justin fox burks
Fratelli’s tapas: lick-your-plate delicious
Let me say this up front: I’m not a big fan of sangria.
Until last week, I hadn’t touched the stuff in 30 years. (Blame it
on too much fun in Syracuse, New York.) But after seeing Joe Ferguson’s
sangria recipe for Fratelli’s at the Garden, I decided to give
the fruity concoction another try.
Ferguson, who coordinates beverages and rentals for the Memphis
Botanic Garden, makes his sangria for Fratelli’s new tapas bar. The
café, which normally serves only lunch, now opens its patio for
tapas, wine, cocktails, and sangria on Wednesday and Thursday evenings
from 5 to 9 p.m.
Ferguson mixes a red wine like Merlot or Shiraz with oranges, limes,
lemons, peaches, a little Triple Sec, and cherry juice. After
marinating overnight, the sangria is poured over ice, topped with a
splash of club soda, and garnished with a skewer of fruit. It was the
garnish that hooked me when my husband Tony and I stopped by for tapas
last week.
“In Spain, dinner isn’t served until 9 or 10 at night, so tapas are
the snacks that people eat after work,” says Fratelli’s Sabine
Baltz, who created the tapas menu. “They are perfect for talking
and sharing.”
Here’s how the menu works: For a fixed price of $12, you pick one
tapas from three different groups. Checking off the boxes is a little
like ordering sushi. Tony went with pork tenderloin with chorizo sauce,
chicken breast roulade stuffed with goat cheese and sun-dried tomatoes,
and mushrooms in garlic sauce. (The potatoes in garlic aioli already
was sold out.) I ordered seared salmon in puréed red-pepper
sauce; vegetable pâté made with carrots, cauliflower, and
zucchini; and chickpeas and spinach. All six were lick-your-plate
delicious.
In addition to tapas, Fratelli’s serves a cheese plate with fresh
strawberries, soup (we had tomato with cilantro and Gorgonzola), and
desserts such as cheesecake, gelato, and sorbet. An added treat for
customers is free admission to the gardens, which stay open for
nighttime walks until the café closes.
When you visit the newly renovated Kroger on Poplar and Kirby
Parkway in East Memphis (a must-do), here’s a suggestion: Pick up
the glossy brochure near the front door. The brochure has a store map
— you’ll need it.
The store, which expanded into the former Walgreens on its east
side, now offers a mind-blowing assortment of fresh and prepared foods,
kosher items, and imports in addition to standard grocery-store fare.
It took me 20 minutes to make it out of the produce department, where
between 75 and 100 organics join about 600 more fruits and vegetables:
bins of baby artichokes, purple wax beans, tomatillos, and enoki
mushrooms, to name a few.
Don’t feel like cooking? Then keep walking because a full-time
Kroger chef prepares packaged meals-to-go along with hot and cold food
buffets. Priced at $5.99 per pound, the “chef-on-the-run” buffets offer
lots of options like pesto pasta, smoked pulled pork, and garlic mashed
potatoes. There also are a pair of sushi chefs who man their own
station, a fantastic Mediterranean bar with olives and hummus (try the
edamame), and 300 varieties of domestic and imported cheeses.
More renovations and expansions are planned for Memphis stores, but
when asked for specifics, Kroger spokesman Joe Bell answered, “We don’t
give that out.”