The Lease and The Gateway

The catfish is out of the bag. Go to the Memphis Daily News to find the article on the Bass Pro lease.

Bass Pro Stay Tuned

Today we're supposed to find out for certain about the Bass Pro deal details in the Pyramid. Until we hear from City Hall, here's some mood music while you wait:
"Egyptian Pharoahs fell from the sky, fell from the sky and played the Blues... Pyramids and Pharoahs the River Nile is like a disco..."



Also, as an aside, notice the soccer ball icon on the menu bar at the bottom of some YouTube videos. Click it and you get the vuvuzela sound on top of the audio. Those crazy vuvuzelas.

Salty Dogs and a Firecracker

Join the running group, The Salty Dogs, every Monday night at 7 pm or Wednesday mornings at 7 am at Bardog, 73 Monroe. The runs start and finish at Bardog. It may be easier to stay motivated in this heat by running with a group. Have a look at a list of all area group runs.

Yesterday's post about the St. Jude Garden and today's Salty Dogs reminded me of the upcoming Firecracker 5K benefitting St. Jude. It's this Saturday, July 3rd, 7 pm at The Racquet Club.

St. Jude Garden; Memphis Farmers Market

Driving down Shadyac Ave. between Second and Third you wouldn't expect to see a zillion colorful raised beds in a thriving garden. Until now. The St. Jude garden is up and running thanks to the hospital's executive chef, hospital employees and volunteers. The goal: serving fresher, better produce at a cost savings. See the full story here.

I have only been to the Memphis Farmers Market once this year but I'm going to start making up for lost time. Last week when I posted about the labneh sandwich I did not mention the other two items I bought at the Mediterranean Grocery, dried fava beans and dried giant lima beans. I never cook dried beans so I've been spending quite a bit of time soaking, blanching, shelling and simmering and still have yet to get it right. On top of that my neighbor runs a farmers market in Arkansas and their child has been regulary selling me a dozen fresh eggs. Frittatas, quiches, and deviled eggs have been the result of those purchases. So you can see why I've been too distracted to make it to the farmers market though this past Saturday I ran past. I waited until 10 a.m. to run, so as I ran past the market with hot sweat pouring down my brow and stinging my eyes, it appeared that the market has grown even larger this year with vendors set up deep into the parking lot.

As the 4th Approaches

We get a message from the Edge...

Summer Sandwich; Cool Food Downtown

Labneh is my new favorite thing. This Middle Eastern yogurt-cheese spread , which I had never heard of prior to visiting Lebanon, became my choice for lunch in Beirut at a place near our hotel called La Maison du Café, a great spot for lunch, coffee and people watching. There is nothing terribly exotic or exciting about labneh but the timing of the discovery could not have been better. Before I left for the trip the weather here was hot but not unbearably so. The temps in Memphis started climbing ever higher as I was gallivanting about the globe. Upon my return to Memphis I was greeted by the humid heatwave as I came off the plane. Native Memphians all too familiar with the blanket of sweltering heat would fondly say, "I am definitely home", as beads of sweat form on their brows. This brings me back to labneh. It's cool, light and creamy, the perfect ingredient on a sandwich in summertime.

Simply, it consists of lettuce, kalamata olives, tomato, and labneh mixed with finely chopped cucumber and mint on toasted grainy/seedy bread. Last night, I got pretty darn close to making a sandwich that tasted exactly the same as the one I had in Beirut. Ok, their bread was way better but I used a close runner up - La Brea seeded wheat bread. La Brea also has a kalamata olive bread that would be great for this sandwich. I bought the labneh at the Mediterranean Market at Highland and Park.





Speaking of cooling food...

Frix-Jennings' gelato bar, Besso's at 59 S. Main, is still not open but they plan to get it up and running at some point in the future. A year and a half now I've been waiting for the gelato. Please bring the gelato. Seriously, people have left comments about the one in Jackson, TN and how great it is so I am looking forward to being a customer.

I forget about it, but Maggie Moo's Ice Cream is still in Peabody Place.

On Wednesday nights, Sole offers Jet-Fresh sushi flown in fresh from Honolulu Seafood Company.

And of course, you can always head to Bluff City Coffee for an iced coffee or iced blended drinks.

What's Been Happening: SACHË; SOB; Urban Garden; Ladies Days and Nights; Pizza; Stray Dog

And now back to our regularly scheduled program...

Those looking for designer clothes and accessories made in Memphis need look no further than SACHË a new shop coming to 525 S. Main.

South of Beale is building a patio...



I spotted another one of those cut-out squiggly-tailed cats...


The urban garden on Huling is coming along quite nicely...


Don't forget today is Ladies Day at the Corkscrew - 10% off all wine for ladies.

And Mona Spa at the Envision training and fitness center in the Cadre Building, is offering Ladies Nights with the Memphis Redbirds.

Suddenly, pizza seems to be everywhere, a happy circumstance:

Ferraro's Pizza at 111 Jackson in the Pinch will be having their soft opening tomorrow and their Grand Opening this Friday.

Also, another new pizza place has opened at the corner of Peabody Place and Third called Italia Pizza, I think. It's where the Ben and Jerry's used to be.

Aldo's Pizza Pies in the core on Main St. between Union and Monroe should be coming along soon as well.

Lastly, the stray dog has been on my mind. Maybe you've seen her trotting along Main Street. She's a black dog with a little brown in her coat, friendly, she somehow stays clean and looks like she eats fairly well. I've seen her around now since December and am amazed that she is still alive. This morning on my run we encountered each other and I bent down to scratch her ears. She then ran along behind me for about six blocks. I would love to take her in but the Queen (aka Poppy) would surely not approve of an interloper in her castle, albeit a diminutive one it's her kingdom nonetheless.

Wrapping Up the Trip; Back in Memphis

My vacation has come to an end and what a world wind two weeks this has been! From Paris to Geneva to Lyon to Beirut then back to Paris. My favorite place was Beirut. Not to take anything away from the beauty of France and Switzerland but I felt something different in Lebanon. The people are friendly, the weather is beautiful, there are mountains and a seaside, the food is outstanding and the city is alive and well and rebuilding at a frenetic pace. I hope for Beirutis and their visitors it stays that way. As a side note I was in Paris while watching the second half of the World Cup match between Mexico and France and bore witness to the subsequent first stages of the meltdown of the fans, the media and the French team. The unraveling is interesting, no? Here are a couple of parting shots from my last day in Paris.

One of the many gargoyles perched high atop the Sacré Cœur Basilica on Montmarte, the highest point in Paris.

And my personal favorite is a photo on a street called Rue de Silly with a marker sign for the Hotel Tryp. I have obnoxiously circled the signs in yellow. I know, it's like pearls before swine with me. Click the image to enlarge...

Back to downtown Memphis posts this week! To get back into the swing of things I noted that Local on Main Street is showing all the World Cup matches. So get your vuvuzela down there. Glad to be back home.

Where in the World?, part 7 A Lebanese Beach

At the beach in Jiyeh about 25 minutes south of Beirut

Where in the World? part 6, Glimpses of Beirut

Armenian Catholic Church St. Gregoire - St. Elie

Construction and destruction

The Riviera Club off the Corniche on the sea

Saifi Village near Solidere

Gemmayze - a very cool neighborhood with lots of nightlife

Where in the World? part 5 : Lebanese Food and Narghileh

Continuing on in Beirut with some more photos...

Local beer served with salted pumpkin seeds and roasted peanuts

Warm, fresh from the oven pita bread, hummus and fresh vegetables

Eggplant and beef shish kabob

Rose, lemon and mint sorbets

Narghileh - lots of people, guys and girls, were smoking these on the sidewalk cafes in Solidere while watching the World Cup. All the cafes, bars and restaurants have many flatscreens set up inside and outside so people can watch the matches. We saw USA vs. England last night and caught most of Ghana vs. Serbia today.

Rose flavored tobacco and mint tea. I'm not a smoker but I got all caught up in this thing, though I posted about hookahs a couple of years ago when there was a place downtown that had them.

A sheik and his narghileh-smoking friend? bodyguard?

Where in the World?, part 4

Photos from the exciting destination of....Beirut, Lebanon

View from the Corniche - the seaside promenade.

The Maronite Cathedral of St. George and the Mohammad Al-Amin Mosque sit next to each other..

Narghileh are ominpresent.

I have been in Beirut less than 48 hours as I write this. I have so many impressions and have already seen so many things that I don't think I could gather my thoughts into a cohesive post. I will just write a few quick notes for now:

There is much more on-going construction, reconstruction and redevelopment than I had imagined.

The Solidere area downtown, especially the pedestrian part, is super sleek and cosmopolitan. We had lunch there today at a great place called Karam where my companion had lamb tongue and lamb brains. I was more than happy with my hummus, though I tried the tongue and liked it. The brains, not so much.

I was not expecting to see Roman ruins on one side of the street and a TGI Friday's on the other side of the street. Right, a Friday's. Nor was I expecting there to be a Chili's next to our hotel.

The lebanese food I have had so far - creamy hummus, labneh, tabbouleh, grilled meats, super fresh fish, shrimp, calamari, spicy potatoes, beans (foul) and a wide variety of pastries - is so very good. We've eaten twice at a great place called Chase just around the corner from the hotel in Sassine Square.

I would describe the driving as free form, sort of like an interpretive dance at 50 mph. It seems like you can honk your horn all the time for almost any reason.

Lots of people smoke narghileh (hookahs), inside and outside.

Anyway, as this is my maiden voyage to the Middle East I'm sure I will form some deeper impressions in the next few days.

I'm not hyper linking today, so here are some links if you are interested:

About Soldiere: http://www.solidere.com/project/beirut.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mohammad_Al-Amin_Mosque

http://facebook.com/pages/The-Maronite-Cathedral-of-St-George-Downtown-Beirut/53473892055

About labneh: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strained_yoghurt

Where in the World?, part 3

Flew out from Paris....


Past Greece...


And over Cyprus to the second continent and third country of the trip...

Soon: the third destination revealed in a photographic revelry, no doubt.