Memphis Eats: Dinner at Iris, Finally!

We heard about Iris before we even moved back to Memphis, and I think we've called every weekend at the last minute trying to eat there, and they've been booked every time.  We finally got in Tuesday night, and it was packed!  On a Tuesday!  That is nuts for Memphis.  It was great.  We drove up and it felt like New Orleans.  Its in a small house in Overton Square and has a neighborhood feel to it.  There are a few outdoor tables, and you walk inside to a packed house.  It really felt just like some of our favorite New Orleans restaurants, and for good reason. The chef, Kelly English, is from southern Louisiana and trained under John Besh (who has some awesome restaurants in New Orleans like August and Luke).  Anyway, dinner was awesome.

I started out with the sweet corn griddle cakes with crab ravigote.  They were amazing.  It was like a mix of a crepe and a corn pancake with layers of crab in the middle.  So so good.

I took the pictures with my Iphone so not that great.  For dinner, I had the flank steak.  It had a great flavor and was served with some spicy rice.

Again, kind of hard to see, but it was thin slices of flank steak with a side of rice tucked into this green cone. Not sure what the green was, so I didn't eat the outside!  Brian had the "surf and turf" new york strip stuffed with fried oysters and blue cheese.  It was delicious but very very big and filling. 

For dessert, we had the creme brulee that was coffee flavored with beignets on the side. It was an awesome combination.

Overall it was an awesome meal and the restaurant has great ambience- it felt so much like a New Orleans neighborhood restaurant it felt like we were there!  It is definitely a big, fancy meal and not the type a place you would go every week (unless you had a really big food budget!), but so worth going for a special occasion or if someone else is paying :)  We have the 3M rep, Scott Stumpf, to thank for treating us to this awesome dinner and being able to get the table in the first place.  Apparently his mom is somehow related to the bass player for Wilco and is friends with the chef's mom.  Scott's mom hooked the chef up with front row Wilco tickets, so the chef hooked Scott up with a table!  And we got to enjoy the awesome food.  We will definitely be back.