Photo by Ben Fant // Buy this photo
Roadside BBQ is among vendors at the new Tennessee Flea Market on Winchester. Owner Ron Howard smokes his barbecue in West Memphis and brings it over, but it tastes like it's fresh out of the smoker.
At the Tennessee Flea Market, you can stroll the aisles for hours, looking at items ranging from handmade clothes and jewelry to sequined cowboy boots, bras in rainbow multipacks, from home décor to skin care and hair-care products. You can visit with a lawyer, get your nails done -- and really, with more than 600 vendors, you can stay busy a long time.
As all that shopping is bound to work up an appetite, there are plenty of food vendors set up to satisfy. It's like the food court at the mall, except that at the flea market, the vendors are local, and for many of them, this weekend-only venue has given them the opportunity to launch a new business.
Photo by Ben Fant
After browsing the wares of more than 600 vendors, shoppers have plenty of choices for a snack at the Tennessee Flea Market.
A soul food plate from Church Ladies includes turkey and dressing, sweet potatoes, collard greens and special cornbread dressing.
You'll find home cooking, doughnuts, pizza, hot dogs, Pronto Pups, a concession with fair food, Dyer's burgers, Lenny's and, among others, Roadside BBQ, which is where we'll begin.
Roadside owner Ron Howard is not a new restaurateur; the original Roadside outside West Memphis has been beloved for years by locals and by travelers lucky enough to take a detour. It's no surprise that his concession is smoothly run. The surprise is that the barbecue is just a few miles from Downtown and so few people know how good it is.
That included me. Last year, a group of friends met in Memphis for a tour of more than 30 barbecue joints in three days. I was with them for part of the time and wrote a story about the tour, but I missed the off-list detour to Roadside. The guys voted it near the top and over the years have written to see whether I've tried it. Well, I can finally say I have, and I get it.
This is excellent barbecue. We tried the ribs and the sandwich, along with a catfish basket and a smoked turkey leg. Howard is smoking the meat in Arkansas and bringing it in (at least for now), but he's storing it properly, because it tastes like it's just off the fire. The sandwich is excellent, one of the finest I've eaten. The pulled pork is smoky enough, but the meat is not overwhelmed by flavor. It's pulled in big, tender strips. The creamy coleslaw has just a hint of sweetness and is crisp, a nice textural and cooling dollop on the pork.
When we first met, Howard told me a story about how his sauce won first place one year at the Memphis in May World Championship Barbecue Cooking Contest. When a competitor's sauce was dropped at the last minute, Howard offered his as a fill-in, and it won, but not under Howard's name. Before you question the story, try the sauces. The mild is sweet but smoky, and it's not too sweet. The hot is not too hot, but it does build. I say mix the two for a near-perfect sandwich.
The ribs were also very good -- one of my grazing partners was particularly smitten with them. The meat was exceptionally tender, though not to the point of falling off the bone. We could easily pull it off with our fingers, though. The smokiness went to the bone, the meat was generous, and despite being very full, we kept going back for "just one more bite."
In addition to our barbecue feast, we ate at Lewivon Gourmet Pizza, which could have been very good. We ordered the spinach and chicken pizza, but waited about 15 minutes and were delivered a small pie (these are personal-size pizzas, so that's OK) with excellent toppings but an undercooked crust. I watched fresh vegetables being cut for the pizza, which elevated my expectations. We were disappointed, but it was the pizza that gave me perspective. Read on.
At Church Ladies Soul Food, we first had to give the spaghetti and meatball skewers a try, because, come on, wouldn't you? Tender beef meatballs with pasta inside them, served on top of a nice marinara, all topped with a sprinkle of parmesan.
Well, were you expecting skewered spaghetti? OK, me, too, just a little, but these weren't a disappointment. We also had to try the turkey and dressing. The turkey was tender and flavorful, more so than most white turkey meat (give me dark meat), but the dressing missed the mark.
It's hard to talk about something good when you taste something that needs work, but a couple of months ago I listened to owner Wes Cook tell me how he makes it, and from that, I have a good idea of how it should taste. What we were served wasn't that. It was bland, and it was dry. It was supposed to come with giblet gravy and it didn't, so I went back to ask for it, and there was none ready. We waited a good 20 minutes for it, but it didn't add much flavor.
The pizza came on the heels of this, and I realized that not only are most of the concessionaires new to the business, but they're doing it only on weekends. It's just going to take a little time for it to come together, but I believe it will. Recipes will be standardized and prep work done as the budding businessmen and women learn the ropes.
We finished our tour with a stop at Strawberry Hart for a chocolate-dipped strawberry and ended up trying the strawberries, grapes, and a smoothie. All the fruit is dipped in milk chocolate, and it's all good, but we all agreed we'd like to see dark chocolate, too.
Prices are reasonable. The turkey dinner comes with two sides and a drink for $9; the spaghetti and meatballs skewer is $5; the pizza is $6; and the total for a barbecue sandwich with fries, a half-order of ribs with two sides, a barbecue bologna sandwich (thick-cut, slathered in sauce, topped with slaw and decadently good), a turkey leg the size of a forearm and three drinks was $25 and some change.
And to top it off, you're helping local businesses grow.
-- Jennifer Biggs: 529-5223
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Tennessee Flea Market
Address: 7060 Winchester.
Telephone: (901) 848-3532.
Hours: Saturday and Sunday, 8:30 a.m.-6:30 p.m.
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Comments » 2
irvuss writes:
who wants a flea market lawyer?
Thomasd writes:
I only tried the food at Roadside Barbecue. I had the pork sandwich combo. The sandwich was excellent. Everything about it was perfect. The bun as fresh as you can get, lightly toasted, the meat perfectly cooked and the hot sauce just the way I like it, with a kick. The ribs were a huge disappointment, so bad after one bite I threw my half slab away. I am hoping that I just got a bad batch and will drive to Proctor AR to give them another try. But that Sandwich might have been the best I've ever had.
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