Jennifer Biggs

More piri piri has come to town with the opening of Boneheads in East Memphis. The menu looks very much like Humdingers, so let's get all that sorted out before we proceed.

Usually, soul food, home cooking, country cooking -- there's barely a nickel's difference between them -- is hearty workman's food. At Southern Hands Family Dining, you'll be served plenty, but some of the family favorites are almost dainty.

The Presentation Room at L'Ecole Culinaire, Stellar Cellar Wine and Spirits and chef Tom Hughes host a five-course Argentinean wine dinner at 6:30 p.m. Jan. 25. $50; 1245 N. Germantown Pkwy. Call (901) 754-7115.

It's safe to call Molly's La Casita an institution; 2012 marks the restaurant's 30th year in its Madison Avenue location, where it moved when the late Robert Chapman purchased it from Molly Gonzales. Such institutions see good days and days ...

Italian WinterFest on Sunday at the Racquet Club of Memphis, 5111 Sanderlin, is $35 and includes food from Pete & Sam's, Frank Grisanti's, Coletta's, Folk's Folly, Garibaldi's, Andrew Michael Italian Kitchen, The Rendezvous, Holiday Ham & Deli, The Italian Rebel ...

When the bookstore now known as The Booksellers at Laurelwood was saved last year, book lovers rejoiced. Food lovers had less to celebrate, as Brontë Bistro had become tired and all but irrelevant to anyone who cared about food instead ...

Duncan Aiken has pretty much reopened Overton Park Pizze Stone in Cooper-Young, though under the name Skunx Chef Pub. The menu is largely the same, with some variation. The tradeoff Aiken had to make, moving from a thoroughly charming space ...

Chez Philippe in The Peabody hotel starts serving brunch on Sundays, beginning New Year's Day. The Memphis Blues Brunch will be served from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. and includes four courses.

A year-end dining story is always filled with comings and goings, and we had our share in Memphis in 2011. But this year also saw movement and expansion of existing restaurants.

For many years, locals and visitors to Memphis have walked into the lobby of The Peabody hotel and been impressed with the elegance, the music, the fountains and the general pomp as well as the warmth and Southern hospitality of ...

Just before the new restaurant in the Westin Memphis Beale Street opened, e-mail "cleus" were sent out about something "neu" coming to Downtown Memphis. As Sole Restaurant and Raw Bar had recently closed in the space, there wasn't really much ...

Picky eaters tend to shy away from new foods, particularly Asian cuisine. And Korean food, if for no other reason than it's less available, remains more exotic, more mysterious to the Memphis diner than Thai, Chinese, Vietnamese and so on.

After more than two decades in someone else's kitchen, Michael Patrick has opened his own restaurant, Rizzo's Diner, in the former Harry's Detour location. And it's clear he's having a good time.

Memphians love Mexican food, whether it's authentic, Tex-Mex, or a version so Americanized that it's covered in white processed cheese. Yes, this is a barbecue town, but I find people ask me about Mexican restaurants more than any other. At ...

Downtown Dining Week begins Monday and runs through Nov. 20. For $20.11, you can get a three-course meal at participating restaurants. And some are offering two entrees, plus a shared appetizer or dessert, for $20.11.

When a server delivers a plate of food and is met with gasps from diners, you might think a complex could be developed. But at The Green Beetle, our shocked exclamations were surely not the first uttered at the sheer ...

Big changes are underway at Lou's Pizza Pie in Cooper-Young, including a new name. Sometime this weekend -- maybe Friday, maybe as late as Monday -- Lou's will become Skunx Chef Pub. Don't hold your nose: Skunk is a nickname ...

A more cheerful and relaxed place to dine than Stone Soup Café could only be the home of family or a great friend with a knack for brewing a good cup o' joe. his new addition to the Cooper-Young restaurant ...

Paulette's wine dinner features wine experts Marne Anderson of Victor L. Robilio Co. and Gary Burhop of Great Wines & Spirits. Featured wines are from France, Argentina and California and have been rated 91 and 92 points by Robert Parker. ...

Not long ago in Hernando, there were very few dining options: a barbecue joint, an ice cream and burger drive-in, and a small sit-down place on the square, open only for breakfast and lunch. But progress came to this once-sleepy ...

Felicia Suzanne's has been serving upscale Southern and New Orleans meals in Downtown Memphis since 2002. An Arkansas native, owner/chef Felicia Willett keeps her menu fresh through the use of seasonal local ingredients year-round. On Oct. 24, she's doing something ...

Andrew Ticer and Michael Hudman will soon open a pizzeria serving Naples-style pizza just across the street from Andrew Michael Italian Kitchen, the East Memphis restaurant they opened in 2008.

Years ago, fried cheese sticks started hitting appetizer and bar menus everywhere, and while cheese lovers couldn't help but like the thought of what such a thing could have been, the actual product was more like a fish stick than ...

There's a lot going on at The Grove Grill, the restaurant in Laurelwood long popular for its bar and kitchen dinners in addition to a large menu of upscale Southern favorites. Now executive chef Joshua Laban Perkins, who's been running ...

You get a lot of banger for your buck at The Brass Door, the latest addition to the Downtown pub scene -- and the sausages aren't bad either. The bangers are the sausages, for those not in the know about ...

Jackson Kramer, the chef who opened Interim close to five years ago, returned to the restaurant in January and has steadily been making small changes. The latest include a new lunch menu with some old items and some new, as ...

Memphis isn't exactly Los Angeles, but we do have a fair amount of choice in both number and variety when it comes to Asian food. We have Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese, Indian and Thai restaurants serving a range of authentic ...

Patrick's Steaks and Spirits in East Memphis has a huge menu and is keeping it fresh by changing daily and weekly specials. Every Wednesday, the specials for the week are updated at the restaurant's website, , where you'll also find ...

In four years, four restaurants (well, technically three) have occupied the same space on Hacks Cross, but they've had another thing in common besides the address. They've all served Indian food. There was Swagath Indian Cuisine, then Woodlands Indian Vegetarian ...

Some things never change -- and some things do. But some things change, and then they change back. Take Le Chardonnay, for example. A few years ago the Overton Square institution was forced to move from its original home on ...

The Memphis dining stage has a new star, and it's a brightly shining one. Acre opened in May with more fanfare than any local restaurant in recent memory, and has had a full house from day one. The space is ...

Chef Jose Gutierrez has been in the kitchen at River Oaks almost two years, and he's been adjusting the menu along the way. He entered the East Memphis market with many of his signature dishes from Encore, including the adored ...

John Vego with Buster's and Café Society feature wines from the Pacific Northwest at 6:30 p.m. on Tuesday at the restaurant. Six wines and cheese, $25. Small plates available from chef/owner Cullen Kent for $5. Call 722-2177. 212 N. Evergreen.

Any good home cooking restaurant will have a bottle of pepper sauce on the table, because folks like a little dash on their greens. You'll see hot sauce, and kudos to the place that has both Louisiana Hot Sauce and ...

At City Market, you can dash in for grocery basics such as a loaf of bread, eggs, a limited selection of produce and so on. You can also grab convenience-store staples: a cold soda, a six-pack of beer or a ...

Diners love to gobble up small plates, but for years the Spanish word for these delights has drawn puzzled looks from Memphians, who are apparently more accustomed to hearing "topless bar" than "tapas bar."

Note to the message board naysayers: You were wrong when you said it was a bad idea to move Paulette's from its long-time home in Overton Square to Harbor Town. What resulted is an invigorated institution at the former Currents ...

If a restaurant serves up authentic Creole cuisine in Memphis, excellent. If it instead serves a big plate of chips groaning under a magic mix of wet, fiery chicken and white cheese sauce, topped with fresh jalapeno peppers, tomatoes and ...

Amerigo hosts a summer beer tasting with Mike Barzizza of Southwestern Distributors on July 25 from 6 to 8 p.m. Several beers and cheese fritters; $22. 1239 Ridgeway; call (901) 761-4000.

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

The general intersection of Cooper and Young is a culinary cluster, and in the best way. Throw a stone and you could hit a plate of sea bass, a pitcher of margaritas, a California roll, a bowl of Low Country ...

Playhouse on the Square presents "Footloose," a wine tasting to benefit SRVS, beginning at 1:30 p.m. on Sunday. Tickets are $33 in person, at 51 S. Cooper, or $35 by phone, (901) 726-4656. The box office is open 10 a.m.-5 ...

There are numerous Middle Eastern restaurants in town, most of them good. A small stretch of that bastion of ethnic eating along Summer Avenue has gained a third with the addition of Middle East Bakery and Grill. And while there ...

Road Trip Review: This is the first in an occasional series of reviews of restaurants within a comfortable driving distance of Memphis. If you know of one you'd like to see featured, e-mail Jennifer Biggs at biggs@commercialappeal.com with details about ...

Sardis Lake, about 50 miles south of Memphis down Interstate 55, has been a popular water recreation destination for Memphians and North Mississippians for years. But fishing, skiing and swimming are all secondary to the lake's primary purpose.

There's plenty of good pizza to be had in Memphis -- hush up, Travel + Leisure -- so it's not as if you have to leave town to find it. But in case you haven't heard, this is the summer ...

When it's still 95 degrees when you get home from work, who wants to cook? Heat waves, also known locally as "summer," call for cool, easy eats and good takeout. And sure, most any restaurant will pack an order to ...

First things first: The Elegant Farmer is not a ladies-who-lunch restaurant. Though it is situated in the back of an antiques shop in the former Crumpets tea room, Mac Edwards' latest venture is well removed from finger sandwiches and two ...

Who knows good barbecue? Well, Memphians do, of course -- that goes without saying. But among locals, who knows the most? The restaurant owners themselves, that's who.

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 ...