Sleep Out Louie’s returns after 11-year hiatus

Sleep Out Louie’s, a fixture on the Downtown restaurant and bar scene for nearly 20 years, is back.

It opened earlier this month in response to the recent arrival of ServiceMaster and 1,200 employees in the former Peabody Place shopping mall.

A public grand reopening celebration is scheduled 5-7 p.m. Tuesday with music by Pam and Terry.

Sleep Out Louie’s is open 11 a.m. to 10 p.m. daily.

Sleep Out Louie’s had a 19-year run from 1988 to 2007 at 88 Union, which later became Mesquite Chop House.

It has resurfaced around the corner in a commercial storefront that Belz Enterprises had available after ServiceMaster leased most of the former mall. The address is 150 Peabody Place, but the entrance is on Second near Gayoso.

“Our friends at Belz Enterprises were working with ServiceMaster on the relocation, and they were looking for a restaurant close by to serve the hundreds of employees who were moving Downtown,” Beale Street-based restaurateur Preston Lamm said.

“Ron Belz (co-president) asked us about bringing Sleep Out Louie’s back, and that’s just what we’ve done. In fact, the ServiceMaster employees can enter

Sleep Out Louie’s directly from their headquarters building through our back door. There’s so much energy Downtown, and we’re excited to be part of it.”

Earle Farrell, a former Channel 3 reporter and now Shelby County Sheriff ’s Office spokesman, joined forces with restaurateur Bob Thieman to open the original Sleep Out Louie’s in 1988.

“People said, ‘You’ll never make it. Nobody’s coming Downtown,’” Farrell recalled. “There wasn’t much going on Downtown in those days.

“We opened it, and we were just blown away. It was absolutely just an explosion from the first day.”

Farrell stayed about 21⁄2 years before moving on. Thieman, who had operated Captain Bilbo’s and other restaurants, relocated his career to Mexico.

The restaurant eventually came under Lamm’s ownership and was converted to Mesquite Chop House.

Farrell said he hasn’t seen the new restaurant but he likes that it has come back.

The name derives from a marketing story about a fed-up lawyer named Louie telling his boss he’d rather sleep out in the cold than continue practicing law.

“It is a recognizable name,” Farrell said.