy Mexican Restaurant and Cantina. The sheer size of the restaurant made me a bit skeptical, but the food turned out to be pretty decent Mexican, certainly better than the majority of the stuff in Vancouver. I should actually qualify that by admitting my judgment was impaired by the tequila-laden $5.95 jumbo martini that I justified as a means to wash down the industrial-sized portion of corn chips served with a carafe of fresh salsa. I ordered one of the combo plates, which was a taco, enchilada and chili relleno. The taco was bad, watery beef in a premade shell. The enchilada was fine, but it was the chili relleno that really did it for me. The poblano was spicy and perfectly cooked, the batter light and airy with a smooth filling.

The next night I went to a well-known rib joint called Rendezvous, which is sort of hidden down an alleyway off Union and across from the Peabody Hotel. I ordered a large portion of ribs, which comes with baked beans, coleslaw and rolls. Pretty much every barbeque joint serves some kind of white bread with meals. I guess there’s no arguing with tradition, but I really don’t see the point in this one. Plain, cold, white bread really does very little for me these days. But hell, I didn’t go to Rendezvous for the bread. The ribs here were truly extraordinary. I’ve heard people are disappointed when they come here because they aren’t expecting dry-rubbed ribs, which aren’t as tender as traditional fall-off-the-bone barbeque ribs. That might be a problem for me had the dry rub not been as excellent as it was. We’re talking at least 30 spices here, all working in harmony to created a well balanced rib experience. It was messy, it involved the loosening of a few belt buckles, but I finished it. Washed down with a $7 pitcher of beer, what more could a guy want?

After a very moving sermon by Al Green on Sunday morning, my final meal was at Interstate Barbeque, a joint that is often named as one of the top three barbeque joints in the world. The main factor preventing me from visiting it earlier is that Interstate is a few miles from downtown Memphis, but not far from Graceland and Al Green’s church. To cut straight to the point, Interstate served the best barbeque I’ve ever had. The ribs (picture here)were perfectly cooked, smoky and fell off the bone quite readily. The sauce served on the side put Memphis Blues to shame. It had that sweetness one expects from Memphis barbeque, but it didn’t become cloying like that at Memphis Blues. Instead, it was cut by a nice acidity and spiciness. The baked beans served alongside the ribs were equally as good, and what a longtime barbeque afficando in the group called the best he’s ever had. I agreed; heady with pork and brown sugar these beans were worth the price of admission alone. We washed the ribs down with pulled pork shoulder sandwiches that were every bit as good as the ribs. Long story short (too late?), I fell in love with Insterstate’s barbeque.