Dinner at The Peabody: Just Don't Try and Order Duck Confit

Where: 149 Union Ave. [map], Memphis, TN, United States, 38103

6/01/2007 at 3:02 PM
Tags: Memphis Hotel Reviews, Hotel Food

For everyone with an oil portrait of Robert E. Lee hanging in the Billiard Room, you and your fellow Daughters of the American Revolution should venture from the plantation to enjoy a fantastic meal at Chez Phillipe, a Forbes Traveler story on the best hotel food reports.

The French-Asian establishment, located within The Peabody hotel in Memphis, is one of the highest rated restaurants below the Mason-Dixon.

Apparently, all the restaurant buzz proves the hotel now has more than marching ducks to offer its travelers. Since 1932, when a few drunken aristocrats left their duck decoys in the hotel fountain after a day of hunting, fowl have achieved royalty status at The Peabody. According to the hotel web site:

The ducks are housed in the "Duck Palace" on the hotel roof. Every day at 11 a.m., they are led by the Duckmaster down the elevator to the Italian travertine marble fountain in the Peabody Grand Lobby. A red carpet is unrolled and the ducks march through crowds of admiring spectators to the tune of John Philip Sousa's King Cotton March. The ceremony is reversed at 5 p.m., when the ducks retire for the evening to their palace on the roof of the hotel.

Somewhere, Scrooge McDuck seethes with jealousy.

[Photo: bearclau]