Mmmm Meme

There are two things people wonder about when it comes to Meme.
1.) How do I pronounce it?
2.) How do I get in?

So let’s get this out of the way. It’s pronounced MAY-may. And you need to enter on 22nd street through the side door; don’t even think about using the corner door that seems so perfect for entering–you’ll be meet with stares from diners and your own serious embarrassment.

Named after Katz’s Moroccan grandmother, Meme serves dishes that are made from amazing ingredients he gets from local distributors (with the exception of the pork, which Katz ships in straight from a pig farm in Montreal, the city where most of the photos on the wall are from).

With it’s open kitchen and large floor-to-ceiling windows, even street passersby are tempted to peek inside and catch the cozy vibe they seem to have missed out on. The butter-yellow walls (although Katz describes them as "mustard") only accentuate the natural sunny space. Cherry wood floors, rustic wood tables (no table clothes, simple Schott Zwiesel stemware, thickly cut wood shelves, a large wall-to-wall chalkboard with hand-written specials and burlap strips draped across the ceiling all give Meme a provincial European feeling (given that the rustic space in question is decorated with that simple meticulousness that is only achieved in William-Sonoma catalogs).

The food selection is pleasingly creative and the menu is categorized according to plate size, with portions ranging from “small-ish” to “larg-er." Like the restaurant’s dining room, the menu is rather small — but just as Katz managed to comfortably make room for 40 seats in his tiny space, he also succeeded in fitting an array of cooking styles and ingredients into about 15 dishes. The smell of mussels from the open kitchen could make a regular of anyone, but the steam from the duck confit and pasta soup has the faintest warm smell of truffles and is almost laughably perfect for this setting.

Meme serves lunch one day a week (Thursdays) and they do a pretty fine job of it. Proof is the number of lunch-goers who feel comfortable enough to dine solo with a glass wine, free to chat up the waiter or chef after a few tasty bites. During a recent lunch, a friendly diner simply gave owner and chef David Katz the thumbs up. The heads of Bistro La Mignette were also seen recently dining on some of Meme’s un-listed menu items (during lunch, listen carefully to the waiter as he’ll be listing off the lunch choices from memory). And some folks from Sansom Street Oyster House were just getting ready to pay their bill. But for dinner, Katz leaves half of the restaurant for reservations and keeps the other half open for locals and passersby (provided they can find the door).