The Arcade Restaurant

A Memphis diner open since 1919 at the corner of South Main and GE Patterson, on the trolley line. Founder Speros Zepatos came from Cephalonia, Greece; his family still runs it, 4 generations on.

A sidewalk marker from the county film commission dates the rebirth of Memphis moviemaking to 1988, when Jim Jarmusch shot Mystery Train on this corner. The city’s previous nationally distributed feature came in 1928.

Jarmusch used the diner itself as a set. Wong Kar-wai later filmed My Blueberry Nights (2007) inside, at the cafe counter Norah Jones’s character works.

The Client (1994) shot its cafe scene inside, where the mob hires an investigator to watch the boy. Matt Damon and Danny DeVito filmed a scene here for Francis Ford Coppola’s The Rainmaker (1997).

The oldest source on file is the 1982 National Register nomination for the South Main Street Historic District. It inventories the building as contributing: circa 1920, eclectic, one-story brick with a canted corner entrance.

Walk in for breakfast or lunch, no ticket; the room is mostly its 1950s fit-out. The Mystery Train hotel, a separate 3-story building around the corner, came down after the shoot, so nothing remains.