photograph courtesy wiseacre
Chefs Andy Ticer and Michael Hudman
Could this be one of the biggest ever crossover events to come to Memphis? And no, it’s not Avengers: Endgame. The latest team-up action is a joint venture between two eminently recognizable brands in Bluff City’s hospitality industry. Wiseacre founders Kellan and Davin Bartosch are pairing up with veteran restaurant duo Andrew Ticer and Michael Hudman to create Little Bettie, a pizza stand at Wiseacre’s new Downtown location, Wiseacre 2.
Pizza and beer are a classic combination, but Ticer and Hudman are looking to mix up the formula a bit. “We’re going for a New Haven-style pizza at Little Bettie,” says Hudman. Think extra thin, super-crispy crusts covered with crunchy caramelized cheese — in the vein of Neapolitan pizza, but only sort of. “It tends to be a bit drier than Naples-inspired pizza,” he continues. “We’re going to source as much protein and produce as possible from our local farmers.”
Don’t expect New York City-esque pizza by the slice, or something straight off the menu of Hog & Hominy, the Ticer/Hudman establishment that is currently closed after a devastating fire in January 2020. Hudman has recently been doing a lot of research into focaccia, and wants to test out the flatbread as his pizza base.
“What we’re doing right now is floating in a space where we’re trying to find a different representation of pizza, and I’m thinking we go with a big nice square of super-light focaccia,” he says, “with a super-high hydration rate so that it comes off really light. It’s like Roman-style meets Sicilian-style. The focaccia approach might be tricky, because people expect a certain thing when they hear pizza, but we want to deliver and satisfy everyone.”
photograph courtesy wiseacre
Kellan Bartosch
While the team-up might seem like a no-brainer on paper, Little Bettie’s existence can be traced back to a close relationship that the Bartosch brothers cultivated with Ticer and Hudman back when Wiseacre was just starting out. “I think it was about a decade ago,” recollects Kellan, “when we were going around town and talking with people who ran bars and restaurants to tell them our story and our background. And I remember Michael, in particular, was like, slapping the table. He was excited because he felt that he and Andy had a really similar story.”
“I remember looking at Andy,” recalls Hudman, “and saying, ‘I sure hope their beer is good; I like these guys a lot.’ The way they work is similar to how Andy and I operate, really symbiotic.”
photograph courtesy wiseacre
Davin Bartosch
On Wiseacre’s opening weekend, Ticer and Hudman invited the Bartosches to pour beer at the chefs’ cookbook release for Collards & Carbonara: Southern Cooking, Italian Roots. “I was like, ‘They haven’t even tried our beer yet,’” marvels Kellan. “But they said, ‘We know you guys put the work in, and we’re really excited about this.’ And they were just so supportive. Since then, we’ve had a great relationship with them, doing different beer dinners and events around Memphis.”
While there have been plenty of one-off collaborations, the time had never been quite right to enter into a firm partnership. But when Wiseacre announced it would be opening a new location Downtown, Ticer and Hudman knew the moment was perfect. “We pestered them when we heard they were opening a new brewery,” says Hudman, “and they asked us to be a part of it. Davin said they wanted to have a pizza focus, and that’s where the conversation started.”
photograph courtesy wiseacre
Little Bettie, tentatively slated for a mid-December opening, will be unobtrusive. Visitors to Wiseacre can simply order pizza at the bar like they would any Wiseacre brew. “It’s basically part of the rest of the taproom,” explains Davin. “It’s almost hidden in plain sight. There’s a box [square room] that’s cut out of the taproom that houses the kitchen.”
That close proximity works to the menu’s advantage, with many of the items utilizing the brewery’s beer. “This is definitely being made with an eye towards our beer, specifically,” he continues. “And it will be used in a bunch of the recipes. But only when it works; the most important thing is that everything be delicious.”
Beyond pizza, Little Bettie will offer plenty of snacks. Some of the ideas include hand pretzels with beer sauce and cheese sauce, a Little Bettie patty melt, and beer-battered onion rings with dehydrated dill. “I’m also a pretty big chicken finger guy,” laughs Hudman, “so we’ve been playing around with that idea as well.”
The aim is to provide approachable, light-hearted snacks for people to share. “We’re not necessarily a restaurant,” he says, “but thinking if kids are involved, we want to run the gamut with a lot of things. It will be like bar food meets skate-rink food — kind of fun!”
photograph courtesy wiseacre
Little Bettie’s chef de cuisine is Parker Rose, a longtime chef with Enjoy AM, the ownership group for the Ticer-Hudman empire, which currently includes Andrew Michael Italian Kitchen, Catherine & Mary’s, Gray Canary, and Bishop. Rose joined the team in 2014 and formerly served as pizza cook at Hog & Hominy. “He’s totally impressed Andy and me every step of the way,” says Hudman. “We’re really excited for him and to see how he takes this project and runs with it.”
With all the pieces in place, Little Bettie should have a smooth transition to life inside Wiseacre 2. But is this the start of the brewery’s outreach into the food scene? “No, not for us,” says Kellan. “We think of ourselves first and foremost as a production brewery, even before our taproom. That’s what we know how to do, and that’s what we’re good at, so we don’t really have the desire to have different restaurant concepts.” For Wiseacre, the next step is boosting production. The brothers currently distribute beer to nine states full-time, but will increase that number to 13 next spring with the additions of Colorado, Kentucky, North Carolina, and South Carolina.
Ticer and Hudman, meanwhile, will turn their attention to the reincarnation of one of their beloved properties. “She’s coming back!” exclaims Hudman. “We started construction on Hog & Hominy [in fall 2020], but we’re hoping, worst-case scenario, to reopen in late summer 2021. It’s going to be a totally different look, and we’ve got the A-team working on this one, like Grinder Taber Grinder and Natalie Lieberman [from Collect+Curate].”
One of the new flourishes is an homage to the University of Memphis Tigers, of whom Ticer and Hudman are huge fans. “When putting it in, we thought, why not make our new pizza oven in the shape of a big Memphis helmet?”
While Little Bettie’s grand opening is likely to be in mid-December, both the Bartosches and Ticer and Hudman acknowledge that the situation is fluid.
“It’s hard to put hard dates on stuff with everything that’s going on,” says Kellan. “If it opens now, great, if it’s a bit later, we can work with that too.” In the end, both parties are hoping to provide a creative and fun food venue embodied by the eponymous Bettie character. She gets her name from a streamlet that used to run through the area where Wiseacre 2 is located, which on some maps is labeled as “Little Bettie Bayou.”
photograph courtesy wiseacre
The taps at Wiseacre 2.
“We couldn’t figure out why it was called that,” says Kellan, “but Little Bettie seemed like a really fun, whimsical name for the restaurant that also has ties to the area. We came up with this mythology that she lived in the Bayou and was friends with all the woodland creatures. This is her neighborhood, and we’ve just set up shop here.”
That spirit of fun, chimes in Davin, is what makes the Little Bettie concept so appealing. “It’s just really cool to be working with two people who care about food as much as we care about beer,” he says. “They don’t need us, and we don’t need them; they have their own world and identity. And that’s kind of what makes this partnership work. It takes some of the pressure off and allows us to be really creative with this fun opportunity.”
Little Bettie is located at Wiseacre 2, 398 South B.B. King Blvd.
