Yes, chef Erling Jensen can stick his hand in a pot of boiling water.
“I’ve lost the feeling in my fingers,” he says. “I think it’s from touching hot stuff over the years.” But 30 years ago, Jensen threw his whole body into something cool: Erling Jensen, The Restaurant.
His longtime East Memphis fine dining restaurant exudes elegance. Diners speak softly as they savor escargot, Dover sole, and chocolate mousse on white tablecloths topped with votive candles in silver containers. The restaurant also features a more laid-back bar area with its own menu and small dining room.
Jensen, 68, can be found in the kitchen six out of the seven days the restaurant is open weekly. “I love what I’m doing,” he says. “And the day I don’t love what I’m doing, then I’m not going to do it anymore.”
Born in Denmark, where, he says “we ate a lot of pork and fish and potatoes,” Jensen’s interest in cooking began with his first restaurant job at 14 or 15. “A hotel with a French-inspired kitchen opened up in my home town and I went there and asked if I could volunteer.”
Jensen worked long hours at the Hotel Jutlandia, sometimes 16 hours a day. “There were no labor laws,” he says, but he enjoyed the atmosphere — pressure and all. And he learned a lot from the executive chef, Jorgen Mueller.
Jensen left that restaurant about four or five years later to attend cooking school, and the hotel re-hired him as a sous chef. After a stint at the Prince Hamlet hotel in Miami, working under Mueller, he took a job as chef at the Danish embassy in Washington, D.C.. The fare was, as one might imagine, “a lot of Danish food, a lot of smoked fish,” and the diners included “presidents, kings, and queens.”
In 1989, he saw a “little bitty ad” in The New York Times for “a small restaurant in Memphis looking for a head chef.” It included the name and number of Glenn Hayes, who, along with his wife, Martha, owned La Tourelle in Midtown. “I gave him a call and he hired me over the phone. He didn’t ask a damn question.”
Glenn, who taught a lot to Jensen, also took him on one of his frequent trips to France. “We ate our way through Paris,” Jensen remembers.
He continued to prepare dinners at La Tourelle, while serving as the corporate executive chef for First Tennessee Bank. Impressed with his cooking skills, some people from the bank financed the opening of Erling Jensen, The Restaurant.
For his new place, Jensen carried over some La Tourelle items, but the menu evolved into his own distinctive fare, which included French and Asian dishes. “We have something for everyone,” he says. “Pasta, polenta, veal, beef. Sole from the Dover Straits. Salmon from Scotland.”
Some items, including the sole, rack of lamb, angel-hair pasta, crab cakes, and crawfish bisque, have been on the menu since day one. But Jensen is always adding new items. “We want to renew ourselves,” he says. “We don’t want to get stale.”
They didn’t have a bar when they first opened. Instead, he says, “We had a patio outside that never got used.” That was partly because the view wasn’t great. “People had to look at our dumpster.”
As for working with his cooks in the kitchen, Jensen says, “They respect me and know what I want. And I get a little pissed off if I don’t get it my way.”
He eventually added a “little bitty bar” and then expanded to the current one, where diners can order hamburgers, pizza, pasta, and half-portions of menu items.
Jensen has been involved with side projects over the years. In the late ’90s, he and chef Jimmy Ishii opened KoTo in Overton Square. “He did his Asian-Japanese stuff and I had my French influence, he says, “It was a mix of both.”
KoTo closed about five years later. “It had run its course.”
About three years ago Jensen collaborated with Pace Cooper and opened “Erling Jensen Small Bites” at DoubleTree by Hilton Hotel.
But Erling Jensen, The Restaurant is Jensen’s heart.
Jensen’s wife, Jaquila, works at the restaurant. Their son, Blake, 12, keeps him on his toes going to football, basketball, and lacrosse games on his off days.
Some of Jensen’s employees have been with him since he opened. Over the years he’s hired some cooks, which he knows have dealt with substance-abuse issues. They’re known as “Erling’s Kids,” he says, and he relates to their problems, saying. “I had an alcohol issue years and years ago. And then I just stopped, period. I haven’t had a drop in 30 years.”
As for working with his cooks in the kitchen, Jensen says, “They respect me and know what I want. And I get a little pissed off if I don’t get it my way.”
Looking back, he says, “When we first opened, I might have been a little hot-headed. But over the years I kind of mellowed.”
Erling Jensen, The Restaurant, 1044 S. Yates Rd.
