photograph by bruce vanwyngarden
Leanna Tedford with a New Orleans Special.
If you’re the kind of Memphian who likes to settle in at a good bar now and then, you’ve likely had a drink handed to you by Leanna Tedford. Her bartending résumé stretches back 30 years, covering stints at Mick’s, Cafe Olé, Cooper Street, Café Society, Jim’s Place East, and Grove Grill. She currently bartends and waits tables at Karen Carrier’s Beauty Shop in Cooper-Young, where we recently met to catch up.
I confess to being one of those Memphians who likes to settle in at a good bar now and then. I’ve been to all of those places named above, and have encountered Tedford many times over the years. But I really got to know her through our mutual love of trout fishing (and big ol’ rescue mutts), which we discovered in an accidental meetup at Fat Possum Hollow resort on the Little Red River a few years back. I was already aware that Leanna was good people, but folks who trout-fish and love dawgs are extra good people in my book. Plus, she makes a killer drink.
She was originally going to be a teacher, but things got waylaid down in Mississippi. “I started working at Como Steakhouse while doing my student teaching at Delta State in 1992,” Tedford says. “But I never taught a day, because I found something I liked better, and I’ve never left. This industry has been really good to me.”
After working at Cafe Olé, then Cooper Street in the late 1990s, she got a job at Café Society and stayed there nine years. “I really loved that bar,” she says. “I still have lunch over there sometimes. Then I spent 10 years at Grove Grill before it closed, where I also met a lot of great people.”
“I always wanted to be tall and skinny and have a German short-haired pointer, but I’m short, not skinny, and the dogs who’ve found me have all been some kind of hound. I’ve always wanted to be rich, and I’m not, but I have the most wonderful friends — 90 percent of whom I met through my work — so I consider myself to be one of the most-blessed people on the planet. How’s that?” — Leanna Tedford
Tedford got her Beauty Shop gig “one day before the pandemic” — just before the era of take-out and carryout — and decided to hang around for a while.
“One thing about Karen [Carrier] is that she takes care of her employees,” Tedford says. “She was so diligent about masks and all of us staying healthy and setting up insurance. She worried about everybody being able to feed their families and pay their bills. Eventually, I started waiting tables, since we didn’t have a bar for months.”
On a recent delightful spring afternoon, the always-eclectic Beauty Shop bar is open. Being a professional journalist, I never lose sight of my core mission: getting a bartender to make me a free drink.
“You know you have to make me a cocktail as part of this deal, right?” I say. “Them’s the rules.”
“Yes, I am aware of that,” says Tedford, “and I’ve decided to make you our New Orleans Special. It’s got reposado tequila, St. Germain liqueur, a little fresh lemon juice, and some fresh basil. Then I shake it — which strains some of the basil out — and pour. It’s quick, easy, fresh, and delicious. Not complicated.”
A minute later, Leanna slides a clear, icy glass decorated with a sprig of basil in my direction. I take a sip. The cocktail starts dry, not at all sweet. It finishes with a hint of lemon and lavender — and a whiff of that herbaceous basil. It’s crisp as seersucker and would enjoy being in your hand on a steamy Memphis summer day. I recommend it to you.
It turns out that I’ve caught Tedford on the last day before she’s taking a week off to go to Fat Possum. “The dogs are ready,” she says, “and so am I. And now that I’m waiting tables more, it makes it easier for me to take off to my fishing spot, so that’s a win.”
I tell her to catch a big brown trout for me and ask her if she has any final thoughts before we wrap things up.
“Well,” she says, “I always wanted to be tall and skinny and have a German short-haired pointer, but I’m short, not skinny, and the dogs who’ve found me have all been some kind of hound. I’ve always wanted to be rich, and I’m not, but I have the most wonderful friends — 90 percent of whom I met through my work — so I consider myself to be one of the most-blessed people on the planet. How’s that?”
“That’s pretty good,” I say. “Tight lines tomorrow.”
The Beauty Shop is located at 966 South Cooper, 901-272-7111.
