Did you see this Tweet from Friday night?

So what's the story?

A rep from the restaurant says a request was made for Parker for two tables at Restaurant Iris on Friday for Friday night. We all know that's not happening, right?

The restaurant was already booked solid and generally is two weekends out.

Related:

projectspurs.com: "Memphis Restaurant Denying Parker Service Still Comes Up Empty in Win Column"

restaurantiris.com: "regarding reservations at Restaurant Iris"

• Mayor A C Wharton

So ... earlier this week, San Antonio mayor Julian Castro made a barbecue-centric bet with mayor A C Wharton in recognition of the Grizzlies-Spurs series.

My favorite thing about all this is not the wager, but that the mayor's office sent out a press release about the wager.

Included in the release is this addendum from Wharton's Facebook page:

“I should mention that I have a friendly wager going with Mayor Julian Castro of San Antonio on the Grizzlies/Spurs series. The losing Mayor must send BAR-B-Q from one of their city's best BAR-B-Q restaurants to the winning Mayor. Mayor Castro proposed it, but it seems a little backward. In my opinion, I should be forced to eat second-rate Texas BAR-B-Q as punishment not when we are successful!”

Seriously, this is a valid point.

May is National Hamburger Month, with Tuesday, May 28th National Hamburger Day, so let's chomping on some burger news.

• Huey's "Design the Next Huey's Burger" continues until May 31st. According to rep Shannon Little, they've received about 20 to 30 recipes for the contest so far.

The winner of the contest will have his/her creation included on the fall specials menu for six months. The winner also receives a $50 gift certificate.

For more information, go Huey's Facebook page.

• Back Yard Burger is celebrating National Hamburger Day (Tuesday, May 28th) at select locations by giving away Classic hamburgers to the first 100 customers.

Updated again to include additional Backyard Burgers participating in the giveaway in the area. They are:

- 2931 Kirby Whitten Road, Bartlett
- 1709 Whitten Road, Bartlett
- 1685 N. Germantown Pkwy, Cordova
- 8079 Trinity Road, Cordova
- 2110 West St., Germantown
- 6466 Poplar Ave.
- 436 Perkins Ext.
- 1723 Union
- 5091 Park
- 7545 Goodman Road, Olive Branch, MS
- 165 Goodman Road, Southaven, MS

Giveaway is between 11:30 a.m.-2 p.m.

• Hard Rock Cafe Memphis is having a "Bite it, Snap it Post it, Win it" contest. Diners take a selfie with their favorite Hard Rock burger and then post it on Twitter or Instagram with the hashtag #hardrockburger or upload it to hardrockburger.com. A winner is chosen every day with those then entered for a chance to win a 4-day, 3-night stay at the Hard Rock Hotel and Casino Punta Cana. The contest continues through May 31st

It makes all the sense in the world that the corn dog should come in cupcake form, and so it does at the Corked Carrot.

Last Tuesday, we explored the savory side of the menu at the recently opened wine and cupcake bar on South Main.

The Corn Dog Cupcake, pictured at front, is cornbread stuffed with bits of hotdog and topped with Dijon mustard. Pictured at back is the Croque-Madame, which elicited the most oohs and aahs at the table. This is brioche cupped in ham and filled with Gruyere cheese and a poached egg, topped with a Hollandaise sauce.

The Brie and Brown Butter is French bread with brie and apple topped with a caramelized brown butter sauce. This one's very rich, could be on the dessert menu.

Rounding out the savory menu are the Memphis-style Pulled Pork, a French roll with pork and barbecue sauce; and the very good Beet and Goat Cheese Terrine, beets stuffed with a garlic and onion goat cheese.

According to the website, plans are in the making for more savory cupcakes, including Chicago-style deep-dish, shepherd's pie, and chicken and waffles.

All savory cupcakes are $5.95, extra with salad.

Corked Carrot hours are Tuesday-Thursday, 11 a.m.-10 p.m.; Friday-Saturday, 11 a.m.-1 a.m.

The Sow Luau barbecue team has been showing these paper mache globe-trotting pig-head totems for years. The pigs are made by Roberto Vazquez and dressed by his wife Susan. Each are elaborate affairs designed to recognize that year's Memphis In May honored country. (The Swedish pig had yet to be unveiled when this picture was taken.)

Says Sow Luau team member Carrie, "They're the most photographed thing in Tom Lee Park."

More art comes courtesy the renowned Danish National BBQ Team. On Wednesday, during friends and family night at Barbecue Fest, they released the English-language version of the team's Gold: The Story of the Danish National BBQ Team and Its Mission to Change the Game of Grilling.

This massive, 400-page work is as much coffee-table book as it is cookbook, with gorgeous photography of up-scaled dishes (believe me, you will never see a prettier version of Beer-Can Chicken) as well as imaginatively shot profiles of team members and other BBQ notables such as Grand Champion Chris Lilly of Big Bob Gibson's.

Gold, which recently won a Gourmand Award at the Paris Cookbook Fair, is at the Danish National BBQ Team tent (RO52) .

• Don Pelts, with son Barry in an undated photo from the Memphis Magazine archives

More sad news today. Donald Pelts, who founded Corky's Ribs & BBQ, passed away on Wednesday.

Pelts launched Corky's in 1984. The restaurant now has three Memphis-area locations as well as several locations outside the area. Corky's also does a brisk online business and has a presence on QVC. The cookbook Cookin' with Corky's was released earlier this month.

From the 2009 Summer issue of MBQ:

When Don Pelts opened Corky’s BBQ in Memphis in 1984, he was too busy getting the eatery up and running to look very far into the future. But seven years later, after dabbling in requests to send slabs of ribs home with out-of-town customers, the Pelts family got serious about the shipping business.

In 1991, Corky’s distribution center/warehouse became a USDA-inspected plant, located in a 900-square-foot building near the restaurant on Poplar. A decade later, in accordance with federal guidelines for a “separate, dedicated facility” and to accommodate a growing demand for the popular pig products, the Pelts moved the shipping department to a Brooks Road building that had once been the Seessel’s commissary.

“That building,” says Corky’s president and co-owner Barry Pelts, “was about 9,000 square feet. We remodeled it completely and over the years have expanded it to 40,000 square feet.”

The number of shipping personnel has grown too; in the early years, the department consisted of a manager and two employees; today it has five managers overseeing 35 full-time workers. Total shipping revenue now is $12 million, or 25 percent of the total business.

The funeral service has been set for Friday, May 17th, 2 p.m., at Temple Israel, with a grave-side burial to follow.

• Justin Fox Burks
• John Willingham

Barbecue legend John Willingham passed away on Wednesday just as this year's Barbecue Fest was kicking off. He was 80.

Willingham was a politician, a restaurateur, an inventor, a multi-prize winner at barbecue cooking contests, a champion of all things barbecue.

Back in 2009, Willingham spent a memorable afternoon at the Flyer, guiding the staff through the finer points of 'cue for the paper's annual barbecue issue.

From that story:

Willingham preached the gospel of the rib, which has five basic tenets: appearance, aroma, taste, chewability, and memory. On barbecue sauce, Willingham said, "Generally speaking, people cover up that which you love to see — it's like a woman wears a dress." And the congregation (well, some of us), replied, "Amen."

Of barbecue judging, Willingham said, "We wanted to make it formal but with an element of freedom. I believe in the freedom of barbecue."

• Greg Akers
• Pit Master Certification

At the conclusion of the day, Willingham bestowed each of his students with an Order of the Apron certificate, sealed with a greasy, sauce-stained thumbprint.

More:

A whole raccoon smoked in Willingham's W'ham Turbo Cooker.

Modernist Cuisine: "I needed to have one those cookers."

Willingham inducted into the Barbecue Hall of Fame.

Muddy's Bake Shop 's pop-up shop inside Hoot & Louise is set for Wednesday, May 15th, noon-7 p.m.

Owner Kat Gordon shared their planned play-list. It is:

• Plain Jane cupcakes
• Dreamsicle cupcakes
• key lime cupcakes
• Strawberry Fields cupcakes
• Grasshopper cupcakes
• chocolate chip cookies
• lemon dainties (little lemon butter cookies)
• Nancy's Boy baby pies (coconut chess)
• Shady Wake baby pies (pecan)

Oxford-based vinyl record store The End of All Music will also be participating.

Hoot & Louise is located at 109 GE Patterson, near the Arcade restaurant.

When Hunger Monkey hit the road for its launch last Friday, its truck was sans logo, but when that logo does appear sometime later this week, it will feature a purple monkey.

Why a purple monkey? "Because I hadn't seen one," says owner Adam Hardy.

Hardy, who was born in Memphis, recently returned after working with restaurants in Nashville and elsewhere.

He noticed the upswing in food truck activity and wanted to be a part of it, he says. He also saw an opportunity to fill void by providing a healthy alternative for vegans and vegetarians and those following the paleo diet, who often don't have many options when it come to food trucks and fair food.

Hardy created a menu of sides — kale orzo, couscous, roasted okra, collards with sauteed mushrooms, hummus, etc. — that can be built into plates, with four sides for a vegetable plate ($8) or two sides with honey-glazed chicken ($8) or sweet & sour flank steak ($9). All is served on lemon-jasmine rice.

But back to the purple monkey ... One reason Hardy says he chose the name Hunger Monkey was that it did not pin him to one type of cuisine and so he could create a day's menu depending on that day's venue and crowd, be it melon gazpacho for folks enjoying the day at Shelby Farms or nachos for festival-goers.

Hardy bought his truck from a man in Mississippi, who had converted an old church van into a food truck. Hardy says the truck was pretty much ready to go, though he added some equipment and made cosmetic changes. The truck has a smoker for barbecuing.

Hunger Monkey is scheduled to be at Humphreys Blvd. near Baptist Hospital on Tuesday; and at the Ridgeway Loop on Wednesday.

Images courtesy Hunger Monkey

Lawrence and Burks are longtime Flyer friends. Lawrence is a teacher and writer who just won Memphis magazine's Fiction Contest for the second time. Burks is a talented photographer whose work has appeared in many publications, including Food + Wine and Garden & Gun.

Lawrence (AL) and Burks (JFB) took time to answer questions for Hungry Memphis.

When you first started The Chubby Vegetarian blog, you resisted including recipes. Why?
AL: I think we didn't really know how to write one back then! Since that time, we've learned more and figured out how you have to picture the steps and also try (before things are final) to see how they could be misunderstood because the main goal is to make them really easy to follow and clear.

JFB: We were just sharing how we cook; we started TCV in 2008 as a photo blog just to document the things we were doing in our own kitchen. We had no intention of going through the trouble of writing recipes. More and more people started asking for the recipes, so that's really the only reason we ever started including them! We're really glad they asked...

• Shotwell Candy Co.

Local artisan caramels-maker Shotwell Candy Co., which was founded in November 2012, announced yesterday via Facebook that it was in search of a commercial space in order to expand its production.

Shotwell founder Jerrod Smith says the company grew out of his trying to perfect a recipe for caramels for gifts at Christmas. Smith, who works as an in-house attorney for a local corporation, makes the caramels in his kitchen at night after his daughters go to bed. (He says his kitchen is a licensed and inspected facility.)

The original idea, Smith says, was to offer three standard caramels and two or three other flavors via Shotwell's online store. Those three standards are the Original Salted Caramel; the Hand-Crushed Espresso Caramels (using J. Brooks espresso beans); and the Old Fashioned Cocktail Caramel (designed to invoke the classic cocktail with flavors of bourbon, orange, and bitters). Two additional speciality caramels that Shotwell offered — Five-Spice Dark Chocolate Caramels (red for Valentine's Day) and Craft-Beer & Pretzel Caramels (using Ghost River) — proved to be so popular, however, that they became part of the regular line-up as well.

• Shotwell Candy Co.
• Hand-Crushed Espresso Caramels

A trio of recent events boosted Shotwell's business. It was featured on Goldbely.com as part of a partnership with Southern Living's Tastiest Towns contest. The South-focused Bourbon and Boots site started selling the caramels. And, the super-swank Blackberry Farm resort in East Tennessee signed on to become Shotwell's first retail partner.

"It's been pretty incredible," says Smith of Shotwell's growth. "It's just gotten to the point where we can't meet the demand."

And so now Smith is looking for a small commercial space and wants to hire people to ramp up Shotwell's capacity.

Smith says he's checked into to finding a suitable space himself but without much luck. Hence, the call on Facebook.

Smith's ideal space would be less than 1,000 square feet. If you know of a space, you can email Smith at service@shotwellcandy.com or offer suggestions on Shotwell's Facebook page.

Memphians who want Shotwell's caramels will have to order them online, but Smith says he's currently looking at retail spots in downtown, Midtown, and East Memphis to place his wares. He says he's also adding other confections to Shotwell's line to be debuted as soon as next month.

After an afternoon of fly-fishing, the chefs gathered for a crawfish and shrimp boil at the resort's rustic barn/bar. A good time was had by all, as the photos below make clear.

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• Randy Hatfield and Eugene McCann of Ben E. Keith Co.

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• The entree.

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• Paul and Jennifer Chandler and Keith Forrester enjoy the after-dinner activities in the "barn."

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• And a river ran through it.

• Caleb Chancey
• Robby Melvin, Southern Living's Test Kitchen director; Chef Miles McMath; Hunter Lewis, Southern Living executive editor

St. Jude head chef Miles McMath visited Southern Living's Test Kitchen in Birmingham last week. The visit was timed to the announcement that proceeds from this year's Southern Living Idea House in Nashville would benefit the St. Jude.

While at the Test Kitchen, McMath whipped up some St. Jude Garden “Farrotto,” a dish that takes advantage of the produce grown on-site at St. Jude and is called "Cosmic mac n cheese" to lure in the kids. He talked to Southern Living about his background and his work at St. Jude. Read the story here.

McMath also generously shared his recipe for the Farrotto with Hungry Memphis. It is below.

I've mentioned before that I'm a sucker for packaging, so I was all over # pound cakes, which I picked up last week at Miss Cordelia's.

It was like opening a present ...

# pound cakes founder Judy Douglass started baking cakes and selling them to friends several years ago when she was a stay-at-home mom. She says both her grandmother and mother were excellent cooks. "If there's a cooking gene," she says, "I must have it."

Grizzlies playoffs equal Grizzlies-themed food ...

• The Corked Carrot

The newly opened Corked Carrot is offering this lovely Go Grizz! lemon macaron. Available now. It's $1.95 per cookie or $19.95 for a dozen.

• Gibson's Donuts

Gibson's Donuts offers a number of team-colored options. The striped vanilla donuts are 71 cents; sprinkles in chocolate or vanilla (pictured) are 76 cents; and cream puffs are 81 cents and available only on game days.

For those who want to go big, there's the Texas donut, a monster at 8 to 10 inches that can be decorated to read "Grit and Grind" (or anything, really). The Texas donuts, $8, must be preordered a day ahead. You can have one just in time for Friday's game.

• South of Beale

You'll need something to wash it all down, so we'll point you to South of Beale's Grizz shot ($3), made with vodka, peach schnapps, and blue curaçao.