Walk into 6695 Poplar Avenue on a Friday night and you get two restaurants for the price of one building. Downstairs, servers move between tables set under soaring ceilings and floor-to-ceiling windows, herringbone hardwood underfoot, brass fixtures catching the light against sea green walls. Take the stairs up and the whole mood flips: dark leather seating, vinyl booths, tiled floors, a 25-seat bar pouring frozen Negronis to a room that feels like it was built for watching a ballgame with a good steak in front of you.
This is Josephine Estelle and Rosie's Tavern, and the fact that both exist under one roof in Germantown is the least interesting part of the story. The more interesting part is who built it, and why they chose this address over three other cities they'd been considering.
The First New Restaurant in Six Years
Andy Ticer and Michael Hudman are not new to Memphis dining. The chef duo behind Andrew Michael Italian Kitchen, Hog & Hominy, and Catherine & Mary's have been fixtures of the Midtown food scene for years. But Josephine Estelle and Rosie's Tavern mark something specific: the first restaurant they've opened since Hog & Hominy reopened after a fire in 2021, and by Hudman's own account, their first entirely new opening in over six years.
That's a long gap for two chefs with this kind of track record, which makes the choice of where to end it worth paying attention to. Before landing on Germantown, Ticer and Hudman had been weighing bigger moves. They looked at Birmingham. They looked at Nashville. They looked at Little Rock. Instead, they built their next project three miles down Poplar from their existing restaurants, in a building that used to house the old Carrefour retail center, now part of a development called The Standard.
Hudman's explanation for staying local was direct: he felt Germantown had something missing that this project could fill. Josephine Estelle takes the ground floor with an Italian-American menu built on Southern ingredients, house-made pastas, and antipasti like fried ravioli served with a gravy recipe passed down through Hudman's own family. Upstairs, Rosie's Tavern leans into raw bar classics and steaks sourced from Home Place Pastures, the West Tennessee farm run by Marshall Bartlett, alongside a cocktail list built around riffs like the Freek-a-Leek, a playful take on a Gibson.
The Corridor Got Busier, Not Just One Building
Josephine Estelle and Rosie's Tavern weren't the only new kitchen to land on this stretch of Germantown this year. Bain Barbecue, known for its Texas-style smoked meats out of its original Midtown location, opened a second location at 2016 South Germantown Road, just north of Poplar. This one comes with a drive-thru, a format the original location doesn't offer. The Midtown spot stays open, so this isn't a relocation. It's expansion, and it landed within weeks of Josephine Estelle's debut.
Two established Memphis kitchens choosing to grow into Germantown in the same season is a different story than either one opening in isolation. It suggests operators who already have a following elsewhere in the city are starting to see this stretch of Poplar and South Germantown Road as worth a second location rather than a first experiment.
The Festival That Doesn't Need to Change
None of this touches the part of Germantown's fall calendar that hasn't moved in over fifty years. The Germantown Festival marked its 53rd year on September 12 and 13 at the Germantown Civic Club Complex, 7745 Poplar Pike, and it ran the way it always does: arts and crafts vendors, live stage entertainment both days, car exhibits, and the Running of the Weenies Dachshund Race, sponsored by the Germantown Animal Shelter, which drew a Best Dressed Contest ahead of the race itself.
The logistics stayed familiar too. Free shuttle buses ran a continuous loop between two parking lots and the festival grounds, from 9:30 a.m. to 6 p.m. Saturday and 11:30 a.m. to 6 p.m. Sunday, and the buses were set up to transport leashed or kenneled dogs along with their owners. Admission, as always, was free.
Then the Farm Gets Its One Loud Day
The calendar shifts to a completely different kind of gathering next. Bobby Lanier Farm Park, the 10-acre working suburban farm at 2660 Cross Country Drive, hosts its Harvest Moon Fall Festival on October 17, from noon to 6 p.m., sponsored by Campbell Clinic. The lineup includes a corn maze, hayrides, a pumpkin patch, the petting farm, a haunted stable walkthrough billed as the spooky stables, live music, and food trucks. Tickets are required for entry and can be purchased in advance through Germantown-TN.gov or on-site the day of.
For most of the year, the Farm Park is a quiet place: pedestrian access from sunrise to sunset, a community garden known as Beasley Community Garden where residents cultivate their own plots, and the Harvest Moon Pavilion available for private bookings like weddings and retreats. The Harvest Moon Fall Festival is the one day the property is built to hold a crowd instead of a handful of gardeners and a ranger-led nature hike.
What This Adds Up To
Put the pieces next to each other and the shape of a Germantown fall becomes clearer than either the restaurant news or the festival calendar tells on its own. The events that anchor the season, the Germantown Festival already behind us and the Harvest Moon Fall Festival still ahead, are institutions that have run largely unchanged for decades. The dining scene around them is what's actually shifting, and it's shifting because chefs with options elsewhere are choosing to build here instead.
That distinction matters if you've lived in Germantown long enough to have a fixed idea of what a fall weekend looks like. The Weenie Dash already ran its course this year, and the corn maze is still three weeks out. What's new is that the drive to a serious dinner no longer has to end in Midtown. It can end upstairs at Rosie's Tavern, three miles from where it always used to.
House Team keeps a running list of what's opening, closing, and worth putting on the calendar around Germantown. If you want the next update before it shows up anywhere else, reach out to House Team.
