photograph by bruce vanwyngarden
Lisa Gradinger with a “Vieux Carré.”
After moving to Memphis from Springfield, Missouri, in 1997, Lisa Gradinger soon found herself making drinks for Elvis Presley. Sort of.
“I’d been waiting tables at the Dixie Cafe when I first got to Memphis,” she remembers. “Then I ended up working downtown at Elvis Presley’s Memphis, and that’s where I started bartending. I just watched and picked up on what everybody was doing behind the bar. It looked like more fun than waiting tables.”
After her stint at Elvis Presley’s, Gradinger moved a few blocks north, to Swig Martini Bar, where she worked for a couple years before landing a job bartending at the Majestic Grille, where she happily stayed from 2006 to 2021. That’s when the great Covid diaspora took her away from the business for a bit, as it did so many others in the restaurant trade.
“I took a couple months off,” she says, “and asked myself, ‘Do I still want to be doing this?’ And I decided I did. I enjoy restaurants, and I enjoy taking care of people, watching them have a great experience with food and drink. And you meet so many amazing people in this job.”
Gradinger’s next stop was Ecco, in Midtown, and when owners Sabine Bachman and her son, John Paul Gagliano, opened Tonica in March 2022, Gradinger became the bar manager there. It’s a flourishing tapas restaurant with an extensive and creative cocktail menu, and it’s a good fit, she says.
After one sip, you know this thing means business, but it goes about its work very nicely. It’s a smooth operator, and one that will take time to get to know better.
“The neighborhood has responded well,” she says, “and we’ve had a lot of fun times here. I like trying new things. There are a couple of guys who know that, and they’ll come in and just randomly go, ‘Have you heard of this drink?’ It will usually be something strange or obscure, like ‘the Suburban.’ It usually makes me look something up and then I’ll think about how I could make it better. I love making tinctures and syrups, and you never stop learning in this job, whether it’s new spirits, new wines, or new techniques.”
When she’s not behind the bar, Gradinger and her husband, Joel, are members of a competitive barbecue team, named — wait for it — the Porkcrastinators. It’s become a real passion, she says: “You never realize how competitive it is until you do it. It’s a fun group of people from all around the Memphis area. We cook on Weber grills — our little R2D2s. My husband specializes in ribs but we both try other things. We had a big ‘bean-off’ at our house a couple of years ago — mine against his — and his won the competition that weekend. So he has bean-bragging rights.”
Speaking of bragging rights, Lisa is also quite proud of their family cat, Tony Allen. “Tony is definitely ‘First-Team All Defense’ at our house,” she says.
I find myself wanting to know more about Tony Allen, but duty compels me to ask Lisa what kind of cocktail she plans to serve me.
“I’d like to make you a ‘Vieux Carré,’” she says. “It’s one of the great classic cocktails.”
“That sounds good to me. Let’s go for it.”
And it is indeed a classic drink, created at the Hotel Monteleone in New Orleans in the 1930s, in honor of that city’s own Vieux Carré, the French Quarter district.
photograph by bruce vanwyngarden
“Remind me what’s in it,” I say.
“It’s got rye whiskey, brandy, sweet vermouth, Benedictine, and two bitters — Angostura and Peychaud’s,” Gradinger says.
“That sounds like a rather stout-ass drink.”
“Oh, yes,” she says, smiling, “it’s all booze.”
This is not a job for sissies, I remind myself, even if it is only 3:30 in the afternoon. Hey, I’m a professional.
The drink arrives in a clear tumbler a minute or so later — short, dark, and handsome, and capped with a jaunty lemon-rind spiral. After one sip, you know this thing means business, but it goes about its work very nicely. It’s a smooth operator, and one that will take time to get to know better. But I’ve got time, so there’s no problem.
And if you’ve got time, you should visit Lisa Gradinger at Tonica and let her make you one of her splendid cocktails. And tell you about Tony Allen.
Tonica, 1545 Overton Park Avenue
