Memphis pasta shop sees sales surge after refusing National Guard service

Miles Tamboli’s Pasta & Pizza on Madison Avenue saw sales roughly double after owner Miles Tamboli refused service to National Guard members, turning a boycott call into a surge of supportive diners. The Midtown Memphis restaurant became a buy-cott stop almost overnight, with customers coming in to back a family-owned spot built around house-made pasta, pizza, cocktails and cannoli.

The backlash landed fast. Tamboli said the restaurant received numerous violent and disturbing calls and emails, and the shop shut down its phones after people posted its phone number and email address online and urged others to contact the restaurant. By mid-July, the place had become a flashpoint in the dispute over the National Guard’s presence in Memphis, with criticism and praise arriving in equal measure.

That dispute had been building for months. The Memphis Safe Task Force, which included the National Guard, had been operating in the city for about a month by Oct. 31, 2025. On Dec. 18, 2025, the Tennessee Court of Appeals agreed to hear arguments over the legality of the deployment, and by Jan. 29, 2026, the Congressional Budget Office had put the cost of deployments to five U.S. cities, including Memphis, at around $496 million in 2026.

For Tamboli’s, the immediate business effect was stark: the refusal did not drive diners away so much as redraw the room. Boycott calls brought attention, but the stronger signal was the crowd that showed up after them, ordering from a menu rooted in the Tamboli family’s Delta Italian heritage and the restaurant’s local-sourcing pitch. For an independent pasta shop, that kind of controversy can swell the register fast, but it also ties the brand’s identity to one public decision that regulars will remember long after the surge settles.