It's
no secret that these days I take a camera wherever I go so I am sort of
surprised that for the 10 years I lived in Memphis I took very few
pictures outdoors--in fact I don't even have a picture of the new,
white, 1970 Cadillac convertible that the business bought for me in
1969!

I've gone through google, bing and other search engines but I couldn't find pictures of what I wanted such as Pappy's Lobster Shack which was definitely a shack and not as good looking as
the one above. Not only were all the rooms mismatched but each wall had
many patterns of wallpaper and no two tiles on the floor matched. Pappy's was in OvertonPappolette that was so good I wanted to eat thye parchment paper it was baked in. Square before it was renovated and was one of the first restaurants I
went to after arriving in Memphis. Though it is over 30+ years I can
still taste that Pompano en

Memphis
had many excellent restaurants including The Four Flames and Justine's,
both antebellum homes, with the former serving prime ribs and the
latter concentrating on old fashioned French food. Though it was 1969
and Martin Luther King had been shot to death in downtown Memphis the
so called 'better' restaurants still hung onto Black servers. Justine's
was a 5 star restaurant and as formal as a restaurant could get.

Being
Memphis there were barbecue restaurants all over the city one being the
world famous Rendezvous Room just a walk away from the Peabody Hotel.
On the other hand the two or three what they called 'delis'--with New
York always proceeding the phrase--were horrendous. There were many
excellent restaurants including The Shelby Motel right out side of town
where they had the most succulent fried catfish and, I forget the name,
a restaurant right off the Memphis University campus where you could
get the best Southern breakfasts with grits made as they should be.

It
was on top of the Union Planters bank building on Poplar Avenue that I
ate in my first revolving restaurant and it was there, having dinner
with John, that we sat and watched Nixon resign. There were Italian
restaurants like Grisanti's and---darn! Where did I keep the camera?!--one I loved that was just
across the railroad tracks between Park and Poplar Avenues--maybe Chuck
remembers the name--he is younger than me!  LOL

I really didn't mean to make this whole blog about
food but the great restaurants in Memphis only added to my joy of
living there. Next time I'll talk about the ice skating rink, picking
greens,  seeing "The Boys In The Band", which was a shock at that time in the Bible Belt, Gig Young in "Long's Day Journey Into Night", Mudd Island and the pyramid, Overton Square and park, Our Weigh, Memphis In May carnival, my missing diaries from 1970-1976 and what I think happened to them, my last visit there and why I felt I had to leave in 1979.