Please join us this Friday, April 15th for libations and live music and to help celebrate our second anniversary!  We will have Happy Hour specials from 4-6pm and 10pm-1am with live music commencing after 10pm on the patio…

The Recession Friendly Wine Dinner Series
Next Dinner: November 8

City Grocery presents “The Recession Friendly Chef’s Wine Dinner Series”.  Please join us for an evening to sample wines paired with a four course menu. Throughout the evening, we will explore wines from France, Italy and Oregon; a representative with International Wines from Birmingham, AL will be present to introduce and discuss the selections.

$55 per person exclusive of tax and gratuity

Please call City Grocery for reservations: (662) 232-8080

We invite you to come up to City Grocery Bar to watch the Season Premier of Top Chef Masters. John will be competing against 11 other masters for his charity, No Kid Hungry. We are hosting a viewing party for the season opener next Wednesday, April 6th at 10pm at the City Grocery Bar, so come root for chef and, who knows, we may have a surprise or two in store….

We invite you to join author, Jessica B. Harris after her Thacker Mountain Radio reading, from her new book, High on the Hog. City Grocery will prepare a selection of dishes from Ms. Harris’s extensive body of cookbook work.

Menu

First Course
Avocado/Papaya Salad

Second Course
Warm Okra and Tomatoes with Crispy Pig Ears

Third Course
Moroccan Spiced Leg of Lamb with Collards and Yam Salad

Fourth Course
Milk Rice with Medjool Dates

Thursday, March 31st
9pm
$45 includes wine pairings
Seating is limited to 30 guests
Please call City Grocery for reservations: 662-232-8080

A little bit about Cochon 555… “is a one-of-a-kind traveling culinary competition and tasting event–five chefs, five pigs, five wine makers–to promote sustainable farming of heritage breed pigs. Each stop along the ten-city tour offers hard-working local farmers the opportunity to connect with like-minded agriculturalists, renowned chefs and the pork-loving public. Our goal is to help family farms sustain and expand their businesses and to encourage breed diversity. Cochon 555 is the only heritage breed pig culinary competition in the country.”

New Orleans is one of ten stops on the tour, and Chef John has been invited to compete alongside:
Mike Lata – FIG – Charleston, SC
Stephen Stryjewski – Cochon Restaurant, NOLA
Adolfa Garcia – Rio Mar, NOLA
Erick Loos – Besh Restaurant Group, NOLA

He will be battling for the title of “Prince of Porc” and then off to compete at the final showdown in Aspen, Colorado at the Food & Wine Classic. Please visit Cochon555 for all the details of this event!

When:   May 28, 2011
Where:  New Orleans
Tickets: Purchase here

Chef Currence is one of 12 award winning chefs competing on Top Chef Masters Season 3!  Bravo just announced this week that the Season Premier will air on Wednesday, April 6th at 11pm/10pmCST.  The 12 chefs will compete for a charity of their choice with the grand prize being $100,000. Tune in to watch Currence compete for the charity, No Kid Hungry.

To find out more about Top Chef Masters, please visit their website.

Remember to tune in to Bravo TV on April 6th at 11pm/10pmCST.

Brandall Atkinson

Food and Wine Magazine has expanded its Best New Chef Award and partnered with CNN’s Eatocracy to create a new award called, “The People’s Best New Chef.”  The winner, selected by the dining public and online voting, will be featured in the magazine alongside the winners of this year’s Best New Chef awards.  Vishwesh is among 100 pre-selected chefs, from 10 regions (the chef needs to have run their own kitchens for five years or fewer), and will be voted on via an online poll at Eatocracy’s website.

Voting will run from February 15 through March 1, and the chef with the most votes in each region will then be named a finalist. Then the chef with the most votes overall will be named The 2011 People’s Best New Chef and will be featured in the July 2011 issue of Food & Wine alongside the winners of this year’s Best New Chef awards.

Please show your support for Vishwesh by voting TODAY! Click here to Vote!

City Grocery Restaurant Group welcomes Assistant Manager, Terry Moon to City Grocery.  Terry is from Cleveland, Ohio where he began his long career in the restaurant industry.  He began working for a large corporate restaurant group in Cleveland, and in 1990 Terry moved to Boca Raton where he helped open The Cheesecake Factory.  He worked his way to Corporate Bartender Trainer which enabled him to train the bartenders and open the Cheesecake Factory store in Baltimore, MD in 1995.  Terry worked for the corporate restaurant group for 11 years.

Terry arrived in Oxford Mississippi in July of 2000 with working at City Grocery as his goal in mind.  In August of 2000, Terry was hired as a waiter and stayed with City Grocery for 6 years.  He left City Grocery when he was offered the position of General Manager of 208, a local Oxford restaurant. He stayed at 208 for two years and was offered another management position at Prime Steakhouse, also in Oxford.  He was approached the following year to help open Lenora’s as General Manager.

With five years behind him of managing some of Oxford’s fine dining establishments, we welcome him back to City Grocery and are delighted to have him as part of our management team.

Bellies hanging in the BBB Smokehouse

During the month of December, BBB Bacon will be featured in The Grateful Palate’s Bacon of the Month Club.  BBB Bacon will be shipped all across the country to members of the BOMC.  With the combined efforts of Chef John Currence, Chef ‘d Cuisine Jason Nicholas and Charcuterie Director Kirk Lovejoy, and countless other BBB staff, we were able to produce 1000 pounds of bacon in 4 weeks to fill the order for BOMC!

For those who don’t know, Big Bad Breakfast cures all of its own bacon in our very own little red brick smokehouse.  While mulling over the concept for Big Bad Breakfast, Currence claims, “Bacon was the first consideration, I was on a trip to Argentina with Paul McIlhenney, among others, when I decided to pull the trigger and move ahead. During the course of the trip, I began to assemble notes one the very basic needs for the concept and how we would execute them. All the while there was side conversation with Paul about with Tabasco was doing with their residual pepper mash from the Tabasco-making process. It struck me that we could use some of it in a cure to make a sweet and spicy bacon, unlike anything we had ever had before.  The result is a unique bacon with a touch of sweet from a dry brown sugar/salt cure and spicy from the Tabasco pepper mash with hints of exotic spice that bring forth a hint of leather and citrus. Because of the sugar, the bacon lends itself to a gentler cooking process, but crisps up nicely for those who like a crispier bacon.”

Stay tuned for updates from our little red smokehouse!

Chefs Currence, Schwartz & Cooper with Smokey Robinson

CMT’s ARTISTS OF THE YEAR

Country music’s top artists and celebrities from all facets of entertainment gathered for an evening filled with star-studded performances, tributes and camaraderie in celebration of the first ever, CMT ARTISTS OF THE YEAR, hosted by Kevin Costner.

Honorees included:
 Jason Aldean
, Lady Antebellum, 
Taylor Swift, 
Carrie Underwood and 
Zac Brown Band

In celebration of the year’s top country artists, CMT invited three James Beard Award-winning chefs: RJ Cooper, John Currence, and Michael Schwartz to create a three course tasting menu.  In addition to the dinner, honorees and guests at CMT ARTISTS OF THE YEAR were treated to some of the finest wines in this country by Heitz Cellars in Napa Valley, California and Ken Wright Cellars in Portland, Oregon.

Read the article in Esquire Magazine
The Daily Meal also did a nice story
Watch the video coverage of 3 James Beard Chefs prepping their course