Breakfast might be the most important meal of the day, but there’s just something special about the midnight snack. It could be a scarfed-down handful of Goldfish or a drunkenly crafted peanut butter sandwich, but sometimes that late-night munchie hits just right. Of course, there’s no need to restrict yourself to chips or microwavable meals. Memphis restaurants are here to pick up the slack with some inspired menus. It’s not just bacon and eggs or greasy burgers (although we love those, too). Last year’s late-night dining adventure included visits to old favorites like Alex’s Tavern and RP Tracks, and relative newcomer Pantà. This time around, we found that Memphis’ nocturnal kitchens continue to whip out a wide variety of after-dark cuisine, from tater tot nachos to caviar, with a little bit of traditional Irish cooking in between. This year, our Flyer food writers had themselves another late night to check out three restaurants that cater to the hungry insomniacs and night owls among us.
EAT at Black Lodge
There’s a lot of things you can do at Black Lodge. You can watch or rent movies, of course. You can play a wide assortment of board games. You can participate in a medieval combat tournament or hop on to an arcade machine. Or you can just hang out with your friends.
But something else that you can do at Black Lodge is EAT. And there are plenty of fun snacks to be had from the menu the longtime video rental store launched last year. And with a midnight closing during the week and a 3 a.m. cutoff on Friday and Saturday, it might be a Midtowner’s best bet for a late food run.
Zach Miller, kitchen manager and chef at Black Lodge, began working at EAT a year ago. As for creating dishes, he says, “I was going off what was created by our guest chef and co-owner James Blair. He’s like our special guest chef. He comes in for dinner and movies and for special things. Or catering, as well, for parties as such.”
Blair and Chad Allen Barton, a Black Lodge owner, came up with the basic menu, Miller says. “And I kind of went off of that and I created my own things.”
Miller has a philosophy about what kind of dishes he creates for Black Lodge. “I don’t want to create something that looks complex on the plate. Something that is complex, for sure, but it looks simple. I don’t want people paying attention to their plate. I want them paying attention to the screen.”
Blair came up with the name EAT for the restaurant, Black Lodge owner Matt Martin previously told the Flyer. He described it as “one part kind of a throwback name” to those “little diners that say things like Eats or Joe’s Eats on Times Square, mostly in older movies.”
The name also was inspired by John Carpenter’s 1988 movie, They Live. “In that movie, subliminal messages are hidden behind everything.” Roddy Piper, who plays the main character, uses special glasses to see through everything, Martin says. “When he looks at a menu he sees the word ‘food.’”
When we looked at the Black Lodge menu, we saw a variety of tasty treats just waiting to be ordered. Breakfast is served all day, including the delectable chicken and waffles. The breakfast sandwiches, in a fun twist, use waffles instead of bread or biscuits to make for some sweet snacks. The waffle grilled cheese, for example, combines melted Brie with chopped nuts, tamarind sauce, and a drizzle of honey. But the more savory option tosses bacon, ham, or tofu with cheesy scrambled eggs and house sauce.
The most exciting item, perhaps the crown jewel of Black Lodge’s menu, is the tot-cho bowl. Think nachos, but with … tater tots? The salty, crispy tots provided the perfect bedrock for helpings of nacho-ey goodness, with slices of bacon and jalapeños decorating our bowl, along with a healthy portion of avocado and sour cream. Our forks flew wildly through the bowl, and we found that we’d demolished the dish before the Lodge’s featured movie, Studio Ghibli’s Ponyo, even made it through the intro.
Black Lodge is located at 405 N. Cleveland.
Tiger and Peacock
Ride the elevator to the top of The Memphian hotel, and prepare to set foot in a bar that our colleague Bruce VanWygarden once described as looking “as if Alice in Wonderland fell down the rabbit hole, met Jerry Garcia at the bottom, and they decided to form an interior design team.” There’s a full assortment of funky decorations at Tiger and Peacock, from Debra the zebra standing behind the bar to oodles of anthropomorphic portraiture and bright, snazzy colors. It’s the perfect place to throw back a cocktail.
But people do eat, as well as drink, at Tiger and Peacock. Manager Harvey Grillo describes it as “a relaxing and upscale lounge. Almost like a speakeasy.”
“The tables are smaller,” he continues. “It doesn’t really warrant a full dinner atmosphere. It’s light bite snacking. The plates aren’t full entrees and things like that.”
It’s not a restaurant like the hotel’s Complicated Pilgrim downstairs. “It takes a little bit of trying to get full upstairs since they are small bites,” says fellow Tiger and Peacock manager Cat Turowski.
And, she adds, “Because the table space is pretty small, usually they’ll get a plate or two. And they’ll get another plate or two. And then get another plate or two.”
But, Turowski says, “Primarily everybody comes up there to enjoy the atmosphere, enjoy the decor, and have a good time.”
Not all Tiger and Peacock dishes are small, though, Grillo says. “There are dishes that push more toward the dinner option.”
The sake marinated short rib is one of them, he says. “It’s my personal favorite and it’s everyone else’s personal favorite,” Turowski adds. “The sake glaze gives it a little bit of a sweet taste and the sriracha aioli gives it a little bit of zing. And it’s very tender and moist. It kind of checks all the boxes.”
Scott Donnelly, executive chef of Complicated Pilgrim at The Memphian, also makes the cuisine for Tiger and Peacock. Asked his inspiration for the Tiger and Peacock dishes, Donnelly says he didn’t want the “usual rigmarole of sliders” and other typical items on the menu. He wanted “something different and somewhat quirky. Like the tiger and peacock.”
The blueberry grilled cheese is a good example. “When I got there, they had a patty melt, which I wasn’t too fond of.” He wanted an “elevated version” of a grilled cheese sandwich. “I’m like a grilled cheese junkie.” So, he added the blueberry ginger jam, which they make in house, to green apples and Brie cheese. That jam really “sets it off.”
For a fancier midnight feast, look no further than Let’s Get Layed, Tiger and Peacock’s classy solution to the late-night munchies. The dish matches premium caviar with a bag of good ol’ salty Lay’s potato chips. That might seem like a weird pairing, but the odd couple has long made for a formidable duo in caviar circles, with the salty, almost buttery crunchiness of the chips balancing out caviar’s brinier tendencies. For a couple of sweet hours, it felt as if we occupied a higher tax bracket. While caviar might not be our go-to snack every night, Tiger and Peacock embraces a creative, refined approach to late-night dining that offers something unique to Memphis.
The kitchen is open until midnight at Tiger and Peacock. “I’ve seen folks order food at 11:45 on weekends,” Grillo says. But, he adds, Tiger and Peacock closes at midnight in consideration of the hotel guests beneath them. “We allow folks to wrap up what they’re doing while we start the closing process.”
They have a grace period of about 30 minutes while he starts making his rounds, Grillo says. “Thanking everybody who’s been there. And if they are hotel guests, they’re welcome to take drinks and things back up to their room.”
Non-guests can take their food and drinks to the lobby. “Food is a little bit more messy to transport down the elevator, but I’m here for it. I’m able to help.”
Usually, he says, “They end up taking a cocktail or a bottle of wine downstairs. Especially old friends who haven’t seen each other for a while.” They also can relocate to “late late late bars near us like Zebra Lounge.”
Tiger and Peacock is located at 21 Cooper St.
Bog & Barley
If you need a bit more Ireland in your snacks, you’re in luck. D.J. Naylor, co-owner of Celtic Crossing with his wife Jamie, cut the ribbon on his East Memphis venture Bog & Barley several months ago. And the new building is spectacular, an upscale Irish pub that has soaring wooden ceilings, plenty of Irish art and knickknacks, and a 24-foot-long bar on the ground floor. Everything in the space was sourced from Ireland, with Naylor looking to his roots when creating his new Irish pub.
“It’s an Irish restaurant, but we wanted it to be totally different from Celtic Crossing,” says Naylor. “It’s more upscale, we’ve focused on providing a high-quality experience, but it’s also a really approachable spot to either grab a drink or celebrate a special occasion.”
Open until 11 p.m. during the week and midnight on Friday and Saturday, Bog & Barley provides an Irish alternative to late-night diners. Reny Alfonso created the menu and looks to mix traditional Irish staples with his own personal flair. “You’ve got the typical dishes that people might think of: shepherd’s pie, bangers and mash, fish and chips,” says Alfonso. “So I left those alone. So we’ve got those Irish ingredients, but we’ve got a lot of global influences too, harkening back to a kind of bistro mentality. I use a lot of French techniques here.” Alfonso’s style can be seen in many of the restaurant’s entrees, from jumbo lump crab cakes to beer cured salmon, and his creations merit multiple revisits to Bog & Barley.
But when in Ireland, they say, do as the Irish do, so we plumped for the bangers and mash, which uses sausages from Newman Farm in Missouri. “I only get pork from Newman Farm,” adds Alfonso. “The quality is amazing.” And he’s right. The sausages pack in a soft freshness, juices sizzling out and dripping into the velvety mashed potatoes they sit atop. A blanket of caramelized onion gravy adds a nice finishing touch to the whole thing, the perfect cherry on top for a meal that could go easily with a couple of beers.
Or one beer, in particular: Soul & Spirits Brewery created a signature beer, the Auld Bog, as the restaurant’s house brew. “I might think of it as a lighter version of Guinness,” says Naylor. And a special print behind the bar can create foam images in the beer’s head, akin to latte art. Mine was served with the Bog & Barley logo, but Naylor said that it can do custom images as well. But sorry, readers, no Michael Donahue beer art just yet. Maybe during our next late-night adventure.
Bog & Barley is located at 6150 Poplar Ave., Suite 124.
