Joe Spotts and Joseph Soliman criss-crossed the Southeast sampling fried chicken dinners before settling in Memphis.
West Memphis native Joe Spotts first met Joseph Soliman, who is Lebanese, in Istanbul, but he couldn’t speak Arabic, Soliman’s first language. Likewise, Soliman didn’t know much English, so the chefs cooked together, building a culinary bond that led them eventually to Memphis, where the two Joes now operate Joes’ Restaurant, open since mid-May. “We would go to the markets, and cook, and never even discuss it,” Spotts says. “We finished each other’s sentences gastronomically.”
Located on South Highland Street in the former Farmer space, Joes’ original concept — a down-and-dirty fried chicken place — has evolved into full-service dinner and lunch with dishes such as braised beef ribs and salmon with butter caper sauce. (Think home-cooked Sunday dinners, but gussied up.) Exceptionally good fried chicken, however, remains at the menu’s core, marinated for 24 hours, seasoned with a 16-spice blend, and fried to order so the skin stays nice and crispy.
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Fried chicken, seasoned with secret spices, shapes the heart of Joes’ menu
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Chicken fried steak (it’s divine!) comes with mashed potatoes and Angel biscuits
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Pork medallions perch atop plum-colored lingonberry sauce.
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For dessert, try a slice of Grasshopper pie
Order a two-piece plate — either white meat or dark — and don’t skip the restaurant’s sides made with Southern leanings: Mardi Gras slaw, mac and cheese, mashed potatoes with roasted poblano chili gravy, and Angel biscuits, moist and a little billowy as the name implies.
“We call them Angel biscuits in our family, and they are a yeast biscuit, and we make them fresh at the restaurant every day,” says Spotts, crediting his passion for cooking to his great-grandmother Eva Brower, his grandmother, Erdie McKee, and his mother, June Greene, who wrote a cooking column for local newspapers, including the West Memphis Evening Times.
At Joes’, family recipes stand alongside seasonal soups like mango tomato vichyssoise and retro classics like coq au vin and pork medallions in lingonberry sauce, a plum-colored perfection made with port wine reduction and lingonberry jam. For dessert, try Grasshopper pie, a kind of grown up Girl Scout cookie made with crème de menthe and crème de cacao. “Restaurants used to give away mints after dinner,” Spotts says. “Our pie gives you that same kind of refreshing afterglow.”
262 S. Highland St. (901-337-7003) $-$$
