When I was leaving Andrew Michael Italian Kitchen on Friday night, I ran into Andy Ticer on the front steps. It’s always a pleasure to talk with the chef after a great meal, especially one as charming and friendly as Andy. He was pumped up about the restaurant’s new venture, a lunch through late-night pizzeria located nearby.
“See that blue building?” he asked, pointing across the street. “We’ve already got the sign up. We’re calling it Hog & Hominy.”
In the mid 1800s, Tennessee was known as the “Hog and Hominy” state, thanks to its huge production of hogs and corn. The pizzeria’s name salutes both the chefs’ home state and their celebrated love of pig, a food prominently featured on the menu at Andrew Michael.
While some version of pork is sure to be served at the pizzeria, the specifics of the menu are still in the making. But this is for sure: the food at Hog & Hominy will be more rustic, Dicer said. “There will be pizza in a stone oven, and we will probably have pasta. But it won’t be boiled. It will be baked like baked zita.”
The restaurant’s renovation is waiting on building permits, but Ticer and partner Michael Hudman hope to open the pizzeria by the first of the year. East Memphis is ready for more late-night options, Ticer said: “We think East Memphis needs a place where people can hang out after a Grizzlies game, but be close to home.”
In the meantime, never hesitate to stop by Andrew Michael Italian Kitchen, my new favorite
restaurant. Tony and I were knocked out by our handmade pasta (corn tortellini stuffed with duck confit and gnocchi stuffed with gargonzola) and my martini’s pimento olive was frozen in a cube of ice. Equally impressive was the restaurant’s acorn salad. It gave me hope for the bowl of winter squash waiting at home on my kitchen counter. Even my husband (who is very grumpy about our CSA squash) reluctantly agreed that this combination was delicious: larges slices of baked skins-on squash, fresh arugula, red onion, green apple, and yogurt vinaigrette.
Andrew Michael Italian Kitchen, 712 W. Brookhaven Circle (901) 347-3569
