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Memphis is full of ghosts. Elvis aside, I swear I could sense apparitions in the city’s hottest new restaurants. At the Inn at Hunt Phelan (533 Beale St.; 901-525-8225), which opened in late 2005, I ate chef Stephen Hassinger’s haute Creole food—creamy crab gratin; fried oysters with black-eyed peas and jalapeño vinaigrette—in a restored Victorian mansion where Andrew Jackson and Jefferson Davis slumbered and in the very dining room where Ulysses S. Grant planned the battle of Vicksburg. Chef-owner John Bragg wants to evoke the swank of early-20th-century Paris with his brand-new restaurant, Circa (119 S. Main St.; 901-522-1488), where he pairs contemporary Southern dishes like crawfish beignets with a choice of 50 eclectic wines by the glass. In the dark, sleek dining room at the new Spindini (383 S. Main St.; 901-578-2767), chef Judd Grisanti conjures the spirit of his late Italian grandmother with dishes like the wood-fired Tuscan steak and toasted ravioli—a meatball encased in a crispy fried-pasta shell. And at Brushmark in the Brooks Museum of Art (1934 Poplar Ave.; 901-544-6225), chef Wally Joe updates old Memphis favorites, such as a dessert so gluttonous—fried peanut butter sandwiches in a chunky banana sauce—that it could bring back the King himself.
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