1. Memphis in May World Championship Barbecue Cooking Contest, Tom Lee Park, Friday and Saturday, all day, $5 – $9 (cash only)

Teams from all over the world have set up camp in Tom Lee Park to compete in this weekend's Memphis in May World Championship Barbecue Cooking Contest. Head to the park to check out the elaborate tents and live music, but note that you won't be able to eat any of the cooking teams' barbecue unless you know someone on a team (and that person invites you into their tent).

3. Project Motion: House Happening, Woodruff-Fontaine House, Friday – Sunday, 7 p.m. (Fri. and Sat.) and 3 p.m. (Sun.), $25

Project Motion is taking their modern dance company off of the stage and into one of Memphis' finest Victorian homes. Dancers will perform peices inspired by the turn of the century, and tours of the house will end in a big finale and reception.

3. Hope Clayburn's Soul Scrimmage, Poplar Lounge, Friday, 9 p.m., $5

If you haven't seen Hope Clayburn's Soul Scrimmage yet, I'll forgive you, but only if you make a point to go see them tonight. They're one of the most fun bands in Memphis, and you'll love them if you're a fan of funk, jazz, soul and reggae (and the meeting points between).

4. The Shins w/ Ra Ra Riot, Minglewood Hall, Saturday, 8 p.m. $35

Remember when you saw the movie "Garden State" and heard the Shins' smart indie-pop for (probably) the first time? They're still great, they've got a new-ish record out, and they'll be at Minglewood Hall on Saturday night with the equally-good Ra Ra Riot.

5. Hog and Hominy Hoedown, Hog and Hominy, Sunday, 3 p.m., $40

Hog and Hominy's second annual hoedown and bocce ball tournament is happening on Sunday to benefit the Savior Foundation. In addition to the bocce, they'll have live music from the Bluff City Backsliders, food, drinks, a silent auction and square dancing.

If none of these events are your thing, check the blog's calendar for plenty more. No matter what you do this weekend, have a great time, and go Grizz!

The space is lovely. It's sleek and modern, and it looks way more like a lounge than a bakery. The kitchen is glass-walled, so you can see the bakers at work, and the glass wall also serves as a projection screen so they can show basketball games.

While Corked Carrot doesn't have any traditional dinner items, they do have savory cupcakes. Corndog and pulled pork cupcakes sound a little weird (and I haven't tried them yet), but the pictures I've seen of them make them look more like stuffed popovers than traditional iced cupakes.

The dessert cupcakes are really good, though. They're moist and they've got a great icing-to-cake ratio. I tried the carrot cake, which came topped with a cute baby carrot and a shard of green sugar "glass".

I'm also glad to see a Memphis bakery selling macarons. The almond flour sandwich cookies are insanely difficult to make (at least, I had a hard time), but the Corked Carrot's are airy and crunchy. I recommend the rose and the lemon.

(I know lemon macarons aren't supposed to be blue, but the Corked Carrot is showing some love to the Grizzlies.)

The only issue I had was the price – the cupcakes and macarons are all priced around $2. That wouldn't be a big deal, especially for high quality desserts like these, if the desserts were just a little bigger. The cupcakes are all mini-cupcakes (for comparison, about half the size of a Muddy's cupcake) and the macarons are about an inch and a half in diameter.

That said, I hope the Corked Carrot does well. It's a great addition to South Main, and it's a cool alternative to a typical downtown bar.

The Corked Carrot is open Tuesday through Saturday from 11 a.m. until 10 p.m. You could probably take kids there during the day (it's non-smoking), but I wouldn't recommend it at night.

Go there:

The Corked Carrot

314 S. Main St.
Memphis, TN 38103
(901) 401-0043

I grinned through most of the game (other than those very tense first and last minutes), I grinned when I got home, I've been grinning every time I think about how the Grizzlies, the Memphis Grizzlies, are going to the Western Conference Finals.

Here are a handful of the best tweets from game five:

]]> http://ilovememphisblog.com/2013/05/tweets-from-last-night-the-best-tweets-from-game-5/feed/ 2 http://ilovememphisblog.com/2013/05/right-now-is-the-greatest-time-to-be-in-memphis/ http://ilovememphisblog.com/2013/05/right-now-is-the-greatest-time-to-be-in-memphis/#comments Wed, 15 May 2013 19:47:36 +0000 Kerry (Admin) http://ilovememphisblog.com/?p=11549 Isn't it?

The weather is warm, but not intensely, disugstingly hot. The air isn't so densely humid that you get sticky just walking outside. Spring has been around long enough that allergies have cleared up, and there's (for once) very little rain in the weekend forecast.

Barbecue fest, our annual celebration of slow-smoked pork, has taken over Tom Lee Park. Cooking teams are using up their vacation days on a (very long) weekend of partying in elaborately constructed tents. The whole of downtown smells like a barbeuce sandwich.

And the Grizzlies – our beloved Grizzlies – are not only in the playoffs, but doing so well in the playoffs that it's not unreasonable to believe that they'll move on to the conference finals. National media are starting to come around to our team's dogged, grimy persuit of victory, talking our guys up, heaping praise on our crowds and hinting that maybe, just maybe, a Grizzlies vs. Heat final could be possible.

Nothing brings Memphians together quite like this magical combination of perfect weather, good food and gritty, grind-y basketball. Everyone is smiling, high-fiving and soaking it up because we truly appreciate this golden time, mostly because we know it won't last. We'll have to go back to work, the forecast will call for days of 110 percent humidity with no rain, and eventually, no matter what the outcome, basketball season will be over until next year.

But let's not think about that. Let's just stuff our faces and be outside and wave (or wear) our Growl Towls and smile knowingly at strangers, because it doesn't get any better than this.

Three crepes are stuffed with sweet cream cheese and rolled up and made Swedish with tart lingonberry sauce, dusted with powdered sugar and swimming in enough melted butter to get Paula Deen excited. These are borderline dessert food.

To up the Swedish-ness, eat them while listening to the musical stylings of my favorite Swede, Jens Lekman:

Go there:

Stone Soup Cafe

Today's photo was snapped at Fresh Market by Instagrammer @psslaton. She'd like you to know that neither the dog or car belong to her. If you'd like to see your photos featured here, tag them #ilovememphis.

- Help me – I can't stop reading all of the incredible national media attention the Grizzlies are getting. If you're in a similar predicament, here are a few pieces of required reading to get you ready for tonight's game: a Memphian provides the best definition of Grit'n'Grind that I've read so far; Grantland profiles Mike Conley's stealth greatness, Tony Allen is our spirit animal (and Z-Bo's celebration hands are the best); and an out-of-town skeptic returns to the Grindhouse and finds it more to his liking. Lastly, here's a picture of the team crammed into an elevator.

- Attention downtowners – you can get cupcakes from Muddy's Bake Shop without having to leave downtown today. Muddy's is pairing with End of All Music (a record store in Oxford, Miss.) for a pop-up shop at Hoot+Louise in South Main from noon until 7 p.m.

- Just in time for Memphis in May Barbecue Fest, two Memphis restaurants  have made National Geographic's list of the 10 best barbecue joints.

- More high praise: Travel and Leisure has named Memphis as one of the top U.S. cities for affordable vacations.

- Channel 3 has solved the mystery of the missing riverfront cobblestones. (Note that as far as I know, the Anderson Cooper quoted in the story is not the news anchor.)

- The brand new splash park at the Children's Museum is scheduled to open on Monday, May 27th.

Know of something going on in Memphis? If you've got a tip for ILM, send me an email. If you'd like to submit a story, photo gallery, video or something else for the blog, do that here. If you've got an event coming up, please add it to the calendar, and if you're not already, follow ILM on Facebook and/or Twitter and/or Instagram and/or Pinterest.

It took a while before I found one, but there, parked just a little bit east of Waring, was Taqueria el Porvenir.

The truck is hard to miss. It's painted like a giant Mexican Flag, it's got a bright green frog painted on it, and it looks like the owners attempted to rebrand the truck by using paint to white-out its old name.

I was expecting the menu to be pretty basic (maybe just tacos and a burrito or something), and I was impressed to see that it had quite a few offerings, none of them more than $10.

I ordered the quesadillas con carne from the nice guy behind the window, gave him $5.25, and five minutes later, had my food, all wrapped up in a to-go container.

The menu didn't specify what meat the quesadilla came with, but mine was stuffed with shredded cheese and chunks of steak, accompanied by a healthy plop of sour cream for dipping. It was everything a taco truck quesadilla should be – smoky, cheesy, cheap and delicious.

Next time, I'll definitely get an agua fresca to go with it.

As far as I could tell, Taqueria el Porvenir only accepts cash. Stickers on the truck suggest that you like them on Facebook, but they must have been from the truck's past life, because I was unable to find them. Had I been able to, I would have attempted to like them repeatedly.

Go there:

Taqueria el Porvenir
Spotted on Summer Ave.

It was a late night rollercoaster of emotions: the terrible first half; the somewhat better third quarter; the fourth-quarter redemption; the overtime that had us all a little scared that it would turn into another three-overtime slumber party. I don't know what the aftermath of the game was like at the Forum, but at Alex's, there was a dance party to Chuck Berry's "Memphis, Tennessee".

Through the whole thing, you were tweeting. Here are some of the best tweets from last night's game. 

But first, check out this photo from @BwanaJ which proves that grit and grind can't be confined to land.

And now, your tweets:

Bike to Work Day is an annual event that encourages people to switch up their daily routine and try bicycle commuting.

Cyclists of all experience levels are welcome, and participation is easy: all you have to do is ride you bike to work on Friday, May 17. If you register ahead of time, you'll get gift bag full of treats from local bike shops.

Before you ride, check out Fix Memphis' bike lane map so that you can plan your route (and remember that a ton of MATA buses have bike racks on them). Make sure your bike is tuned up, your tires are inflated and that you wear your helmet and pack some clothes to change into when you get to the office.

What: Bike to Work Day 2013

When: Friday, May 17

Where: City-wide

How much does it cost: Free!

Where can I find more info? Right here.

Today in Memphis, there are new plans for the restaurant formerly known as Cortona, Trader Joe's comes to Memphis (sort of), the Memphis Chamber makes a wager and Marc Gasol is the most interesting basketball player in the world.

All of that (and plenty more) is in today's Memphis news update:
 

Today's photo was taken by @the_shrews in Crosstown. If you'd like to see you Instagram photos here, just tag them #ilovememphis.

- Marc Gasol is obviously the most interesting man in the NBA. Grit and grind, my friends. 

- The city is holding a public meeting to get feedback about the bike lanes on McLean (which have been in place for about a year) tomorrow night at Snowden School at 6 p.m.

- Today's recommended reading: this incredible piece of interactive narrative journalism on the last 24 hours of Dr. Martin Luther King's life by the Commercial Appeal's Marc Perrusquia. It's not behind the paywall, so you have no excuse. (But, read it on a desktop – it doesn't render correctly on mobile devices.)

- Cortona, the Italian restaurant at the corner of Cooper and Young is getting a complete overhaul. It's going to be – wait for it – a gastropub. It will re-open on June 1.

- It's not quite a Trader Joe's, but it is a Trader Joe's distribution center (and a possible sign of hope that we'll get a TJ's eventually).

- The Memphis Chamber of Commerce offered a friendly, barbecue-based wager to the Oklahoma City Chamber based on Saturday's Grizz game, but alas, OKC never responded. I wonder why.

- Have you ever wondered what you can't put on a vainty license plate in Tennessee? The list is long.

- Lastly, in honor of tonight's playoff game (at 8:30 p.m. at the Forum), here's Tony Allen, delivering the most Tony Allen soundbites of all time. The Grizz office should just go ahead and print all of them on Growl Towels.

Know of something going on in Memphis? If you've got a tip for ILM, send me an email. If you'd like to submit a story, photo gallery, video or something else for the blog, do that here. If you've got an event coming up, please add it to the calendar, and if you're not already, follow ILM on Facebook and/or Twitter and/or Instagram and/or Pinterest.