Front St. Deli will reopen at its old 77 South Front address by the end of January.
“We are doing the final touches with Ken [Hooper], the culinary brains, over there this week,” says Tony Westmoreland, who runs Tandem Restaurant Group with his wife Stephanie. The group operates other restaurants, including Carolina Watershed, Sidecar Cafe Memphis, and Ben Yay’s.
In addition to being the “culinary brains,” chef Hooper also is a managing partner at Front St. Deli. “If all goes well, he might be the new owner,” Westmoreland says.
The delicatessen, which originally opened in 1976, closed in 2020.
The building, which dates to 1853, “looks a little bit different,” he says. “We did facade renovation. Took off the whole front of the building. It’s an all-glass front now.”
They’re considering adding two garage doors to the front so they can roll them up and people can eat outside in the warmer months.
“We had to make some changes,” Westmoreland adds. “The inside has changed up a little. Mostly cosmetic.”
Changes were made to the “footprint layout,” he says. “We wanted to put in some more equipment for the variety of food we want to prepare.”
The restaurant will be “grab and go,” says Westmoreland. “With the limitations on the space, it’s a pretty much similar menu. But I think he [Hooper] wants to keep a few things from the previous menu for historic value.”
Emphasis won’t be placed on Tom Cruise and the 1993 movie, The Firm, part of which was filmed at Front St. Deli. “We’re not going to play The Firm movie over and over again, and have all the pictures of Tom Cruise.”
They’re going to play up the historic value of the building and make it “more Memphis than ‘Tom Cruise filmed a movie there.’ And that building is really old.”
The color scheme will be red, black, and white. Most of the equipment has been replaced. “We did put in a new countertop and a wall to block off the kitchen part. It’s still a half wall.”
They don’t want to make too many changes because, like their other properties, including the legendary Zinnie’s, they want to play into the “nostalgia” of “the past historical influence of some of these places.”
As for the food, expect a mix of some of the old with the new. “For instance, in the previous incarnation they had a pimento cheese and bacon sandwich,” Hooper says. “We want to bring that over. That was really iconic. The counterpoint is Cubano Memphis. It’s honey ham and pickles and Swiss cheese and — it’s supposed to be Cuban roast pork — but pulled pork on top. Just to make it fit in.We’re going to make it a Memphis thing.”
Hooper also will feature “cast iron pizzas,” including one consisting of smoked turkey, smoked pork, and smoked sausage. “Memphis is just a smoked-up town.”
Other items include the Jack & Lui — a sandwich made of house-smoked turkey and paprika mayonnaise on tomato bread.
Josh Steiner of Hive Bagel & Deli is “going to be making most of our breads, which I’m really excited about. A white baguette. A caraway dark rye, which I don’t know if you can get it anywhere else. Just gorgeous bread.”
The menu item names won’t refer to The Firm, Hooper says. The restaurant previously was “a shrine to Tom Cruise. People can like what they like, but we’re not going to emphasize that.”
Instead, they’re going to emphasize Memphis. “The sandwiches are going to be named for famous riverboats: Memphis Queen, Julia Belle Swain, and Belle of Louisville.”
Born in Spokane, Washington, Hooper moved to Memphis in 1976 — the same year Front St. Deli opened. He owned food trucks, ran food service at Levitt Shell (now the Overton Park Shell) for two years, and he was the executive chef at Growlers.
He’s excited to work at Front St. Deli, a place that has “very deep name recognition in Memphis.”
“You couldn’t spend that much money to get that hype with that name recognition. And we get to just walk right in.”
Hooper believes Front St. Deli has “got name recognition almost with Pete & Sam’s and Arcade and the Rendezvous. It’s got that deep history.”
And, Hooper says, “It’s a grande dame. A Memphis institution. We understand that. And we’re going to take good care of it.”
In addition to re-opening Front St. Deli, Tandem Restaurant Group also is in the process of opening two Uncle Red’s restaurant locations — 2583 Broad Avenue and 786 Echles Street, Westmoreland says. The restaurants will feature Christopher “FreeSol” Anderson’s turkey legs. “We shut Watershed down for the winter and we’re going to focus on getting Broad Avenue open directly after Front St. Deli,” Westmoreland says. “We hope to have that one open in February and Echles, hopefully, in March.”
