Blues City Cafe

“Beale Street's ribs-and-blues room, open until 3am”

Blues City Cafe sits square on Beale Street, Memphis's legendary music strip, serving barbecue and live blues deep into the night. Since 1991 it has been a downtown crossroads where tourists and locals share the same rack of ribs while a band works the corner stage. The kitchen leans wet: fall-apart ribs slicked in a tomato-based sauce, plus pulled pork plates for the late-night crowd and BBQ nachos loaded for the table. The sleeper order is the Delta tamales, a Mississippi-River food tradition that predates the city's barbecue boom and rarely shows up on a barbecue menu at all. Open until 3am, Blues City is the only place in Memphis where a full rack of wet ribs and live music arrive together at one in the morning, which is exactly the draw that keeps Beale Street busy after dark.