Saturday, November 26, 7:00 pm
Members $90, guests $115

Geographically speaking, Memphis is just about as far as one can get from the Pacific Rim, a fact that has not been lost on Tsunami Restaurant chef and owner Ben Smith. “Opening a Pacific Rim–inspired restaurant in the heart of the ‘barbecue belt’ has not been without its challenges,” he noted in the introduction to the recently published Tsunami Restaurant Cookbook. But for the past five years, Smith has been impressing local diners with his subtle yet focused seafood-based dishes. Under Smith’s direction, “Tsunami has settled into a routine that through skill and intuition manages to be gratifying without ever becoming too comfortable,” commented Gayot.com.

A Memphis native, Smith spent three years after his high school graduation working in restaurant kitchens before enrolling at the Culinary Institute of America. He went on to cook at Stars restaurant in San Francisco, where he developed a flair for Asian flavors and techniques. This led Smith to his greatest adventure yet: a six-month tour of the South Pacific that included stops in Tahiti, New Caledonia, New Zealand, and Australia. A year after returning to the States, Smith took a job at the Lodge at Koele in Lanai, Hawaii, where for two and one- half years he had uninterrupted access to an incredible variety of seafood, as well as a multitude of other ingredients native to the Pacific. Returning to Memphis with a concept in mind for his own restaurant, Smith worked at several area restaurants before opening Tsunami in 1998.

Smith’s dream restaurant was an instant success. Two months after it opened, Memphis magazine named it Best New Restaurant, and the eatery has appeared every year since as one of the top three on the magazine’s Best Seafood and Most Creative Menu lists. Fredric Koeppel of the Memphis Commercial Appeal lauded its chef for his nimble touch, writing, “You can trust Smith to turn out fish cooked the way it ought to be.” Koeppel further noted that the chef’s signature roasted sea bass “remains one of the best dishes in the city.”