photo by justin fox burks
Editor’s note: As we go to press with our Staycation package, there are an unprecedented number of closings due to the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. The owners of Arrive Memphis have temporarily closed their hotel, including the Longshot Bar. In a statement, the ownership group said, "When the world sorts itself out, we hope we'll be the first to welcome you back with a drink and a laugh." We'll be there.
Arrive Memphis embraces South Main with a lively lobby for coffee, cocktails, pastry, and toast.
From the oversized windows on the fifth floor of Arrive Memphis, the city’s redeveloped south side spreads out beneath a glorious winter sunset. There’s the distinctive smokestack at the Malco Powerhouse Cinema, block after block of stylish apartments, and expansive lofts inside once-forgotten factories near the Mississippi River.
The hotel room’s boho décor and contemporary underpinnings — Apple TVs, Egyptian cotton linens, and chilled glasses in the mini-fridge — are equally appealing. But at Arrive Memphis, where my husband and I spend an overnight getaway, we don’t linger too long in room 508. The hotel’s charming lobby beckons.
With its vibrant collection of people, pets, and curios, the first-floor corner space reminds me of a Wes Anderson film, only here we can eat, drink, and plug in. At the hotel’s check-in desk, baristas from local roaster Vice & Virtue pour lattes with the options of whole, oat, or hemp milk. More elaborate drinks are available, too, like Blue Note Bourbon barrel-aged espresso mixed with house-made cocoa and steamed milk.
photo by justin fox burks
From the eclectic lobby of Arrive Memphis on South Main Street, guests can see the iconic sign of the Lorraine Motel, watch the city’s trolley roll by, or feast on a café menu built around sourdough bread.
But now it’s after 5 p.m., so we skip coffee and head to the lobby bar, where cocktails from beverage director Erik Hmiel are inventive and Instagramable. Along with our cocktails, we order a small plate from the Hustle & Dough café menu, served in the lobby all day. The menu’s offerings move from savory scones and hand pies filled with fruit to grilled cheese and dill on Texas toast. We share a cured fish plate with pickles, labneh, and dark rye toast before heading around the corner to the hotel’s restaurant for sausages, beer, and a spirited game of shuffleboard.
photo by justin fox burks
With a big flavor bar menu at Longshot, Chef David Todd does it his way.
Chef David Todd’s culinary journey has been a circuitous one. He’s cooked at bars and country clubs, high-end restaurants like Interim, and short-lived but trendy ones like Cooper-Young’s Grace au Vin. Formerly part of the opening kitchen team at Acre, he calls the experience life-changing.
Todd, a Memphis native, has faced tough times, too. He left Memphis, shouldered through rehab, and came back to recommit himself to professional cooking. But through it all, he never considered working in a hotel kitchen until bumping into James Siao, the managing director of Arrive Memphis, at a soccer game last year.
“This job is something I’ve been meandering to for a long time. I just didn’t realize it,” Todd says. “I love bar food, but I also love big technique and bold, interesting flavors. I like moving between the two different worlds.”
At Longshot, the hotel’s restaurant, Todd’s energy seems ideally matched with the space. The restaurant’s entrance is located at the dip of a cobblestone incline on East Butler Avenue, so it feels a little like a family basement rec room, only updated. Booths run along the north wall, so customers can see passersby through street-level windows. Shuffleboard tables run down the restaurant’s center aisle, a nod to the game’s renewed popularity and the building’s history.
photo by justin fox burks
Near the turn of the last century, a Memphis doctor named Albert Schuffel opened a leading alley manufacturer called Alleyworks in the ArriveMemphis building. A new game called “Schuffel Board” evolved when workers from a rivet producer next door noticed how easily the rivets they made slid across Alleyworks’ scrap planks. Or so the story goes.
Longshot’s sausage-centric menu is another fun companion with the space, but still chef-driven. Think bar food, but gussied up. Seven different sausages, all house-made, build the menu’s core. Each sandwich — served on baker Ali Rorhbacher’s remarkable milk bread buns — pays homage to a different world cuisine. For Todd, everything is fair game.
The Al Pastor, for instance, celebrates Mexican street food with a seasoned sausage (cumin, oregano, and guajillo chili) topped with onion, cilantro, charred pineapple, and salsa verde made with roasted tomatillo and avocado. The Korean BBQ sausage is topped with kimchi, toasted sesame seed, and a daikon-cucumber salad, while the Vietnamese sausage (my favorite) is seasoned with ginger, chili, and lime and garnished with fresh cilantro, pepper sauce, and sticky rice.
Todd likes to think of each sausage as an entrée compressed into a bun. He explains his creative process like this: “I remove the traditional boxes of an entrée — throw the plate out, throw the presentation out — and then work with the same flavors and components into a different package.”
Case in point: Longshot’s Frito Pie. Customers will recognize the familiar crunch from Frito-Lay, but the pie’s filling — berbere-spiced lamb chili, mint oil, and cilantro — is inspired by Ethiopian flavors.
Rotating entree specials like Moroccan barbecue lamb ribs with shredded red cabbage slaw illustrate a similar spirited approach. “They are fun and something new to put out into the world on social media,” Todd says. “And it helps set the tone for people who are curious about what’s coming up next.”
photo by justin fox burks
“I’m all in or I don’t go,” says baker Ali Rohrbacher about her spirited approach to baking.
Chef Ali Rohrbacher’s passion for sourdough builds a cafe menu around bread.
By her own admission, chef Ali Rohrbacher is obsessive by nature. She played competitive sports growing up and, later as an adult, exercised as a form of self-competition.
When she decided to teach herself how to make sourdough bread, she also hit it hard, first as a hobbyist with a dedicated Instagram following and later as a professional baker at The Liquor Store on Broad Avenue and at the now closed Crosstown Café. Mastering sourdough — the building block of her bakery and café called Hustle & Dough — was both complicated and challenging. “It was a tactile and experimental kind of project that met the parameter of trying to do better every time I baked,” she recalls.
Made with fermented dough, the bread depends on a live starter called levain, a delicate ecosystem impacted by temperature, environment, and handling. It is a complicated dance, but one Rohrbacher embraces for a bread program that includes baguettes, Japanese-style milk bread and buns, and three kinds of sourdough: country, multigrain porridge, and dark rye.
“When you bake sourdough, you are trying to control and manipulate nature,” she says. “To get to harness that to make a beautiful loaf of bread that someone can enjoy is as close to magic as I’ll ever get.”
At Hustle & Dough, located inside the lobby of Arrive Memphis, Rohrbacher and her six-person team turn out bread and pastries for retail, along with a menu structured around sweet or savory toast. Rohrbacher insists on top-quality ingredients such as Valrhona dark chocolate from France, Wuthrich European butter (it’s 83 percent butterfat!), and heirloom grains, some of which she grinds in-house.
Cut into thick slices, the breads are the foundation for a dozen or so dishes, including rye bread granola in whipped yogurt bowls, mushroom toast with basil pesto and ricotta, avocado toast with fermented jalapeño, and delicious tamago egg sandwiches fashioned after grab-n-go varieties ubiquitous to Japan.
Pastry selections add more variety to the hotel menu and to the bakery’s retail case. Try savory scones stuffed with mushrooms and shallots, sourdough pretzels baked fresh every day, or dark chocolate chip cookies with flake salt on top. “They are my nod to the American pastry tradition of making insanely large cookies,” Rohrbacher says with a laugh. “I wanted both a crunchy exterior, a chewier soft middle, and salt with every bite.”
Best Bets
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photo by justin fox burks
Almond butter toast at Hustle & Dough: Almond butter, a forgotten but favorite hippie food, gets an upscale makeover with sea salt, maple date syrup, and a thick slice of Chef Ali Rohrbacher’s porridge sourdough bread.
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photo by justin fox burks
Pigs in a Blanket at Longshot: Forget the crescent rolls. Instead, Chef David Todd stuffs lumpia, or Pilipino spring rolls, with house-made sausage and garnishes the skinny fried rolls with green leaf lettuce wraps and nouc cham, a Vietnamese dipping sauce.
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photo by justin fox burks
Spicy Masala Chicken Wings at Longshot: Grab several napkins because these plump chicken wings get the attention they deserve. Consider the ingredients: coriander, cilantro, green onion, toasted mustard seeds, and raita, a yogurt-based condiment, to cool down the heat.
Almond butter toast at Hustle & Dough: Almond butter, a forgotten but favorite hippie food, gets an upscale makeover with sea salt, maple date syrup, and a thick slice of Chef Ali Rohrbacher’s porridge sourdough bread.
Pigs in a Blanket at Longshot: Forget the crescent rolls. Instead, Chef David Todd stuffs lumpia, or Pilipino spring rolls, with house-made sausage and garnishes the skinny fried rolls with green leaf lettuce wraps and nouc cham, a Vietnamese dipping sauce.
Spicy Masala Chicken Wings at Longshot: Grab several napkins because these plump chicken wings get the attention they deserve. Consider the ingredients: coriander, cilantro, green onion, toasted mustard seeds, and raita, a yogurt-based condiment, to cool down the heat.
477 S. Main. 901-896-0228. Open 4 p.m. to midnight seven days a week.
