Burger of the Day with blue cheese, onion rings, guanciale, and Swiss chard.
Once a year, I find myself pondering the same question: Where do I take my wife for our anniversary dinner? The answer must be someplace “nice,” of course — anniversary dinners at Taco Bell tend to be frowned upon by the audience that matters. But what does “nice” mean? The atmosphere has to be just right: Friendly, not too formal (unless you’re into that sort of thing), with an intimate table for two available. And most importantly, the food has to be great.
For our anniversary this year, I found a great spot. Fawn is a relatively new addition to the Cooper-Young dining scene, having opened last May at 937 South Cooper in the former Sweetgrass spot. Chef Theresa Schunke says she relocated specifically for the opportunity to work with owners Paul Gilliam and Mary Oglesby. They made their reputation in Memphis with Cameo, the popular Midtown watering hole on Union Avenue, and Mary’s Bar of Tropical Escapism, which bills itself as Memphis’ only Tiki bar.
Some 15 years before, Oglesby had been Schunke’s boss when they both lived in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and they had stayed in touch. “Mary contacted me when they got the space,” says Schunke. “I had been cooking for about 10 years all over the country. So I was like, ‘Heck, yeah!’ and packed my bags and moved to Memphis.”
Lentil Dubu Jorim
The space Oglesby and Gilliam prepared for Schunke is done up in mostly black. Well-designed lighting keeps it from looking gloomy. Our service was nothing if not enthusiastic. This is all good anniversary material , I thought . Before we began, our server offered us a champagne anniversary toast — and when my wife asked for a non-alcoholic option, she was offered Lyre’s zero alcohol champagne, which was citrusy and delicious.
Fawn’s menu features appetizers, shareable small plates, and main courses. We started our dinner with the beef tartare appetizer, served with an oyster aioli, which we took on the side. The combo made for a light, yet earthy flavor combination. “The oyster aioli is a play on surf-and-turf,” says Schunke.
Our venture into the shareables section was the lentil dubu jorim. The Korean dish is usually made with tofu, but Schunke substituted a fluffy, yet crispy, lentil cake served over slices of fried eggplant.
“I’ve always really loved eggplant. It’s one of my favorite vegetables,” says the chef. “The original idea is kind of a spin-off of a dish that’s tofu, sautéed and marinated in [gochugaru] sauce, but then I wanted to make something in-house that was a little bit more original. We take red lentils, and we make lentil cakes in-house. The eggplant kind of seemed like a natural fit for me.”
For the main course, my anniversary dinner date got the sweet potato gnocchi. “That’s one of my favorite dishes,” says Schunke. “I really like it because people don’t know that it’s vegan. The dish’s pastrami is made with celery root, served in a bravas sauce with a touch of horseradish aioli
I chose the burger of the day, which Schunke says was not on the original menu. “When we opened, we didn’t think we were going to do a burger. But this way, it’s different every single week. We display the creativity of the kitchen, using whatever is fresh from our farmers, or what we have in-house. It’s kind of like a Chopped-style situation, where you look around, and you’re like, ‘This would make a really good burger!’”
This week, the ingredients of that really good burger were bleu cheese; onion rings; guanciale, an Italian salt-cured pork cheek; and Swiss chard, which came from a Memphis-area farmer. I loved the burger, which was surprising because I have never been a fan of blue cheese. “Blue cheese is always divisive, but I do like to sneak it on there sometimes,” says the chef.
Since it was a special occasion, we saved room for desert. We chose to split a slice of the red velvet cake, which prompted a reminiscence from chef Schunke. “I didn’t start cooking until a little bit later in life. I was actually in school, but I loved working in restaurants, and decided one day that I wanted to jump into cooking. I did a lot of it at home for my family, my friends. So I went around the country and learned under different chefs.”
Sweet Potato Gnocchi
During a stint in Milwaukee, she ran the kitchen for a restaurant called Goodkind. “I want to give them a shout out, because they got nominated for a James Beard Award and made it to the semifinals this year. I’m so proud of them. A wife-and husband duo was in the kitchen, and she did a lot of the menu, but was very well versed in pastries. She took me under her wing and taught me what she knew. I discovered a love for pastries, and how to play around with them. Once you know the rules, you can bend them a little bit.”
The red velvet cake was not as fluffy as some iterations of the dessert. Its texture was a bit more like a dense carrot cake, but the flavors were intense.
“One of the things that I learned from my mentors about doing pastry,” says the chef, “was that you always add more salt than you think you would need in a pastry, or in any kind of cake, because that will cut the sweetness and bring out the other flavors that you’re trying to get through. Otherwise, it just tastes like sugar — which some people are going to like — and I won’t knock anybody for that. But I prefer things that have a bit more flavor. The sweetness is there, but it’s not the main thing that you get.”
The red velvet cake came with a light coating of cream cheese frosting. “You know, it's funny, because I cook the way I like to eat,” says Schunke. “My favorite part is the cake part. If I get a cake, usually I’m scraping off half the frosting, because I like it, but I want to taste the cake.”
The frosting is made with an unusual ingredient. “I like to use Thai tea in desserts,” the chef says. “When we make the frosting, we steep that Thai tea in some cream and add that to our cream cheese and our buttermilk. It makes it a little more earthy. You get that black tea flavor, but it also has turmeric, and there’s a lot of vanilla and some cardamom in there, some warm spices.”
As we lingered after dinner, fully sated, chatting with the chef, I realized that my wife and I had discovered a new spot for future anniversaries.
Fawn, 937 South Cooper
