- We really wanted this to be a place
that was a safe space. Everybody could come here
and feel comfortable and taken care of.
- We try to understand every day
the intersectionality of everyone who comes in this store
and all of their identities and how enriching
they make the experience of this restaurant.
- It's really heartwarming to walk into the dining room
and be like, "How did all of these queer people find us?"
- Yeah.
We are very proud of our queer identity.
When you are able to be your authentic self,
you get to share all of these great parts of you
and a restaurant, in order to feel authentic,
needs to be a reflection of who we are.
- We are by no means an exclusively queer space --
like that is not something that interests us --
we're chiefly and foremost a neighborhood spot,
but we are queer, a lot of our staff are queer.
- We want it to be a safe space but like we also just wanted
to create a place where we wanted to eat every day.
We wanted to have food that felt familiar,
that was crave-able that sort of teetered the line
between healthy food and indulgent food.
Something that you could find anything to eat
'cause there are familiar classics.
- Biscuits are like a unifying food.
I mean, so many cultures eat some form of biscuit,
and I mean fried chicken is just a standard.
- It's a good thing to eat at breakfast
after a long night.
Bill makes an amazing biscuit, and he had a friend
that grew up eating cathead biscuits,
and I had never heard of a cathead biscuit before.
- It's just a biscuit as big as a cat's head.
- He made me a cathead biscuit,
and I was like, "This is incredible,
it's an incredible name, this is amazing."
- So our biscuit is sort of, it's a wet dough.
It's kind of somewhere between a drop biscuit
and a traditional like kneaded, flaky biscuit.
And it's really great when you cut it in half
and put a piece of fried chicken
in the middle of it with some slaw.
- Yeah, and syrup and chili oil.
- Yup. - And a fried egg.
- Yeah.
- Because it's breakfast.
The meatloaf sandwich came as sort of
like a natural progression from our dinner menu,
and we moved into brunch a little bit after we opened,
and it turned out that meatloaf was our No. 1 seller,
which came as shock to me, came as a shock to Bill.
- We joke that we are MeMe's Meatloaf Diner.
- I wanted something that felt savory
but that could be for breakfast, too,
so we went with the garlic toast,
put the awesome greens with it,
which I think are a really great accompaniment
to the meatloaf at dinner.
- The greens kind of bring everything together.
We were going to be a kale-free restaurant.
- We were going to be a kale-free restaurant.
We said we were, [and] sometimes you don't
do what you say you're going to do.
- The greens are a staple on our menu.
- It's a staple now.
- It tastes great when you douse it in
- It does.
- cider vinegar and chili oil.
- And then it gets topped with a fried egg,
'cause it's breakfast, and the barbecue sauce,
that we put on it and the crispy shallots,
because crispy shallots deserve a spot in every food.
I grew up eating meatloaf.
My dad and I hate meatloaf sandwiches,
my brother loved meatloaf sandwiches.
My brother has done a lot for us,
and I wanted him to have something
on the brunch menu that he would really like.
- And that he orders
every single time - He does.
- that he comes here.
I will tell you I don't love peanut butter.
- It's so good, whatever.
- I get the love of peanut butter, but Libby was like,
"I think you really should make a peanut butter pie,"
and I was like, "Fine, OK."
And so we started talking about peanut butter and pretzels
and chocolate -- like, classic combo.
- Just like hitting all the levels of like sweet,
salty, crunchy, and then adding a little nostalgia in there,
adding a little sort of, a little Midwestern twist.
- It is based on an old-school,
no-bake cheesecake recipe.
- Peanut butter: What's better?
- It is cold and creamy and salty,
and even if I don't like peanut butter,
all of those flavors are so familiar,
and it is a classic combo and I joke about it
being a Midwest mom pie, but like, it is.
It's a pie that your mom would make.
- It was a sleeper hit.
We tried to change the pie and the cake flavor
every few weeks, but people kept asking
for the peanut butter pie, but it's definitely one
that people they come and they're like,
"Do you have that peanut butter pie?"
As a female in a kitchen it can be hard.
That's like well-documented.
And I've definitely worked in chauvinistic,
sexual harassment, like, rampant environments.
I would think to myself constantly,
"How do I make this better?
What do I do?"
You know, I love the restaurant industry,
I love hospitality, I love serving people,
I love making food but why is it so hard
to come to work sometimes?
And how do I make this better?
- We always said that we are a hospitality-driven restaurant
not a chef-driven restaurant,
because it is very important to us that you walk
in the door and immediately feel welcome and comfortable,
and we are lucky to have a staff
that really gets that and understands that.
- I'm not gonna let the stress of short ticket times
and fast turnaround and vendors being late get to me.
I need to be good for everybody else
so that they're good back to me and it's working,
just by saying, "No, I won't be nasty."