Sure, the barbecue in town is great, but there are plenty of other great things about Memphis cuisine. BurgerFest returns to Tiger Lane to prove that the 901 can cook a beef patty as well as anyone. On Saturday, October 27th, culinary staples of the Memphis restaurant scene will provide burger samples for festival attendees to try alongside local craft breweries and musical acts.
This year’s burger tasting will feature six signature burgers created by Chef Tam of Chef Tam’s Underground Café. She describes her restaurant as a family-oriented restaurant. “All you’ll see on the walls are pictures of my grandparents, my mother and my father, and photos of me when I was younger,” she says. “We ordered a custom eight-foot table, and the top of the table has my grandmother’s handwritten recipes on it.” Tam’s niece is the head line cook at the Underground Café and created the first idea for BurgerFest: the Tennessee Whiskey Burger. Tam plans to include that item on the restaurant menu full time after the festival.
The six signature burgers include:
Tennessee Whiskey Burger (whiskey cheddar sauce, caramelized onion jam, smoked bacon, whiskey and barbecue drizzle)
Black Bean Fiesta Burger
Memphis Grizzlies Chili Burger (pepper jack cheese, Grizzlies chili on Texas toast, spicy pickles)
The Showstopper (Memphis dry rub seasonings, gouda cheese, barbecue brisket, fried egg)
Great Smokey Mountain Burger (bacon, mac’n’cheese, toasted bun)
Bluff City Classic Burger
For those unfamiliar with Chef Tam, they can catch one of her recent appearances on the Food Network. She was invited to compete on the Guy Fieri led “Guy’s Grocery Challenge,” in which contestants are tasked with racing through the grocery store to pick up items from a list of ingredients and mold them into something delicious. “I was extremely nervous because I’m not classically trained, and the other chefs I was competing against had won awards and were classically trained and all that, and I was as nervous as I’d ever been. But when I got on there, I said, ‘you know what, I’m going to be true to who I am and make it work.”
With that attitude, Tam ended up victorious in her first appearance on “Guy’s Grocery Challenge.” Her three dishes included Muddy Waters mac’n’cheese (mac’n’cheese made with shrimp, crab, and crawfish, and available at her restaurant), peach cobbler french toast with cayenne brown sugar bacon, and a collard greens pizza. Her victory merited a follow-up appearance for a winners edition of the show, and then another Food Network slot on the “Ultimate Summer Cook Off.”
Tickets to BurgerFest and Chef Tam’s signature dishes are $10 for general admission, $20 for GA plus a sampling card, and $50 for VIP.
Visit the official BurgerFest website for more information.
Chef Tam's Underground Café is located at 2299 Young Ave.
