Woman's Exchange

88 Racine St., Memphis, TN - (901) 327-5681

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Posted By Michael Stern on April 11, 2009 6:29 PM

The Woman’s Exchange was established in 1885 and started serving lunch in the 1930s. When you walk in today, it feels like the culinary past. Here is one of the last bastions of ladies lunch, where dainty meals are served quickly and efficiently.

The ordering system is archaic. When you walk in, past the handcrafts for sale on consignment, you are greeted at a desk by a couple of women who point your attention to a short menu written on a chalkboard behind them. There are listed the meals of the day. When we visited, the choices were seafood Charleston, chicken salad, and a four-vegetable plate. Take your pick, pay the women, then find a table, preferably in the bright “garden room,” where the windowed walls provide a view of nothing but greenery.

Once you’re seated, a waitress brings your beverage, then your meal on a round, wood-grain tray. The food is lovely to look at, carefully arranged. Three items on our vegetable plate were separated by thin strips of white bread, like the partitions on a diner plate, but nicer. The fourth item, escalloped squash, was too messy to be put on a plate so it came in its own little bowl. Accompanying the veggies was a deliciously sweet cornbread muffin.

We already knew what was going to be in the seafood Charleston, because back at the order desk the Woman’s Exchange cookbook had been opened to the recipe for it: a creamy, mild dish reminiscent of shrimp wiggle. And the chicken salad, my-oh-my, what a presentation that was! Around the salad on its plate were a tiny crustless pimiento cheese sandwich, a little array of fresh fruit, and a block of opaque red Jell-O.

For dessert, everyone gets the same thing. For our lunch, it was a bright and happy square of strawberry cake with sweet, pretty pink icing: the perfect end to a very ladylike meal.

Overall Rating

cake

vegetables

cornbread

Chicken Salad Plate

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