Eat, Sip, and Spin in...Memphis

Making some of the best music players on earth isn’t the only thing we do at Victrola. Our staff loves to travel, loves record stores, loves to eat, loves a fine cocktail, and loves to hunt for the best places to do all those things in every metropolis in the United States. We want to share our favorite places with you, so we invented Eat, Sip, and Spin in…to tell you about our favorite places to do those things.

It is not an exaggeration to call Memphis the most important musical city in all of America. It was the first metropolitan spot for many, many generations of musicians and Americans who were heading north from the Mississippi Delta, and was the birthplace of the blues, soul music, an important nexus of jazz, and, later, home of some of the most inventive hip-hop ever recorded. And that’s without even mentioning Sun Records, and the original launching point of Elvis, Johnny Cash, Jerry Lee Lewis, Carl Perkins, and other early rock and country stars. 

It’s often outshone by its eastern metropolis, Nashville, but Memphis is the kind of city you can get lost in for a few days, chasing the history of American music. You can go to Al Green’s old home of Royal Studios, and see him preach at his church. You can go visit the Stax Museum of American Soul Music, built in the place where every Stax hit was recorded, where Otis Redding and Isaac Hayes shared cigarettes out front on McLemore Ave. You can eat at Elvis’ old booth downtown, or go see his house and his airplane collection at Graceland. You can convene with the ghosts of Jeff Buckley, Howlin’ Wolf, BB King, and Martin Luther King, Jr. and visit the biggest pyramid in the U.S. (seriously). There’s barbecue, and the powerful National Civil Rights Museum, and Beale Street, where you can still see blues artists. 

Narrowing the city down to the below three categories for this third edition of Eat, Sip and Spin was harder than normal, but we tried:

Eat

This conversation should begin and end with Memphis BBQ, the finest BBQ style this country has come up with (I mean it). You basically can throw a dart at a Google Maps printout of BBQ restaurants and hit something transcendent, but we recommend the standby Central BBQ, which has incredible ribs, and their sides are legit. If you aren’t afraid of a drive, Elwood’s Shack will also blow your hair back.

If you have your BBQ fill, head to the flagship Gus’s Fried Chicken location downtown. It was originally advertised with a hearse that said “chicken worth dying for” and that has not changed, even after the company has expanded to 14 states from its Memphis roots.

For breakfast, go to Arcade, a greasy spoon that is the oldest restaurant in Memphis. It feels like it probably did in 1964, which fits with the historical resonance so much of Memphis has. 

Sip

The Art Bar at Crosstown Arts is like walking into someone’s hip 1950s living room, and they happen to have a great cocktail menu. The Beauty Shop in Cooper Young is in an old, you guessed it, beauty shop, and their dinner menu is great. If you’re looking to tie one on during brunch, head to another repurposed building, the Liquor Store, a cocktail/brunch restaurant in an old liquor store.

Spin

The two best record stores in Memphis are a short drive from each other, and both have history, and tons of incredible records ready to be found. Shangri-La is the place to go for jazz, country, and soul records, and their selection of rare Memphis records—the city boasted many record labels that were not Hi or Stax or Sun—can’t be beat.

Goner is a local institution, with an emphasis on punk and rock, and releases from its titular record label. An early champion of King Khan and Jay Reatard (RIP), the store also hosts an annual festival, and has its own impressive collection of Memphis rarities.