Two Memphis food veterans have quietly slipped behind the line at Archives, the basement restaurant inside Hotel Napoleon. Hugh Balthrop, the founder of Sweet Magnolia Gelato, is now serving as chef manager, while David Lorrison, the restaurateur behind Rumble Fish, is steering the bar program.
The hotel’s materials list The Archives at 179 Madison Avenue and shows breakfast and dinner service aimed at both hotel guests and downtown regulars. The restaurant is set in the historic Scimitar building and focuses on Southern-influenced plates alongside craft cocktails, according to Hotel Napoleon.
The current menu leans familiar but polished. Breakfast brings eggs, breakfast potatoes, sausage, avocado toast, and an “Elvis overnight oats.” Dinner shifts to steaks and salmon along with hot chicken and waffles, jerk wings, deviled eggs, and charcuterie. Sweet Magnolia gelato is scooped in-house, and Balthrop told the Flyer he shuttered his Crosstown Concourse location and other shops to concentrate on Archives, as reported by Memphis Flyer.
From Gelato To Breakfast Plates
Balthrop arrives with formal training and a regional track record. He studied at the Penn State Ice Cream Short Course and apprenticed at The French Pastry School in Chicago before launching his first gelato operation in Clarksdale, where he built flavors around Southern ingredients. Local coverage has followed his Crosstown and Oxford shop plans and how those same practices now shape the gelato program at the hotel, according to What Now Memphis.
Rounding Out The Bar Program
Lorrison, who ran the short-lived Midtown bistro Rumble Fish decades ago, has more recently been staging pop-ups and special events and plans to keep that energy going at Archives. He told the Flyer he is building a small, independent wine list with a few carefully chosen bottles and is bringing Japanese whiskeys and vodkas behind the bar. He also recently hosted a themed “Ship of Fools” night, as reported by Memphis Flyer.
The Archives sits in the basement of the circa-1902 Scimitar building that once housed the Memphis Press-Scimitar, giving the food and drink operation a newsroom-era backdrop as downtown’s dining scene keeps expanding. Hotel materials highlight the restored building’s character and its role in attracting both out-of-towners and local regulars, according to Hotel Napoleon.
