Restaurant Iris. Photographs by Justin Fox Burks
From the outside, Restaurant Iris seems much the same. The picturesque Queen Anne bungalow looks settled and confident, and, as in years past, lavender blossoms nod hello from the restaurant’s sun-drenched garden planters.
But look beyond the front door with its signature fleur-de-lis, and Chef Kelly English’s renovated Midtown restaurant becomes a house of surprises. Customers cluster around a 12-seat bar top crafted from polished zinc for cocktails like Strawberry Fields, a festive Tito’s concoction made with St. Germaine, sprigs of Thai basil, and strawberry lemonade.
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Order a bourbon punch bowl off the dessert menu before food.
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Quail is served on a nest of sautéed spinach.
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Before smoking it, chefs rub down the seven-spice brisket with a pomegranate reduction and spices including cumin, coriander, and allspice. On the plate, fork-tender brisket joins ruby-red gremolata and roasted lima beans.
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Little octopi are marinated, sous-vided, and quickly seared for extra char, then served with saffron aioli and persillade, a parsley-garlic sauce.
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The dark chocolate flourless cake is rich like fudge, served with Grand Marnier cream and macerated blood orange slices, and cut to be shared.
Other people share bar snacks. There are baked böreks, a Middle Eastern phyllo pastry stuffed with wild mushrooms, shallots, and chard and stacked in a crisscross on whipped Bulgarian feta, and ham hock hushpuppies — crispy, fat, and round — plated with smoked aioli and translucent slivers of lardo melted on top.
The bar menu recognizes English’s Louisiana roots, an homage of sorts to the original Restaurant Iris that opened off Overton Square a decade ago. The bar’s buoyant energy, however, is new, and it pushes into the restaurant’s redesigned dining rooms like an exuberant 10-year-old headed toward Christmas. “I’m more in love with this restaurant than I’ve ever been,” English says about his restaurant’s new persona. “And part of what I love is that we’ve stripped it down and intentionally not rested on past accolades.”
A perennial winner for best restaurant in Memphis, along with best chef, Restaurant Iris was defined, and sometimes bound, by its own success. So, English closed Iris in April. He wanted time to rethink the restaurant’s food, physical space, and culture, both as a business and a community partner. “After a while, even if something isn’t broken, you should break it,” English explains.
As executive chef, Camron Razavi’s expertise encouraged the shift. Although he has directed Iris’s kitchen for some time, the restaurant’s former menu still reflected English’s original vision: to serve modern Louisiana food retooled by the seasonal ingredients available in Memphis. Now Razavi asks the same question: What would my family eat if they had settled here?
Chefs Kelly English and Camron Razavi
His answers are decidedly different. For starters, Razavi’s mix-and-match menu of 16 dishes retells his own culinary journey from childhood home to seasoned professional. He first cooked in a restaurant at age 19, after a fluke interview led him from pre-law studies to a kitchen in Norman, Oklahoma, not far from where he grew up. “My dad was from Iran, and my mom was from Oklahoma, but she’s also native American,” Razavi says about his early influences. “In college, my roommates were Asian, and that’s all we cooked.”
Razavi’s connection to English started in St. Louis at the Kelly English Steakhouse, now closed, and later at the Magnolia House in Biloxi. In Memphis at the new Iris, Razavi’s global appetites come full circle with new menus that are bold, purposeful, and unique. “I’m Cam’s biggest fan,” English says. “I love the way he cooks.”
A test kitchen dinner, one of a series held over the summer, gave me an early peek at Razavi’s creativity. I tried roasted oysters muffuletta, ruby red trout with fennel, fresh figs, and green-tomato gazpacho, and Vietnamese coffee mousse with a mini-glazed donut. I was delighted when all three dishes took slightly altered paths to Iris’s opening menu. Six weeks later, they were gone, along with the summer season.
By mid-October, a few menu originals remain, at least for now. My favorite dish is the restaurant’s quail settled on a nest of sautéed spinach. Despite its demure looks, the quail’s intrepid personality shines through, thanks to spicy mustard caramel sauce developed by accident. Intended for a vinaigrette, Razavi added sugar to the spicy sauce to tame its heat. “I kept adding more sugar, and more sugar until I finally said, ‘I might as well turn this sauce into caramel.’”
Other layered flavors enhance this dish’s texture and depth. To start, cooks marinade the quail for two days in Char siu, the Cantonese seasoning that gives Chinese barbecue its signature red color. For the quail’s stuffing, they mix three types of rice — wild, red, and brown — with Bluff City Fungi mushrooms, locally sourced.
The shrimp and grits also remain on the fall menu, and no wonder. They are a sublime study in restraint, as well as a story about the Asian fishermen who harvest much of the Gulf Coast’s shrimp. For the dish, Razavi eschews corn grits for rice grits congee, a kind of rice gruel popular in many Asian countries. He also adds dashi, or Japanese soup stock, to the grits to develop more umami flavor. In the bowl, slices of Chinese sausage join head-on shrimp, and on top, boiled peanuts stand in for more traditional garnishes like scallions or bacon.
For Razavi, both dishes bode well for a menu that bends easily to accommodate individual diners and the experiences they create. “If customers want to share some small dishes, they can,” he says. “If they want to order three or four courses, they can do that, too.”
Happy to abide Razavi’s advice to mix things up, we order a bourbon punch bowl off the dessert menu before we order food. It is a splendid idea, and we can’t help but smile (a lot) as we watch the bowl fill up with fresh fruit (peaches, blackberries, and strawberries); booze (vermouth, Buffalo Trace, and peach liqueur); juice (lemon and orange); and scoops of ice cubes that click merrily against the bowl’s vintage crystal.
As our food arrives, we fish out the last berries from the bottom of the punch and share bountiful plates: celery root gnocchi with ribbons of egg yolk that melt into Parmesan cream; pork tenderloin with purple cabbage purée and a circle of deep-fried pork shoulder croquettes; and butternut squash risotto made with pearl couscous, sage brown butter, pepitas, and Pecorino cheese.
Later, when I see English and praise our punch bowl bliss, he laughs, “It’s like a grown-up Diver, right?” But then he gets more serious: “Our only goal is to make people happy, and the customers who come to our restaurant give us the opportunity to do just that.”
Restaurant Iris
2146 Monroe Ave.
901-590-2828
★★★★
Food: Look for Chef Camron Razavi’s three favorite ingredients — saffron, pomegranates, and pistachios — in dishes that link Southern cooking to Asian, Mediterranean, and Middle Eastern food.
Drinks: Beverage director Laurin Culp grows fresh herbs for cocktails like Light in August, spirited by the honey notes of Vermont’s Barr Hill Gin. After the first frost, look for new ingredients, like house-made grenadine for a seasonal fall punch.
Atmosphere: Deliberate details such as portraits of the Iris team by local artist Jimpsie Ayres and flecked paper menus in silver frames shape an easy ambience at the new Iris.
Prices: Snacks ($6-$12); starters ($8-$14); mains ($24-$38); desserts ($8); punch bowls serve four to six ($52-$56).
Open: Dinner and bar open at 5 p.m. Monday through Saturday.
What the stars mean:
★★★★ Exceptional
★★★ Very good
★★ Satisfactory
★ Skip it!
