First Place

• Best Restaurant (2012, 2011, 2010)
• Best Chef (2012, 2011, 2010)
• Best Service (2012, 2011, 2010, 2009)
• Best Wine List (2012, 2011)
• Best Ambiance (2012, 2011)

First, we must thank every member of our team. We are so proud of our staff- most who have been with us since we opened the doors in 2008- for their unwavering support and dedication. Each of you are amazingly talented at what you do and daily live out our commitment to guest service. Without each of you, these awards would be out of reach.

Many thanks to all of our loyal guests that thought enough of us to go online and vote for us. It’s our sincere pleasure to serve you.

Finally, a hearty congratulations to all of our friends and colleagues who were also honored this year. It’s a privilege to work with each of you.

Also check out Bon Appetit’s “Mac ‘n’ Cheese Is a Vegetable … and 21 More Reasons Why We Love the Southland,” an accurate take on what makes the South so special!

You can be the winner of this fabulous gift certificate worth up to $200 by registering for The Memphis Library Foundation’s e-drawing. Simply submit your information here and they will enter you into the drawing. The winner will be drawn on February 1, 2012.

Dinner for two at Restaurant Iris includes wine but excludes gratuity. Reservations are required. 

About the Memphis Library Foundation

The Memphis Library Foundation is a 501(c)(3) charitable organization established in 1994, chartered as the Foundation for the Library, to actively pursue private funds to support the needs of the Memphis Public Library & Information Center. The mission of the Memphis Library Foundation is to solicit, accept, steward and dispense private support for the enhancement of the Memphis Public Library & Information Center. The Memphis Library Foundation is composed of a group of private citizens united by a common passion for this unique civic asset.

Eat. Drink. Enjoy all that’s Southern at the Atlanta Food & Wine Festival.
May 10 – 13, 2012 – Midtown, Atlanta

The Atlanta Food & Wine Festival is a four-day celebration of Southern food and beverage traditions with cocktail and cooking demonstrations, special tasting seminars, panel discussions, Tasting Tents like none other, fabulous parties and delicious dinners. Tickets range from $60 – $2000 and are on sale February 14.

Click here to purchase gift certificates valid for any Atlanta Food & Wine Festival ticket.

To see the complete gallery of images, please click here.

Meadowood donates two thousand dollars in the name of each of the participating twelve chefs and twenty percent of each dinner ticket to Share Our Strength.

To order a gift card, please call 901.590.2828.

Another entry in the occasional “Signature Dish” series.

Let’s settle one thing first. Kelly English, owner and chef of Restaurant Iris, is the brother of Todd English, but not the Todd English who’s a celebrated chef in New York and the owner of a string of famous restaurants. No, it just happens that Kelly English has a younger brother whose name happens to be Todd. “If you ask me if I’m Todd English’s brother and I say ‘yes,’ well, I’m not lying,” he said recently at the Midtown restaurant. “I’m just not saying which Todd English it is.”

Not that Kelly English requires any false assumptions or associations to validate his talent. He opened Iris – in the house at Monroe and Cooper long home to La Tourelle – in April 2008, and in 2009 Food & Wine magazine selected him as one of its Best New Chefs of the year. “That was a game-changer,” said English.

We are at the restaurant early on a weekday so that the chef can demonstrate how he makes one of the most popular dishes on the Iris menu, Rod Bailey’s Raviolo “Neola” with Brown Butter and Mushrooms. The appetizer is named for a local businessman who visited the restaurant regularly during its remodeling and reconstruction phases to check on progress and who was among the diners on opening night. The “raviolo” – which Spell Check keeps changing to “ravioli” – was served as a special one night not long after Iris opened when Bailey was in the house.

“He ordered the dish and liked it so much that he insisted we keep it on the regular menu,” English said, “so we did, and we named it in his honor. It’s never been off the menu since then.”

“Neola” is Neola Farms, the Black Angus ranch in Tipton County that supplies many local restaurants with beef. In the case of Rod Bailey’s Raviolo, it’s short ribs. In fact, when we go into the kitchen, the sole inhabitant a young man quietly concentrating on rolling out and cutting gnocchi, a large pan of meat, looking a bit like chopped barbecue, sits on a prep table.

“That’s 40 pounds of Neola Farms short ribs that we braised with salt, pepper and allspice in roasted chicken stock with lots of garlic and herbs,” said English. After braising, the deboned meat and stock are separated and the stock reduces – in a giant pan that covers four burners – with thyme and tarragon and truffle oil until it’s almost a glaze, and then it’s reunited with the meat. That’s what forms the golf-ball sized lump inside the ravioli. “When you cut into this thing there’s a kind of burst of winter unctuousness.” He’s not kidding. The pan of meat and the barely bubbling reduction show us what the background preparation for the dish is. Now, as a single plump ravioli gently bounces around in boiling water – “one of the challenges is that with such a big filling you have to cook the ravioli just right” – English prepares the sauce that will engulf the ravioli. He tosses a few shiitake mushrooms in a sauté pan and adds slightly congealed veal stock, brown butter – butter carefully cooked until it’s brown and nutty – and sherry vinegar, along with diced shallots; then a spare handful of peeled, seeded and diced tomatoes; and garlic, all cooked to make what’s essentially a warm vinaigrette.

“I love sherry vinegar,” said the chef. “The earthy aroma, the tang, that’s what makes the dish. This may be my favorite thing on the menu.”

The finish touch consists of two fried sage leaves, not the dinky sage leaves that you buy at the store in those plastic shells but dark green leaves the width of a baby’s fist. They grow in the restaurant’s herb garden. From the moment that English picks up the sauté pan until he holds the completed dish, “plated,” as they say, in a wide, shallow white bowl, under our tantalized noses, the cooking of Rod Bailey’s Raviolo “Neola” has occupied about three minutes. Beforehand, of course, there were hours of preparation, though most of that was hands-off braising and reduction time.

The raviolo, looking rather like a large dumpling, sits with a complacent yet expectant air in its bath of glossy, deep-brown sauce roughened with pieces of dark mushrooms and flanked by the crisp sage leaves. An incredible woodsy redolence rises from the bowl. The dish is fabulously rich and flavorful, the filling of the ravioli dense and succulent; it could make a meal in itself. The price on the menu is $15.

English was born in New Orleans and cooked there under the legendary John Besh, of August, La Provence, Besh Steak, Lüke and other restaurants, including Lüke San Antonio, his first restaurant outside Louisiana. English is emulating his mentor by extending his reach to St. Louis, where he’s opening a steakhouse. As far as Memphis is concerned, “There will be another Kelly English restaurant in Memphis,” he said, “but it won’t be a second Iris, there’s only one of this place. It will be something completely different. We’re looking at a couple of concepts, but that’s as far as we’ve gotten with it.”

“We had to open,” says Kelly English, referring to Restaurant Iris, the cafe he opened in Memphis with “literally 50 cents” in his pocket. Numerous awards and a Food & Wine “Best New Chefs” distinction later, Iris is in full bloom, and the affable, young chef got asked to perform some magic: open a casino steakhouse in a town that, well, doesn’t easily embrace them. This month, the Louisiana-tinged Kelly English Steakhouse is slated to open at Harrah’s St. Louis. English told SLM that “Southern boys are full of surprises,” and he shared more than a few.

What was your first impression of St. Louis?
When I first visited, I had one of the best meals of my life at Niche. And what a great guy [Gerard] Craft is. It’s like the music scene in the 1960s… Chefs here are celebrating what the other chefs are doing. In the old days, it was xenophobia… not anymore, and especially not here.

Two years ago, you were a Food & Wine “Best New Chef”, a high honor. How did that experience change you?
Few of the chefs honored with that award have had any recognition at all, so it’s a real coming-out party and a real eye-opener, being suddenly thrust into the national spotlight. I kept telling them, “Hey, I’m just a dude from Memphis.”

You were born in Louisiana. I would assume that’s an advantage for anyone considering the restaurant business.
My family were Louisiana nomads, moving from Baton Rouge to Lafayette to New Orleans. Retrospectively, by living in all these places I really got to experience the Cajun and Creole nuances. Most people—and chefs—have a passing knowledge, but I was able to actually study it. I was lucky to have been raised in such a food-centric environment…down there, you become a man not when you can build a house, but when you can make a roux.

What dish is common to both?
As you move out of Lafayette, you never notice how gumbo changes, but once you reach New Orleans, you realize it’s changed almost completely. It now has tomatoes, it’s thicker and richer, and you never know where the change occurred.

Is file powder a standard ingredient in gumbo or not?
Our family sprinkled it on at the table, other folks don’t think it belongs in gumbo at all.

Was your family in the business?
My father was a lawyer, and the day I told him I wanted to switch majors from law to hotel/restaurant management, he told me he was relieved that I was not going to follow in his footsteps.

Do you have a chef mentor?
Hands down it was John Besh at August restaurant, who taught me the importance of doing anything for a guest. Anything. He’d cook an omelet during a 7 course tasting if necessary. He’d say “We have eggs, what’s the problem?” Now it might be a $25 omelet…

Did you follow that lead?
Absolutely… I’ll do anything. It’s a comforting feeling for the guest and the right feeling for me. Chefs inflicting their will on their guests is not relevant anymore.



How did you end up in Memphis?
After Katrina, I was helping John back in New Orleans. I wanted to be part of the rebuilding. We opened two more restaurants there, Lüke and La Provence, and on a weekend off, we went to Memphis. At Sunday brunch, out of the blue, the restaurant owner asked if I knew of anyone wanting to buy his other restaurant. We took a look, and I noticed a large, stained glass fleur de lis, and that was it.

Kind of an expensive brunch…
When we went back outside and there was a rainbow. Done.

Wow, how many signs do you need?
Plus, the owner was willing to finance it, as I had little money. After several delays that sapped the little money I did have, we were ready to open Restaurant Iris on April 1, but I couldn’t open a business–especially a restaurant– on April Fool’s Day. I remember having literally fifty cents in my pocket, on April 2, the day we opened.

What kind of place is Iris?
A 45-seat French Creole restaurant located in an old Victorian home in Memphis. Fortunately, that style cooking has so many influences–French, Spanish, a lot of African, plus German, Italian, Vietnamese, Mexican–so we really are able to globetrot there quite a bit.

Did it take off slowly or immediately?
We were lucky it was small–45 seats can make “slowly” look like “immediately.” Then we got a rare 4-star review and that took care of the rest. The following February, Food & Wine called, told me that I’d won the award, but that I could not tell anyone. And I said, “even my mom?”

Moms are terrible at keeping secrets…
Food & Wine was a game changer for me…area codes in the reservation book I’d never seen before. Already high expectations just got higher. Making people happy was now more difficult.

Will you maintain ownership at Iris? People worry when a chef divides his time.
I wouldn’t have taken on something new without having total confidence in Iris’ staff. I plan to divide my time…just not yet sure of the split. But if need be, I can work lunch and be at the other place for dinner.

How will your Louisiana influence carry over into Kelly English Steakhouse?
You will see shrimp and grits, sauteed redfish with crawfish butter, many items like that. Creole is burned into my soul and it will sneak out wherever I am. The Midnight Snack is my favorite thing to eat at home: toasted brioche, warm shrimp remoulade, and a poached egg on top. That’s it.



Will you serve New Orleans-style BBQ shrimp?
There ain’t nothin’ better than good BBQ shrimp. When I was young, my father gave me that recipe: too much pepper, too much butter, too much lemon, too much worchestershire, too much parsley, oh and some shrimp.

Do people in the South eat blackened fish anymore?
Only tourists. Outsiders think that Cajun and/or Creole means blackened. Growing up, I never saw anything blackened until Paul Prudhomme blackened that fish.

Will there be any crossover dishes from Iris?
A few. We will duplicate our surf and turf, on the Food Network for “The Best Thing I Ever Ate”: a 14-ounce NY Strip, stuffed with bleu cheese and fried oysters, with hollandaise, potato hash, and the best bacon I’ve ever had.

Do you make that bacon?
It comes from Alan Benton in Maryville, Tennessee [English pronounced it MERR-vill]. His bacon will kick you in the face. I use nothing but. I know I can’t make bacon that well.

What makes it better?
I don’t know. Soul? I believe there’s a one year waiting list to get some. Go to bentonshams.com.

How do you get non-gambling, conservative-but-carniverous locals to come to a casino for a steak dinner?
We will have items that the-I hate to use this term—foodies, will call explosive; we will have traditional, steak-based options; we will have established items that I know already work. We were successful in attracting non gamblers in Tunica, so I’m pretty sure I know what they want. My goal here is to lure in the atypical customer.

Will you let customers dictate what you serve?
Ultimately, you have to. You serve, you educate, you listen, you adjust. Like I said, there’s nothing I won’t do for the guest.

What motivates you day in and day out?
When people tell me I can’t do something, it forces me to prove that I can. I did it at Iris. When I launched that, no one believed in me but me.

How large is Kelly English Steakhouse?
Forty percent larger than the one it replaced: 214 seats.

That’s a little different than 45…
Yes and no; 45 seats can feel just as busy because of staffing levels and the structure of the menu. That part does not worry me.

What’s your favorite cut of steak?
I like a good rib-eye, but I’m not as concerned with what the steer was fed as I am with whether it was properly cared for… and happy. Today, the focus isn’t so much on Prime and Choice, but on conditions. That’s what people–especially chefs–are more dialed into these days. It’s all about positive karmatic flow.

Do tell…
So a lot of our proteins will come from small farms—they have the best products, can’t satisfy big demand, and so are perfect for us.



First Iris, now Kelly English Steakhouse. Why put your name on this one?
Harrah’s was comfortable having already worked with me in Tunica. Here we felt the restaurant’s name needed to be an indentifier. It was not borne out of ego.

What’s the secret to a really good steak?
A good cut of meat, salt and pepper is all you really need. Then cook it properly. We will use a Creole seasoning on some items, however.

What’s the hardest Creole dish to get right?
Whatever one your Creole grandma did well. No one—no chef—can compete with that. No one will ever make a better peanut butter pie than my grandma.

The roots of tradition run deep.
I prefer to think of myself as a forward-thinking traditionalist. You can put a pair of fancy pants on that steak, but in the end, my goal is to attempt to serve something that grandma would have appreciated.

Will the side dishes be Southern-leaning?
Yes, we’ll have my mother’s spinach madeline, an alternative to creamed spinach; dirty rice, one of my favorite things on earth to cook; after that, there’ll be a lot of changing, seasonal sides.



How often will the menu change?
Between four and eight changes per year.

What’s one underrated Southern food?
Chicken livers. They’re in many items but no one wants to talk about them. It’s like anchovy paste…people hate anchovies but they love that Caesar dressing!

Was there ever a time you wanted to chuck it all and go sell women’s shoes?
In the early days of Iris I could be found in the walk-in curled into the fetal position. I adjusted.

Ever been told you resemble Steven Furst, “Flounder” from Animal House?
Yes, and I may just put flounder on the menu. But we’ll never have it, just like Sal and Judy’s did with their Chicken Cacciatora…it’s listed on the menu and they’re always out.

Sweetbreads at Restaurant Iris

The sweetbreads appetizer at Restaurant Iris is a playful spin on the classic dish of chicken and dumplings. If you’ve ever wondered what sweetbreads are, they’re the thymus gland of a young cow. But don’t let that scare you off. When prepared correctly, sweetbreads can be exquisite. At Restaurant Iris, Chef Kelly English puts them through multiple treatments, including poaching and brining. This results in something tender and succulent with a slightly sweet yet savory earthiness. They come served over house-made gnocchi that are light as air with a pillowy tenderness. The sauce is deep and rich like a concentrated broth that coats the gnocchi and sweetbreads yet doesn’t weigh them down. The dish accomplishes what so many like it strive for: elegant and elevated comfort food.

— Michael Hughes

Restaurant Iris, 2146 Monroe (590-2828)
restaurantiris.com