Big Bad Breakfast to open in Cooper-Young
By Sophia Surrett– Reporter, Daily Memphian
April 14, 2026
Big Bad Breakfast plans to open its second Memphis location this fall in the former Mulan Asian Bistro space in Cooper-Young.
Chef John Currence, the owner of Big Bad Breakfast, said they expect to open the last week of August before the University of Memphis’ first home football game of the season Saturday, Sept. 5.
Big Bad Breakfast serves Southern favorites, such as chicken and waffles, pancakes and scratch-made biscuits, but Currence said the new location will also serve some health-conscious menu items. The area’s first location is in East Memphis at 6450 Poplar Ave.
Renovations, which will cost $320,000, have already begun on the 5,000-square-foot space at 2149 Young Ave., according to a permit filed with the Memphis and Shelby County Division of Planning and Development.
Currence said the circa 1923 building needed a lot of work inside, including the area where a fire broke out in Mulan’s kitchen in September 2025. That restaurant closed immediately after the fire.
Currence said the new restaurant’s layout will mostly remain the same, but with a lighter color palette, a “production space” where people outside can see biscuits being made and a larger dining room.
“When we open a space, and this one will sort of be particularly this way, we want it to appear to have been there for quite some time,” he said. “Like it has been there and been part of the neighborhood for years already.”
In 2022, the restaurant group that owns Big Bad Breakfast, Fresh Hospitality Group, bought the building at the intersection of Cooper Street and Young Avenue that housed Mulan. The company also purchased the building that houses Margaritas across the street, plus two area parking lots.
Following the purchase, there was a “big bad rumor” that the sale would include Mulan vacating the space and Big Bad Breakfast opening in its place.
Currence said the company’s goal was to open a Big Bad Breakfast in Midtown and potentially use that space, but the company wasn’t trying to force Mulan out.
“All of a sudden, like wildfire, it blew up that we were going to shove the guys from Mulan out, and we were coming in to take over and that we were some big, awful corporate entity that was going to be part of ruining the neighborhood,” he said of the 2022 sale.
However, Currence said he was originally interested in the space because he has a “direct and sort of romantic connection” to the corner, dating back to when he opened his first restaurant, City Grocery, in the early ’90s.
He and his friends would drive to Memphis from Oxford, have brunch and drinks in Cooper-Young, then head to Club 616 before going home.
“It was a vibrant little corner that was full of local, independent bars and restaurants,” he said, noting he watched the early days of the Young Avenue Deli and Tsunami. “I have a nostalgic place in my heart for that corner.”
Now, he said, Big Bad Breakfast gets to be part of the “continued revival” of Cooper-Young.
Currence said his favorite Big Bad Breakfast is the East Memphis location because of its local partner, Ruben Wallace, and its regular customers.
“There’s just an abject joy in that store every time I’m there,” he said. “I hope that will translate into that space at Cooper-Young and that the folks in the neighborhood will, once they move beyond perhaps initial apprehension, that they will come to welcome us as their own.”
