The Kitchen
Kelly English opened Restaurant Iris in 2008 in a Cooper-Young bungalow on Monroe Avenue. In October 2022 he moved it to 4550 Poplar Avenue, inside the Laurelwood Shopping Center in East Memphis — a larger, more polished room that suits the cooking better than the old house did. English is a New Orleans native and a Le Cordon Bleu graduate who staged at Per Se before he opened Iris in his early thirties. Eighteen years on, it is still the senior chef-driven table in Memphis.
The cooking is modern Creole built on classical French technique. The menu turns with the seasons around a Louisiana larder — Gulf shrimp, soft-shell crab, andouille — worked with Per Se discipline. The smoked-trout croquettes are the right way to start, the grilled veal chop with stewed field peas is the main to order, and the Gulf seafood and herb stew is the dish that shows where English is from. The wine list leans Burgundy and Rhône, deeper than the Memphis average; the bar runs a proper Sazerac and Vieux Carré.
The credentials are dated and real. English has been a James Beard Foundation semifinalist for Best Chef: Southeast across multiple years, starting two years after he opened, and he has cooked on Iron Chef America. Expect to spend roughly $60 to $120 a head before wine. For a Memphis dinner that should read as a deliberate East Memphis choice rather than a default downtown booking, this is the senior answer. More in our Memphis dining guide.
Why This Is Memphis’s Close a Deal Pick
For closing a deal in Memphis, Restaurant Iris is the East Memphis chef-driven room locals have booked for careful business dinners for nearly two decades. The Laurelwood address sits a short drive from the East Memphis corporate corridor, so it reads as a deliberate local choice rather than a downtown tourist reservation. The room is smart but unstuffy, the banquettes seat a four-top comfortably, and the Creole menu keeps the table talking. English's repeat James Beard semifinalist standing gives the booking weight, and the Burgundy-and-Rhône wine list rewards a host who can call a Volnay without surprising the sommelier.
Skip it for a quick or casual bite. This is a sit-down dinner that runs long, the room and the bill read special-occasion, and it sits in an East Memphis shopping-centre plaza rather than a walkable district — you are driving here and committing to the evening, not dropping in.
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