New restaurant planned at site of Grace in Memphis' Cooper-Young neighborhood

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A still-unnamed restaurant will open in the former Grace and Au Fond spots in the Cooper-Young neighborhood in late August or early September.

Today Bert Smythe and John Littlefield operate one restaurant, McEwen's on Monroe, which they bought from Mac Edwards in 2008. But the second McEwen's location is scheduled to open July 25 in Oxford, Miss., and now they're busy on their third place. Stewart Wingate, a partner in McEwen's Oxford, is also an owner of the new restaurant.

Karen Roth, who was the executive chef at Erling Jensen: The Restaurant until late June, will be in charge of the kitchen and the menu. Along with Ben McLean of Soul Fish, she'll be a managing partner.

"How many chances do you get in life to do exactly what you want?" she said. "Bert and John and I looked at another space to do this exact thing six or seven years ago."

The space will be divided in four parts. The bar, which will feature a large selection of specialty cocktails along with wine, Ghost River beer and craft beers, will be in the front of the space that housed Au Fond. The back room on that side might be for private dining, overflow dining, or could be a wine room.

The main dining room will be in the back part of the former Grace location, and Smythe said they hope to be able to open up the kitchen so that a dining bar with stools is right at the edge, allowing patrons to interact with the chef. The front section of that side will be designed for indoor/outdoor dining.

"If we can manage it, we'll have something that's open but that we can close up and air condition on days that are 110 degrees," he said.

The menu will be mostly small plates.

"I don't want to use the word tapas because of the Spanish context, but that -- the small plate -- is the idea," Smythe said.

Roth said that with her background in Pacific Rim, European, Southern and Latin American cooking, the menu will be diverse.

"It's going to be all over, and hopefully we can keep the plates between $5 and $14," she said. "You can come in and spent $20 or $100.

"It's going to be different. You have to stand out."

Yet fit in too.

"I think the restaurant, whatever its name is, will be a great complement to Tsunami, Sweet Grass and the other places in Cooper-Young," Smythe said.

— Jennifer Biggs: (901) 529-5223

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