I lived in Memphis in 1998 - 1999. If you know anything about Memphis, you’re probably just aware that it’s in Tennessee, and you think it’s country music territory. Nothing could possibly be further from the truth: Memphis is the adopted home of the blues, Elvis Presley, and dry ribs.
If you’ve never heard blues, don’t bother with a CD - go hear it live. There’s an excitement, a soul to it that you can’t possibly capture on a CD. To really experience the blues, you need to be in a tight, cramped bar in the South, less than 50′ away from the band. You need to see the people get up and dance between the tables. You need to watch the interactions between the singers, the brass, the guitars.
On Beale Street, you can walk into any bar on any night and hear astoundingly good live music. There’s no such thing as a bad band on Beale - they wouldn’t last a night. Whether you go into B.B. King’s or the Rum Boogie Cafe, you can be assured of a night with great music. Find the place with the menu you want, and just go in.
Elvis Presley’s Memphis is a new restaurant on Beale that specializes in the kinds of foods Elvis would have eaten in the early years. The place is posh, very high class, but the prices are fair. The service is very consistent: no matter when you go, it’s horrible. There’s plenty of Presley momentos on the walls, from the costumes he wore to his pool table upstairs. The bar serves a great chocolate vodka martini called the Treat Me Right. If you go to Memphis, you need to see this restaurant. It’s better than Graceland.
Speaking of which, Graceland is a total letdown. Every time I brought friends past the building, they were dumbfounded to find it in a seedy neighborhood next to a car dealer. If you’re a true devotee, you might like to take the tour, but I didn’t meet anyone who actually enjoyed it.
No trip to Memphis is complete without a plate of dry ribs at Charlie Vergos’ Rendezvous. Stop in at the Holiday Inn Select downtown and get directions, because if you don’t know exactly where it is, you can’t possibly stumble across it, not even with a map. From a food review: “The ribs at the Rendezvous, in a process devised by Charlie Vergos circa 1948 when he opened the downtown alleyway restaurant, are heavily coated with a sort of Greek-Cajun dry spice rub and cooked for an hour and a half over hardwood.” Forget the BBQ you’re used to - this place doesn’t use sauce. Once you have dry ribs, you’ll never be satisfied with that crappy sauce they drench over ribs trying to make them taste tender. Rendezvous ribs *are* tender, without having to work at it.
There are some other high points in Memphis: Mud Island has a scale model of the Mississippi, half a mile long if I remember right. You can walk along the banks, stepping on towns. Very well-presented. The Peabody has a wonderful tradition that has to be seen to be believed. Every morning they march the ducks down from the roof to their fountain in the lobby, and every afternoon they march back. The drinks in the lobby bar are expensive, don’t bother.
