18 March 2024
I was riding rather happy from the rib tibs from A&R Bar-B-Que earlier, but was also looking forward to dinner. Got a lot of steps in this afternoon in a rather cool Memphis, which is unusual during my visits but made it far easier to hike without sweat dripping into my eyes non-stop.
Tonight’s dining destination is Iris, a well-liked creole restaurant that had moved to the east part of town during the pandemic. It took awhile for my Lyft to show up and off we went…so I thought. After a few minutes I was wondering why we were headed north instead of north-east. Then to my horror, Lyft had the wrong address for the restaurant…
It’s the OLD LOCATION from over 2 years ago! FFS, really?! A terrible flashback to when this happened going to Baroo in Los Angeles, where both Uber and Lyft had different – yet BOTH WRONG – addresses for Baroo. So we got near where the restaurant used to be and I jumped off, and had to wait another 20 minutes for (now) an Uber to get me to the right place (using the street address, not the restaurant name, because Uber had BOTH for some reason…).
[To their credit, after I complained, Lyft did refund me the price of the ride, similar to the Baroo misdirect.]
I finally arrived, flustered, but soon relaxed with the excellent staff looking after me, from the hostess to my servers at the bar where I sat. I relaxed with a drink, and all was good. Looked over the menu and I ordered. Let’s hope this night can be salvaged, and so far so good.
The bartender was really good and friendly, and that made a world of difference. However, when the food came, I had to temper my enthusiasm.
This au gratin dish was very meh, sadly, and the escargots seemed dessicated, and had absolutely no flavour, much like the crawfish. The entire dish was underseasoned, and very bland. Sigh… I figured I was the last diner left in the restaurant on a slow Monday night, so perhaps this was to be expected…
Yeah… The duck was okay here, but the belly was so overcooked it was a piece of meat formerly known as pork belly. At least this dish was seasoned, but what can you do. Sigh… The bar was good still, so I carried on and tried to salvage with a dessert, which my friendly bartender recommended.
And yes, she was right, this cheesecake was by far the best thing all night. It’s a take on the Basque version, and done pretty well, with the perfect touch of banana in the sauce. A delicious end to a meh night of food.
I ended up having an extra drink because – once again – it took about 20 minutes for the Uber to show up. I thanked the excellent crew and headed out, disappointed that this trip ended so poorly food-wise compared to how it started with Brave New Restaurant in Little Rock. Oh well, now for my 3.30am alarm…
Iris
4550 Poplar Avenue
Memphis, Tennessee
melhuang1972 