During our late summer trip down to Memphis, we were trying to figure out where to go for dinner one evening. We'd read about some places on the east side of the city that seemed to be pretty interesting. It turned out that two of the restaurants we were interested in were virtually across the street from one another on a side street off of Poplar Avenue near our hotel. One was called Hog and Hominy, the other Andrew Michael Italian Kitchen. Cindy made the call - we ended up at Andrew Michael for dinner that evening.
It turned out that both restaurants were owned by the same people - Andrew Ticer and Micheal Hudman - friends since they were in their teens growing up in Memphis. It was a boyhood dream of both to run a restaurant together and they opened Andrew Michael Italian Kitchen in 2008. But getting there is a pretty interesting story.
Growing up, Mike Hudman and Andy Ticer (pictured right) came from large Catholic families where the kitchen and good food were the core of the household. The two went to different, but nearby, Catholic grade schools and first got to know each other when they would talk trash back and forth to one another during sporting events. The two eventually became friends by high school and shared a common love for their both of their own Italian-born grandmother's home cooking. Both learned old family Italian recipes and shared a dream of running their own restaurant using family recipes that had been handed down to them.
After high school, the two attended separate colleges, but stayed in touch regarding their dream of running their own restaurant. The two eventually went off to Charleston, SC to go to Johnson and Wales University, a private college with multiple campuses around the nation which has a prestigious culinary school. After graduating there, the two ended up back in Memphis working in the kitchen at the venerable Frank Grisanti's, a long-time Italian restaurant in Memphis. The two eventually ended up at Chez Philippe - the opulent restaurant in the famous Peabody Hotel. Interning under Chef Jose Guiterrez (now the owner/chef at Memphis' River Oaks) the two were at Chez Philippe for nearly five years before decided to go out and learn more about the culinary world on their own.
The two first moved to Lyon, France - called the gastronomic capital of Europe. (I've been to Lyon three times - and, yes - there are some great restaurants there. The only problem is that I haven't written about any of them on Road Tips.) From there, the two ended up in Italy where their lives were changed forever. They attended the Italian Culnary Institute in Copanella, Calabria in Southern Italy where they learned about the importance of locally grown and fresh ingredients used in cooking. It was also in Calabria where the two butchered their first hog using many of the internal organs in their recipes. After graduating from the 3 month long Masters program at the Italian Culinary Institute, they made their way back to Memphis to work on opening their own restaurant.
At the end of October in 2008, the two opened Andrew Michael Italian Kitchen in a converted small house on W. Brookhaven Circle (see map) sourcing many of the items they served from local farmers and growers. The restaurant was an immediate hit and the two began to garner critical acclaim for their rustic Italian recipes with Southern U.S. twist. The two were featured in a number of magazines and television profiles. In 2013 they were semi-finalists as James Beard Award Best Chefs for the Southeatern part of the United States. The same year, Food & Wine Magazine put Ticer and Hudman on their "Best New Chefs" list. The two also co-authored a cookbook - Collards and Carbonara - that melds old world Italian cooking with Southern favorites. We've read about them in Bon Appetit magazine, but never made the correlation until we saw a copy of the same article on the wall in their restaurant.
After being open for a year, Ticer and Hudman were already working on another concept restaurant - a place that they'd like to eat at after they get off work. Their love for Neapolitan pizza from their days in Italy put them on track for their next restaurant - Hog and Hominy - that they opened literally across the street in 2012. The new restaurant went even further in blending Southern U.S. foods with traditional Italian fare. They have a smoker on the premises as well as a wood-fired brick oven for pizzas. (We're definitely going there the next time we make it back to Memphis.)
There's a small parking lot in front of Andrew Michael's, but it was full when we pulled up. We found parking on W. Brookhaven down the street a ways. We went in and up to the hostess stand and asked if we could get a table for two. The hostess said that she wouldn't have anything in the dining room, but had a high top table in the bar for two or we could have a seat at a table on the outdoor patio. It was a warm evening, but tolerable enough. We followed her outside where we were seated at a table overlooking the herb garden and given menus to look through. We were the only ones on the patio. It was like our own little dining room.
Our server for the evening, Karen, came out to greet us. She had short blonde hair and a bubbly personality. She asked if we wanted something to drink and I got a beer and Cindy got an amaretto sour. She said she'd be right back with the drinks.
As we were going through the menu, I felt a bug bite me on my ankle. And another one. Mosquitoes. I am a mosquito magnet. Cindy said, "Uh oh. This won't work. No wonder no one else is seated outside." I got up and went inside to the hostess stand, told her that the mosquitoes were biting pretty bad outside and asked her if the high top table in the bar was still available. She said that it was. She set us up at a table next to a window in the smallish bar area which consisted of only three tables. It wasn't as nice as one of the three dining rooms they have at Andrew Michael, but it was cozy enough.
Newman Farm, which is situated near the Arkansas border in Southern Missouri, has some of the finest all natural pork in the central part of the U.S. Their Heritage Berkshire pigs are raised on a 200 acre pasture, not a feed lot, and are considered to be the pig equivalent to Japanese "Kobe" beef. Many fine dining restaurants in the middle part of the country use Newman Farm pork on their menus. Both Andrew Michael and Hog and Hominy use Newman Farm product for their pork dishes. And Hudman and Ticer will butcher the pigs themselves. (Their third part of their dream is to open their own butcher shop at some point.)
Karen came back with our drinks and asked if we'd ever eaten at Andrew Michael before and we said we hadn't. She said, "Our menu is put into three courses, the starters, pasta and the main entree. That's how traditional Italian families will serve their meals." The starters consisted of things like calamari, a caprese salad, and something called the A/M Breakfast consisting of a poached egg, pork belly, pork rinds and polenta.
The pasta dishes for the second course included a couple gnocchi dishes, a couple ravioli dishes and a couple other offerings. The main entrees that evening included a couple seafood dishes, short ribs, a duck entree and, of course, Newman Farm pork chops. Everything sounded pretty good.
The first thing we ordered were a couple salads for starters. I got the caprese salad that featured three different types of chopped tomatoes along with fresh basil and chopped red onions and finished with chunks of buffalo mozzarella.
Cindy got the A/M Salad - basically Andrew Michael's house salad with fresh greens with a balsamic reduction and a shallot vinaigrette and finished with buffalo mozzarella. Both salads were very fresh and very good.
For the pasta portion of the dinner, I got the Maw Maw's ravioli on the advice of Karen. "Oh, it's so good, " she gushed when describing the dish. The ravioli gravy, I was told, was an old family recipe from one of the chef's grandmother made with a meat sauce of ground chicken, ground beef and ground pork. The ravioli were big and pillowy and the meat sauce had a great tangy tomato taste and not a lot of sweetness. Fresh grated parmesan cheese finished the ravioli dish. On its own, Maw Maw's ravioli would have been a sufficient entree for me.
Cindy really didn't know what to get, but I was also intrigued by the gnocchi sardi. It had a veal ragu mixed with salted ricotta cheese and broccoli in a red wine reduction sauce. The taste was rather plain compared to the goings on with the Maw Maw's ravioli, but it was still interesting enough the we decided it was worth getting.
We were sort of worried about the pasta/entree combination since we'd had a big lunch earlier in the day. I was leaning toward getting the Newman Farm pork chop, but Karen said the pork chops were "huge". I began to look for something along the lines of seafood. I ended up getting hogfish snapper, a lean Gulf/Atlantic fish that was served on a green tomato puree with romesco, green beans, hazelnuts and squash. It was a spot hitter all the way around. It was light and wasn't fishy in taste at all. I had a Gascon malbec wine to go with the caprese salad and the pasta, but I went with a St. Supery chardonnay with the hogfish.
Cindy got the short rib veal breast. It came with carrots, peaches, sweet sorghum and corn. It wasn't large - which was fine with Cindy. She declared it to be "excellent". It was definitely old Italian cooking melding with old Southern cooking. Along with her dinner, Cindy got a Burgo Viejo rioja wine from Spain. This was simply a spectacular dinner.
You would think that with all that food, we would have just had enough. But Karen came over with the dessert menu to try to tempt us. It didn't take much. The first thing on the dessert menu was the A/M cannoli made with a lemoncello riccota. They had a marscapone cheesecake with blueberries, hazelnuts and caramel that sounded equally good. And they had assorted flavors of gelato that evening. We ended up getting the cannoli. I'm a sucker with anything lemon in the taste and the lemoncello riccota was spectacular. The cannoli's were light and flaky. A raspberry sauce was drizzled onto the plate before the cannoli's were laid down.
When we were settling up with Karen she asked if we were from out of town. When we told her that we were from Iowa she said, "Hey, our sous chef, Ryan, is from Iowa!" She went to find out where he was from. It turns out that Ryan Jenniges - the chef de cuisine at Andrew Michael - was from Cedar Falls, IA. We told her to say hello from a couple Iowans and give him our sincere compliments on the food.
The meal we had at Andrew Michael Italian Kitchen was nothing short of fabulous. The combination of old Italian recipes with Southern U.S. favorites was an absolute hit. This was a great find on our vacation and quite possibly one of the top 10 meals we've had over the years. The awards and recognition that Michael Hudman and Andrew Ticer have garnered over the years are more than warranted. Great meal, great service, great setting. Weeks later, we're still reminiscing about our meal at Andrew Michael.
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