Business

Mother Butter's is '"Cheers" with meatloaf'

Suni McMath dishes up shrimp and grits at Mother Butter's.

By Bill Moss, Published: June 10, 2013

Suni McMath says everyone has a memory of meals their grandmother made "and you knew she loved you."
"We're trying to bring that menu back for people," she says.

McMath (her first name is pronounced Sunny) has opened Mother Butter's, in the restaurant space beside City Hall, at 123 Fifth Avenue East. She ran a restaurant in Spartanburg County, S.C., for 10 years called the Broken Teapot.
Homemade chicken salad on a soft pretzel is a lunch menu item.The menu here has plenty of variety under a theme that McMath sums up her theme as "fine comfort cuisine."
Menu items include "cat head" biscuits (the big kind), eggs bubbadict (on catheads instead of English muffins), SOS and buttered croutons, honey bun kale and dippy eggs (poached). Those are from a brunch menu, which is in the works.
Mother Butter's opened in late May and McMath is still fine-tuning some of her specials. She plans Wednesday night chicken night, fried or baked, with the fixins. Sunday family style dining started Sunday.
"You'll pick your entrée and then we'll have pass-around dishes," she said. It won't always be Southern-style, she said, "because not everybody's grandma came from the South." Some might have come from Germany or Italy or Mexico.
Entrees were chicken a la cordon bleu with fondue sauce and orzo rice pilaf; fried catfish with homemade remoulade, corn fritters, chunky mash; and stovetop style shish kebab with orzo rice pilaf. Sides served family style were dilled sweet peas, squash casserole, cucumber salad, fried okra and buttered yeast rolls and grape jelly. Dessert was cobbler with fresh local peaches and vanilla bean ice cream.
Mother Butter's is open from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. Tuesday through Sunday. She said she plans expand weekend hours by July.
"At some point we'll be open for casual fine dining, a little more high-brow but not so high-brow people don't feel like they can't come in in their flipflops," she said."It's 'Cheers' with meatloaf."

"My mantra," she added, "is do a little bit well and not a lot lousy. We're trying to do it the right way instead of the quick way and the big-bucks way."
Lunch items are $8.95 or $9.95 and include wild greens salad, pretzel salad with homemade chicken salad, buffalo toes (salad with spicy chicken strips), the Italian redneck (a "carnivore's delight" of mortadella, salami and ham), Alabama flat dog (thick-sliced grilled bologna on toasted pretzel roll) and Hawaiian Handful (grilled ham and sliced pineapple on toasted ciabatti).
"Everybody says farm-to-table, farm-to-table, eat local," McMath says. "Well, I'm glad it finally caught on because I've been doing it for years."
McMath invites diners to check out specials on FaceBook: Facebook Mother Butter's