A. Schwab, Beale Street, Memphis, USA

I decided to take a stroll from my hotel, the Sheraton Memphis Downtown, to the famous Beale Street, Memphis' answer to London's Carnaby Street or the King's Road, I suppose. It's where you can buy tee shirts with 'Memphis' written on them and other 'knick knacks' that scream 'Memphis'. I did buy two tee shirts and a base ball cup and yes, they did have the word 'Memphis' on them. But where to eat?

Peanut butter and banana sandwich, Elvis Presley's favourite snack

I wanted a 'caff' but couldn't really find one and then I stumbled upon A Schwab a kind of shop and caff blended into one where, among a small selection of snacks, they serve Elvis Presley's favourite food item, the peanut butter and banana sandwich. While I'd enjoyed a fairly large and healthy breakfast, I couldn't miss out on the opportunity to try the Elvis snack being as I was in his hometown, so I ordered it and a coffee and took a seat at the long bar, which was very 1950s/1960s America.

The sandwich was pretty damn tasty and toasted, although the manager of A. Schwab told me she didn't know whether or not Elvis had his sandwich toasted. I watched as she prepared it and she did so very carefully, cutting the banana in half prior to peeling it and then only peeling the half that was going to be used for my sandwich. To do all this she'd donned a pair of surgical gloves, for hygiene purposes, and then first spread peanut butter on the white bread and then adding the sliced banana. She put the lot in a toaster for a few minutes and then served it on a plate with a chequered black and white napkin. I ordered a coffee too and the bill was a little over $7.

A. Schwab on Beale Street, Memphis, sells Elvis Presley's favourite snack

The manager told me she preferred it toasted and I think I agree with her and then we, that is me, the manager and her assistant, started talking about time zones and how, in the USA, there was Eastern, Central, Pacific and Mountain time zones. Nobody was really sure about the latter, I certainly wasn't, not hailing from these parts, but they eventually decided that mountain time was in places like Colorado, Montana, Utah and Wyoming. It also covers parts of Canada and Mexico, I discovered by checking out Wikipedia.

A. Schwab was a great place, it sold wooden catapults for kids as well as teeshirts and other 'stuff' too numerous to mention. In fact, there's a lot of history behind A. Schwab. It is classed as a dry goods store and is the only remaining original business on Beale Street. It  is a family-owned store with the following motto: "If you can't find it at A. Schwab, you're probably better off without it!" 

The Schwab family sold the business towards the end of 2011.