photograph by michael donahue
Boscos Squared owner Andrew Feinstone and his dad, founder Jerry Feinstone.
“A lot of people think I’m ‘Bosco’ if they don’t know me already,” says Andrew Feinstone, owner of Boscos Squared, the iconic restaurant/brewery in Overton Square.
The original name of the restaurant was “Boscos a la Fornay,” Feinstone says. The Italian word “bosco” translates to “woods” or “forest” and “a la fornay” refers to something cooked in an oven. That name might have been chosen because they cook pizzas in a wood-fired oven, Feinstone says. But “a la Fornay” was eventually dropped after they opened their first location in 1992 in the Shops of Saddle Creek in Germantown.
In addition to selling food, they also brew their own beer. “We were Tennessee’s first brewpub,” Feinstone says.
photograph by michael donahue
His dad, Jerry Feinstone, now retired, opened the first Boscos, but Andrew worked there from the beginning. They had several Boscos restaurants at one time, including two in Nashville and one in Little Rock. They also began Ghost River Brewing Co., which they later sold. Boscos Squared is now their only business.
With its exposed brick walls and blue-and-white color scheme, the restaurant is spacious but cozy. The dining room surrounds the iconic four-sided bar — the same bar that graced the Bombay Bicycle Club, which was in the same location for years, and before that, the Looking Glass, one of the first places to open when Overton Square was developed in the early 1970s. Over the years, the old building has been home to many different businesses, including a Kroger grocery in the 1930s.
His dad opened Boscos as a career pivot, says Andrew Feinstone. “He used to be a stockbroker and wanted to get out of it. He and some partners got together to do a restaurant. The original concept was for it to be a California Pizza Kitchen.”
One of the owners, Chuck Skypeck, who went on to become their longtime brewmaster, told them “how the brew laws were changing in the state of Tennessee. And how [Congressman] Steve Cohen helped pass the legislation” that would allow craft breweries.
His dad realized, “Pizza and beer are a pretty good combination, so that might work.” At the same time, “I didn’t know anything about restaurants,” he admits. “I had not done it before. I was a chemistry major!”
They used some of the beer recipes from Skypeck, who was a home brewer, for their “big scale” brewing, Andrew says. “The first beer was our Tennessee cream ale. Since we were the first microbrewery or craft brewery in Memphis, we wanted a pretty light, easy-drinking beer with a little bit of caramel notes. Nothing aggressive. We didn’t want to scare away the Memphis market because everything was really American lagers — a lot of Bud Light-style beers.”
In addition to the cream ale, they sold a brown ale, and their amber beer, which was “a little hoppier. Back then, it was kind of a beginner IPA style.”
photograph by michael donahue
Wood-oven planked salmon.
Boscos enjoyed a great response after it opened, and their wood-fire pizzas were their number-one seller. Andrew says they originally sold 15 different pastas. Their open-style kitchen included a rotisserie, where they roasted chickens and other meat.
Early chefs included Frank Fountain, who used to work at The Peabody, and Gene Bjorklund, who went on to open the legendary Aubergine restaurant. Bjorklund’s Crème Brûlée Grand Marnier is still on the menu.
They opened a Boscos in Nashville in 1996 before opening Boscos Squared in 2000. The plan was to offer “more fun food,” like hamburgers and sandwiches, which they didn’t sell at the Germantown location. They had a wood-fire oven at the new location, but, Andrew says, “We didn’t put in the rotisserie or anything like that at Overton Square.” Instead, they added higher-end items, including their still-popular wood-oven planked salmon.
Andrew says they wanted their establishment to be a place where customers can get “that higher-end, nice meal and feel comfortable being in there in jeans, or in a tux right before you head down to the Orpheum.”
Today, Boscos, which keeps eight beers on tap — four regular beers and four seasonal — brews “roughly 65 different beer styles a year. So, you would almost get a different beer on tap every two or three weeks.”
A Boscos Squared tradition is the regular Sunday brunch performance of singer Joyce Cobb, the only day they offer live music. Cobb, who began performing there two years after they opened, and her band oblige when musicians ask to join them on stage. “They put them in the different sets and help them out,” says Andrew. “She’s still teaching the next generation.”
Boscos Squared added the spacious patio about two or three years after they opened. “It was worth losing the seven parking spaces for.”
As for what’s coming up next, Andrew says, “We always try to keep being creative and filling new bar trends.” This year, they’ve already started to “put up new beers we never had before.”
Andrew is at Boscos Squared almost every day. “I love the business, and what keeps me excited is not only the guests, but the staff,” he says. “They keep me motivated and my head in the game. We couldn’t have made it all these years without the unbelievable crew that’s still working with me.”
Boscos Squared is located at 2120 Madison Ave. in the heart of Overton Square.
