I don’t know why I remember this, but the first time I ate at La Tourelle was in December 1982 for my birthday. I had a fricasse of rabbit and a bottle of Julienas Cru Beaujolais whose vintage I do not recall. I didn’t know this at the time, but cooking in the kitchen at the restaurant were Martha Brahm and Paul Zilch, who later founded the catering company Fascinating Foods. This was almost 25 years ago.
The point is that, as I wrote in The Commercial Appeal Wednesday, La Tourelle is closing just after celebrating its 30th anniversary, though not quite as soon as I reported. Instead of closing after the Bastille Day weekend (July 14 and 15), the restaurant will remain open until the end of this month. The plan is to re-open as an Italian restaurant, Tuscany.
La Tourelle defines the term “labor of love” for owners Martha and Glenn Hays. When the place opened, in the cottage on Monroe just off Cooper, Glenn Hays did the cooking and Martha made the bread and desserts. They readily admit that they had no idea what they were doing in running a restaurant; they did know that they wanted to bring simple, authentic French cuisine to the city.
Following Hays in the kitchen were: 1. A chef who Hays consistently declines to name. 2. Mary Taylor. 3. Angie Kirkpatrick. 4. Brahm and Zilch. 5. Stan Gibson. 6. Gene Bjorklund. 7. Erling Jensen. 8. Lynn Kennedy-Tilyou. 9. Ralph McCormick. 10. Justin Young. 11. Cullen Kent. 12. Chris Dollar. 13. Thomas Schranz. Here and there in the early days, I think there were a few volunteer chefs, too.
My first review of La Tourelle appeared in The CA on Sept. 9, 1998, after Bjorklund had been at the restaurant for a few months. Appetizers were $5 to $8; entrees were $17.50 to $19. I reviewed the restaurant again on June 15, 1990, soon after Jensen took over the kitchen. Appetizers were $5 to $8.50; entrees were $16 to $24; a five-course prix fixe menu was available for $35.
Altogether, between 1998 and 2006, I reviewed La Tourelle 12 times and listed it consistently, despite changes in chefs and shifts in emphasis, as one of the best restaurants in town. And there have been shifts in emphasis. Fine dining is a difficult state of being and mind in Memphis, and at times it has been a struggle for the Hayses to keep the enterprise going. The fading fortunes of Overton Square, the growth of competition, the tides of taste, increasing expenses and a finite local audience for haute cuisine can chip away at profit and confidence. The Hayses and their chefs tried a variety of methods to increase or at least keep their audience. We have seen the opening and closing and opening of the cheaper, bistro-style Tower Room; we have seen (briefly) lunch; we have seen menus change from a la carte to prix fixe and back to a la carte; we have seen prices fluctuate and the dining rooms remodeled and a beautiful kitchen added to the back of the house.
Throughout all of this, the restaurant was able to be a bastion of serenity, excellent service and generally well-conceived and well-prepared food; many establishments with high aspirations have faltered and closed while La Tourelle kept on going.
On the other, the fact that La Tourelle has seen three executive chefs since August 2004 speaks volumes about the restaurant’s difficulties, and it has been with sorrow that we observed its recent foundering. For make no mistake: Going back through my reviews of the restaurant and looking through the trove of menus in my files, I remember entire meals and individual dishes that were among the best I have eaten in the city, particularly coming from the hands of Bjorklund, Jensen and Young, whose tenures in the kitchen raised La Tourelle to its highest achievements.