Catherine & Mary’s

The Grandmothers Come Downtown

South Main at night keeps the brick and the long memory of a street that has been many things and is, at present, itself again. On the corner of Main and Doctor M.L. King, inside the renovated Chisca, Andy Ticer and Michael Hudman built a room and named it for their grandmothers. Catherine. Mary. Tuscan and Sicilian cooking as it was practiced by women who did not care whether a critic was watching. Downtown professionals walk over after work. Couples take the later seating and let the warehouse bones of the building become romantic by lamplight. Complimentary valet, Monday through Saturday, removes the last excuse for staying home.

This is the third Ticer and Hudman house on the larger Diamond map, and it is placed at dinner on purpose. Hog & Hominy already holds lunch. Andrew Michael already holds the East Memphis flagship night. Catherine & Mary’s is the downtown grandmother: Sunday gravy, meatballs, a Caesar with benne seeds, short ribs on polenta, fried mozzarella with tomato bomba. The cooking reminds you of home and then refuses to be only that. An expansive wine list and a considered bar give the evening its second language. Reservations through Resy keep the better tables from dissolving into the South Main stroll.

The interior is industrial in the bones and tender in the keeping. High ceilings, a room large enough for a civic supper, corners enough for two. Service has the ease of a kitchen that has already proven itself elsewhere and still wants this address to feel like a welcome rather than an outpost. You can eat here seven nights. That generosity is downtown’s gift and the house’s promise.

Order Maw Maw’s gravy on rigatoni if you want the name on the door to do its work. Short ribs when you want the evening to slow. Halibut with marsala when you want the kitchen’s finer hand. Tiramisu or a lime pot de crème will finish the sentence. Sit long enough for the street outside to thin. That is when the Chisca feels least like a renovation and most like a place that has decided to stay.

The grace is grandmother cooking in a downtown room that can hold a celebration. The graceful limitation is kinship and echo. Guests who already love Andrew Michael may taste the family resemblance and wonder whether they needed both nights. The room is larger and less hushed than Brookhaven. Come early in the week if you want South Main with more quiet. Come hungry for pasta that was meant to feed a family and was simply scaled to a city.

Citywide Spotlight awards Catherine & Mary’s the fifth Dinner Diamond because downtown deserved a night table rooted in family names rather than in spectacle, and because these chefs, having already given East Memphis its flagship, still had a grandmother story left to tell on Main Street. A generic downtown Italian room will offer the view. This house offers Catherine and Mary, which is a different and older reason to dress for dinner. That is the amenity: you eat a remembrance that learned how to live in a new building without forgetting whose recipes built the kitchen.