The Spring Break 2017 Memphis Tour is over. We had a blast with the Doctors.
We went to Sun Studios and pretended to be Elvis (actually, I pretended to be Johnny Cash). We went to the Rock and Soul Museum on Beale Street. We even did two Escape Rooms (it was raining). Why two? Because we didn’t escape from the first one. I walked in Memphis with my ankle brace ten feet off of Beale. We even went to Mud Island. We did everything but Graceland.
But mostly we ate. It’s a good thing we were walking everywhere because the food in Memphis is not to be missed. And I don’t think we missed any of it.
We did the Rendezvous. We ate at the Majestic Grille, a restaurant made from a 100-year-old theater that showed black-and-white movies while we ate. We ate at a place called Flight that served both its food and its wine in flights. We met my college roommate and his wife at McEwen’s, an outstanding restaurant downtown. We ate lunch at the Blues City Café. I’m telling you, we ate.
But the favorite place we ate was Gus’s World Famous Fried Chicken. If you haven’t been there you need to go. As you can tell, it’s pretty impressive to behold.
We went at six o’clock on a Tuesday evening because we had been warned it can get pretty crowded. We had to wait about twenty minutes to get a table, then we feasted on the best fried chicken I have ever eaten (and, frankly, I have eaten a lot of fried chicken). Peggy swears that at one point she saw my brother-in-law’s eyes roll back into his head. We dined to a genteel sufficiency and left before seven. When we left the line to get a table was out the door and wrapped halfway around the block. On a Tuesday. In a rain storm. I can tell you for those people waiting in the rain, it was worth it!
I have not eaten fried chicken since we returned home from the trip. I do not want to sully the memory of the greatness of Gus’s.
It may not have been the last meal we had in Memphis, and it certainly was not the fanciest meal we had in Memphis. It was, however, the meal we had in Memphis. God bless Gus…
