I was reading the most recent issue of Downtowner and saw an ad for Second Street Shoppers that included a website. Pretty basic, but at least they have hours of operation up and a handful of pictures. I used to go there and attempt to buy them out of Newcastle pretty often when I lived closer. I haven’t been by there in a while since I moved a bit further away, but I’m sure I’ll be back by when the weather warms up. Very nice guys and they carry most of the basics. Their food is pretty damn good too. It’s secondstreetshoppers.com.

I’ve posted pics of the food before (here), so I snapped a pic of the menu and some of the inside.

It’s an ancient deli with fantastic food, I highly suggest you check it out. I tried to get as good a pic of the menu as possible, but it’s still a little blurry. I’ll try to see if I can talk to the guy into letting me take a copy of the menu to scan, because I’m probably going back in a few hours for breakfast.

Hours of Operation

For the love of god, set some hours you can deal with and stick to them. It helps if they make sense. This isn’t a huge deal in the suburbs, but nothing makes me want to stomp a bag of kittens to death like walking a few blocks to a store to find they’re closed, despite their “Hours” sign saying they should be open. It’s not a matter of driving to the next store when you live downtown, it’s a matter of walking another half mile.

It helps if your hours make sense. Second Street Shopper, which is otherwise a great store, is trying to push the food from their deli, yet they were still locked up tight at 10:30 this morning. Good luck selling breakfast when you open at noon.

Maybe I’m a lunatic; scratch that, I’m certainly a lunatic, but knowing that nearly every restaurant downtown has first shift come in at 10-10:30, I’d probably open at 9 every day. Call me fucking crazy.

Website

Kinda ties in with the first one. There’s no excuse for not having a basic website. Fucking contact me and I’ll do it. It costs nothing for basic domain registration, web hosting, and maybe a wordpress blog or joomla front end. There’s no reason to not have a page with your contact info and hours of operation.

Yes, you can call and find this info, but it does fuckall if they’re closed.

Hello, endlessly ringing phone? Yes, I’d like to know when you open. Oh, what’s that? Ring ring? Well mighty fine! I’ll see you then!

With a basic, nearly free website, you can bang it into google and say “Oh, 9am, cool”.

PDF Menus

Jesus tittyfucking christ, please make your menu available in html form, or at the very least scan or photograph the physical menu and link to the jpg/png/gif/etc. I don’t want to download your menu and deal with acrobat reader to see your soup of the day. PDF is for sharing printable files. I’m not going to print your menu. I have no need to save it for posterity. At no point, after the zombie apocolypse, when the interwebtubes are forever gone and your website is no longer available, will I find myself going “Well if only they had made their menu available in PDF form, I would order from the remaining zombie staff”. Every time I do a clean install, it’s assholes like you that make me endure a 35MB download and post-install reboot to see your fucking menu. It enrages me. I want to throw a small child into a wood chipper whenever I encounter this dreaded format.  PDF is the worst thing since AIDS. Please stop. Please.

I’m sure I’ll have more to bitch about soon, but this covers the high notes for today. Fix your shit, you lazy fucks.

I walked down to the BoA ATM at peabody place and noticed they were open. I ventured inside and ordered a bacon, egg, and cheese sandwich on a croissant. Fucking excellent. It was massive, the croissant was perfect and very fresh, it was hot, and it actually tasted like something made in a kitchen, as opposed to that “I wonder what lab that was created in?” feeling you get with fast food.

Normally, there would be a picture here, but I left my camera charger plugged in at work. I guess i’ll just have to grab breakfast there again soon, poor me.

Their pastries look great too, but I’m not much a sweet tooth, and their coffee gets great reviews, but I’m a dedicated Mt. Dew man, so I can’t comment from experience. When it gets cold, I’ll probably sample their hot chocolate, and I imagine I’ll end up getting some of their pastries next time I invoke the wraith of a female and need to calm her with something chocolate.

As for now, i can say the breakfast sandwiches are excellent, and I HIGHLY suggest trying them out. They also have free wifi, a big plus with me. I’m going to give their lunch a shot soon, and they’re definitely my new breakfast joint of choice.

Here’s the menu, it’s on their site, but their scanner appears to date to the first Bush presidency, it’s nearly unreadable.

http://downtownmemphisblog.com/memphis-menus/

I really need to go grocery shopping, but at least it’s giving me a ton of content

I went to midtown to pick up some beer and decided I wanted to grab some BBQ on the way back downtown for dinner.? I went with TOPS on Union, because they’re consistent and it’s on the way home. I went with the regular pulled pork bbq sandwich with no slaw. It’s was basically the standard Memphis fare, which is to say, fucking awesome. This place is also crazy cheap for the amount of food you get; $10.38 for 2 regular bbq sandwich combos with fries, large drink, and bbq beans. Call ahead and they’ll have it ready for you.

Om nom nom.