Arcade Restaurant, Memphis TN

I have my super-mod internet friend Mod Betty to thank for this stop on our Memphis trip. If you’ve not visited the Retro Roadmap and you enjoy the older, vintage restaurants that we like to visit and share, then you are in for an enormous treat. Just click that link and prepare to get lost in a time machine full of great old motels, drive-ins, and places to eat. The ONLY flaw in the Roadmap is that Mod Betty doesn’t make it to the southeast often enough, but she has some pretty awesome content from our neck of the woods all the same, and if we ever do make it to New England again, we can plan our itinerary around her work.

So I found the Arcade Restaurant at the Roadmap and kicked myself for not checking her site more closely before our previous trips to west Tennessee. It’s a fantastic place for breakfast. Still family-owned after 97 years in business – it moved to this location in 1923 – it’s where period movies get filmed (sort of the Memphis equivalent of Atlanta’s Silver Skillet) and people ponder just how many cups of coffee have slid across the boomerang formica tables over all these decades to dent and scar them so badly. Continue reading “Arcade Restaurant, Memphis TN” →

Huey’s and Muddy’s, Memphis TN

(Marie takes the wheel for this story about two places we visited on our first evening in town.)

Every year or so we take a trip to Memphis to visit family and eat good food. Sometimes in that order. In Grant’s case, it’s all about the full-day barbecue tour; the teen is all about visiting the cute boutiques where she will blow her clothing allowance on something she knows she won’t wear but loves anyway. The little guy has crowned a new favorite playground on his list (he still doesn’t understand travel times very well and asked to go back twice after we returned home!). This time, we were there to see my sister graduate from art school. Usually, Memphis does its best to make sure we remember that Shel Silverstein poem about being so hot we need to take our skin off and sit around in our bones. This time it did the reverse. It was in the very low 60s for the outside graduation ceremony, and I had to put on a t-shirt over my nice outfit!

Anyway, since I also like things that are not barbecue, I consulted with my sister about the neat places around where she lives, and the five of us wound up spending our first night in town having dinner at Huey’s midtown location, and dessert afterward at Muddy’s Bake Shop because I’m all about the sweets. Continue reading “Huey’s and Muddy’s, Memphis TN” →

Captain John’s Hot Pit Bar-B-Q, Collierville TN

Barbecue is always on my mind when I visit Memphis, and this trip up US-72 allowed us to visit one of the less heralded barbecue places in the region. It’s probably the first that anybody using this highway will spot after they cross the state line. Continue reading “Captain John’s Hot Pit Bar-B-Q, Collierville TN” →

Gibson’s Donuts, Memphis TN (take two)

Here’s a very short little post for you today, readers. The last time we were in Memphis, we stopped by Gibson’s Donuts on our way out of town, with a light and gentle rain beginning to fall, and I took terrible photos, and we sped out of there as quickly as possible for what would be the beginning of a really, really long and exhausting drive home though a monsoon. With a flat tire. This time, I wanted to try a little harder and capture the fun place, which opened in 1967, a little better. Continue reading “Gibson’s Donuts, Memphis TN (take two)” →

Dyer’s Cafe, Collierville TN

In 2012, Mark McMinn celebrated the hundredth anniversary of Dyer’s by moving the restaurant – the version that he owns, anyway – further out east from Memphis, to the town square of a lovely, sleepy little suburb called Collierville. There has been some pushing and pulling as to whose is the one, true Dyer’s, because there’s another restaurant by that name in downtown Memphis, on Beale Street, pulling in the tourist dollars, but after I read Hamburgers & Fries: An American Story by John T. Edge, I figured that the McMinn-owned Dyer’s was the one to visit. He says that his father, Kahn Aaron, worked for “Doc” Dyer in the 1920s and bought the restaurant from him in 1935. Continue reading “Dyer’s Cafe, Collierville TN” →

Germantown Commissary, Germantown TN

After our lunch in Mississippi, we returned to Memphis, picked up our daughter, took her shopping, and then went to Marie’s sister’s house to spend the afternoon with her. They played Carcasonne – I’m open to most any game, but this one’s appeal has long eluded me – and, several hours later, the convention finished, their brother Karl joined us for some Munchkin, and then we convoyed out east along Poplar Avenue for ages and ages, to the suburb of Germantown. Continue reading “Germantown Commissary, Germantown TN” →

SideStreet Burgers, Olive Branch MS

If I may be allowed to wear my “well, some people in this hobby take me seriously, so I’ll speak seriously once in a while” hat for two paragraphs, I really don’t like it at all when people delete their blogs. Yeah, I understand that long, long-term blogging is uncommon, and many hobbyists lose interest and find new hobbies – or start families, that seems to derail or sideline quite a few bloggers who, upon becoming a daddy or mommy, elect to eat out a lot less – and let their blogs wrap up for a while. That’s disappointing, but understandable. Continue reading “SideStreet Burgers, Olive Branch MS” →