There’s a cast-iron skillet of shrimp and grits sitting in front of you, the cheese still bubbling at the edges, and outside the window on Cooper Street the mid-morning traffic is just starting to pick up. That’s the basic Saturday experience at Second Line Memphis, the Midtown spot that has been doing New Orleans-style brunch and dinner since it opened on Cooper near Young Avenue.
The restaurant is small — maybe fifteen tables, pressed-tin ceiling, walls hung with the kind of Gulf Coast photographs that look like they were actually pulled from someone’s uncle’s house rather than sourced from a design firm. The bar runs along one side and the kitchen is open enough that you can see the pans moving. It doesn’t feel staged. It feels like a place where people actually eat.
Second Line built its name on the brunch menu, and that reputation holds up. The shrimp and grits use a stone-ground base that’s thick and savory, not the watery kind you sometimes get at places that treat the dish as an afterthought. The shrimp come in a Creole butter sauce with a little heat that sneaks up on you around the third bite. The eggs Benedict runs on a house-made andouille-studded hollandaise that changes the whole equation of the dish. If you go on a weekend, expect to wait for a table — twenty, maybe thirty minutes depending on the time. It’s worth it, and there’s no real way around it because they don’t take reservations for brunch.
Dinner is where people sometimes overlook Second Line, which is a mistake. The oyster po’boy is served on a proper French roll with enough dressed lettuce and remoulade that it makes a mess, as it should. The red beans and rice on Monday — a New Orleans tradition that Second Line honors — is the kind of thing you’ll think about for a few days afterward. A bowl runs around eight or nine dollars, which is about as good as lunch gets in this city.
Cocktails lean toward the classics: Sazeracs, French 75s, a Pimm’s Cup. They’re made correctly, without flourish. Happy hour runs on weekdays and the bar fills with Cooper-Young regulars who treat the place like a neighborhood institution, which at this point it basically is.
The Cooper-Young neighborhood runs just north and south of the intersection at Cooper and Young, a stretch of bungalows and commercial blocks that has been the funkier, more walkable corner of Midtown for a couple of decades now. Second Line sits comfortably in that context — it’s not trying to be a destination so much as a fixture. You could walk here from most of the surrounding neighborhood, and plenty of people do.
Prices are reasonable for what you get. Brunch plates run roughly twelve to eighteen dollars. Dinner entrees top out around twenty-five. It’s not cheap, but nothing here feels padded. Budget a little extra if you’re drinking; the cocktails are priced fairly but they’re the kind you tend to order twice.
Go on a weekday if you want quiet. Go on Saturday morning if you want the full version of the thing.
