NOTES by Louisa Koeppel Foreign Affairs On May 8th and 9th, Annunciation Greek Orthodox Church will hold its 40th annual Greek food festival. “It’s Greek to Me!” will feature drive-thru dining, take-out packages, indoor and outdoor dining, and live Greek music and dancing. Since February, hundreds of volunteer parishioners have been cooking away, baking pastries like baklava (layered honey-nut pastry) and paximathia (coffee biscuits), and stuffing phyllo for spanakopita (spinach puffs) and tiropetakia (cheese puffs). There will also be a bazaar featuring jewelry, icons, and Greek specialty foods. Festival chairman Tom Rose and other volunteers are creating an Athens Street Market atmosphere with “a feeling of unity all under the big tent.” Proceeds to benefit the church, with 10 percent going to other charities. For more info, call 327-8177. Gone South John Pearson, formerly of In Limbo and currently at Cafe Society, has been hired to be the chef at McEwen’s on Monroe. The restaurant, which has been serving lunch only, will begin serving dinner on May 12th and will introduce a new New South menu. The New South cuisine takes its inspiration from the Carolina lowlands, Florida’s eastern coast, Louisiana, and the Southwest. While the menu will change monthly, there will always be traditionally recognizable Southern fare – with a twist (such as fried chicken with a jalapeno-spiked batter). Co-owners Mac and Cindy Edwards have applied for a beer and wine license and look forward to featuring wines by the bottle, with emphasis on blends. Dinner will be served until 9 p.m. on weeknights and 11 p.m. on weekends. Once the beer and wine license is in place, the Edwards plan to keep McEwen’s open during the hours between lunch and dinner and feature a partial menu with happy-hour prices. Hot Diggity In 1976, master’s-degree candidate Jerry E. Strahan agreed to do his former boss a favor. All Strahan had to do was collect the receipts from his boss’ hot-dog vendor business in New Orleans’ French Quarter – just for a few days, while his boss was on vacation. On the first day of this assignment, Strahan walked into the Lucky Dogs warehouse and found it stocked with 22 hot-dog shaped carts and one woman with a noose around her neck who told him that the day manager and the night manager had just quit. And while the rest may not exactly be history, it is Managing Ignatius: The Lunacy of Lucky Dogs and Life in the Quarter, Strahan’s amusing collection of anecdotes from his more than 20 years as manager of Lucky Dogs. Strahan will be at Davis-Kidd Booksellers for a booksigning at 6 p.m. on May 1st. n		Rock on The Hard Rock Cafe has good food, a nice staff, and cool stuff to see. by Louisa Koeppel he Hard Rock Cafe was one of the first establishments to pioneer the “theme restaurant.” Many have jumped on the bandwagon, attempting to tie together movies and food, fashion and food, and basically make a buck on merchandise by attaching a restaurant to a gift shop. It must be working, because Hard Rocks, Planet Hollywoods, and Fashion Cafes seem to be popping up all over the United States, and the globe. PHOTO BY DANIEL BALL As we all know, Memphis is the most recent recipient of the granddaddy of all theme cafes, although the question remains as to how a place like Tijuana got a Hard Rock Cafe before our fair city. After all, Memphis is the birthplace of the blues, and, some might argue, rock-and-roll. Nevertheless, it was time to put away my misgivings of the trendy chain and give it a try. I’m glad I did. You will not find bold new food concepts at the Hard Rock (and who would really expect it?). What you will find is decent bar food, with a few pleasant surprises. On our first visit, my companion and I dove right in and started with a hickory-smoked chicken-and-spinach dip and an order of onion rings. The chicken gave a nice twist on the overdone spinach dip. Although the chicken pieces were small, they exuded a smoky flavor throughout the dip, which was void of mayonnaise-y lumps. The salsa that accompanied the dip was fresh, cold, and obviously homemade. The onion rings were just as they should be – thin, crispy, and not greasy. The seasoning salt on the rings, combined with the ketchup for dipping, gave off a barbecue flavor. We followed the appetizers with two items from the H.R.C. specialties list. My companion ordered the catch of the day, which on that particular evening was blackened salmon. This seemed an odd combination to me. I feared the delicately flavored salmon would lose its identity amid the blackening seasoning. Not to worry – the seasoning completely lacked flavor, leaving us to juice up the salmon with lemon wedges. The salmon was, however, perfectly cooked to a lovely medium rare, and they didn’t even ask. So, too, was the pot roast I ordered. Served in a shallow bowl, this very tender roast was served with onions, celery, and mushrooms in a rich brown gravy, topped off with a scoop of hearty roasted-garlic potatoes. It looked like a pot-roast sundae, but I paid that no mind. I was too busy enjoying the hell out of it. My only complaint is that the carrots that joined the other veggies in the bowl had not been cooked with the roast as the others had and lacked that fall-apart consistency that I so look forward to when eating a pot roast. That evening we had a very friendly server who seemed to come from the “Flo” school of etiquette – sweet Southern crassness mixed with proud efficiency. However, I wished she hadn’t sat at our table to explain the desserts. That’s a little too jovial. The next visit, we chose to sit at the bar. This made for a different experience, especially when we found out that all the servers that evening were from the Nashville Hard Rock, filling in for the usual staff who were attending a party. It’s nice that the Memphis servers were able to have a night off, but our Nashvillian bartender had a bit of trouble finding everything. Even with this hurdle, he was friendly and helpful. This friendly quality seems to be the norm for both staffs. On this evening, we started with the Funky Chicken wings and the Santa Fe spring rolls. The wings were typical, served in the normal red baste and accompanied by blue cheese dressing. If you order the Heavy Metal version, make sure your drink is full, because when they say hot, they mean it. The spring rolls were crispy and golden, filled with chicken, black beans, spinach, and Monterey Jack cheese. They are served with guacamole dressing and salsa and come in a big glass goblet, once again reminiscent of a sundae. For my main course, I went for Bruce’s “famous” barbecue ribs. The ribs themselves were cooked to perfection, with the meat falling off the bone. The hickory sauce, though, tasted similar to a bottled version. Looking back, I should have tried the watermelon barbecue sauce. Perhaps it might have had a more distinctive flavor. In this city, if you attempt barbecue sauce, you’d better do it right, and Hard Rock’s was generic. The slaw that came with the ribs was crisp and fresh, but was burdened by too much of a buttermilk flavor. My companion tried the grilled Chinese chicken salad. This was a lackluster mixture of lettuce, broccoli, mandarin oranges, and chicken, seemingly without the Oriental marinade. The dressing, though, was light, with a hint of lime, honey, and peanuts. The club sandwich stayed true to the version that practically everyone knows and loves. Thought-provoking? No. Satisfying? Yes. The French fries served with the sandwich and ribs were thin and crispy. The only dessert I tried was the Outrageous Hot Fudge Brownie. While I’m not a fan of gooey desserts, this was one of the densest brownies I’ve tasted. And get this – the whipped cream was homemade. The prices at Hard Rock Cafe are steep. The mediocre salmon was $14 and the club sandwich was almost $8. However, when you start looking around and realize the magnitude of stuff lining the walls, the price of the food becomes less important. Take a trip up the stairs – see Jimi Hendrix’s vest, Janis Joplin’s cape, Pete Townshend’s smashed guitar – and think of the extra two bucks on your burger as a cover charge to a cool museum. n