A boy sits at his grandmother’s kitchen table, feet swinging above the checkerboard linoleum floor. The sound of crackling oil fills the room as Mamaw stands at the stove, turning pieces of golden fried chicken in her well-seasoned cast-iron skillet. The air smells like Sunday: warm biscuits, pepper gravy, and the kind of Southern cooking that settles into memory and refuses to leave.
Around him, family crowds into the tiny room, passing plates and talking over one another, laughter rising like the steam off the chicken platter she sets in the middle of the table. It is loud, warm, familiar. It feels like the world is held together by her food.
Mamaw St. John is gone now. But in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, her fried chicken, and the spirit behind it lives on in a diner created by her grandson, Robert St John. A diner that set out to feel as familiar as Mamaw’s kitchen once did, welcome to The Midtowner, a breakfast restaurant built brand new yet designed to feel like it has always been part of the Hub City’s heartbeat.
Walk through its doors and it is easy to believe The Midtowner has been open since the 1950s rather than July 2018. Chrome-rimmed stools line the counter. White and black tile floors shine beneath bright windows. Booth’s curve like a memory, the kind that includes grandparents, syrup-sticky plates, and a second cup of coffee you were not supposed to have but got anyway.
But The Midtowner is not a relic. It is a deliberate creation, a brand-new building constructed as part of The District at Midtown development, which began in February 2017 alongside the 100-room Hotel Indigo. The restaurant is located at 3000 Hardy St. It is history made modern; nostalgia constructed one tile at a time.
At the center of that vision is restaurateur Robert St. John, who built this place as a tribute not only to Hattiesburg’s dining culture but to the heart of his family’s table – Eunice Holleman St. John, better known as Mamaw.
“The person that inspired me for all of this kind of cuisine. The fried chicken we do is just like her fried chicken. She was a great lady,” said St. John.
On one wall hangs a photo of Mamaw herself, watching over diners the same way she once watched over that childhood kitchen. Around her are snapshots and relics celebrating Hattiesburg’s history, including one symbol Robert insisted on from the beginning.
“You gotta have the Hub sign,” he says.
The original hub sign was lit up Thanksgiving Day of 1912 and featured over one thousand lights. The sign itself highlighted that Hattiesburg was a railroad town that connected cities like New Orleans, Jackson, Mobile, Gulfport, Meridian, and Natchez. A replica now hangs in The Midtowner, just one of the many reminders of Hattiesburg’s past.
The Midtowner does not just serve breakfast. It pays tribute to a place and the people who shaped it.
No one knows that better than Jennifer Heritage, the restaurant’s opening general manager. The project pulled her back into hospitality after she briefly left the industry in 2017. “The Midtowner is my baby,” Heritage says. “I left and pursued food sales, but I realized that was not why I loved the food industry.”
When she walked into the space before opening day, she saw potential and a blank canvas. “It was amazing to see how Robert’s vision came together,” she recalls. “Watching it go from yellow walls and tile floors to overnight becoming a diner that looks like you have grown up going to it with your grandparents was incredible.”
Authenticity cannot be faked. But it can be built when someone understands the heart they are trying to recreate.
The Midtowner hit the ground running, quickly becoming a local favorite. Families lined up on weekends. College students grabbed grits before class. Travelers stopped in for biscuits and a taste of real Southern hospitality.
Then came March 2020. Just months before celebrating its two-year anniversary, the restaurant closed its doors due to the COVID-19 pandemic. For four months, the stools sat empty. The hum of breakfast chatter went silent.
For many restaurants, that pause became a full stop. But when The Midtowner reopened, something else came through the door with its customers – gratitude. People did not just return for pancakes or chicken and waffles. They returned for connection, for ritual, and for the comfort of a place that felt like home at a time when home was the only safe place to be.
Slowly, the clinking dishes and morning conversations returned. The same walls held a new sense of appreciation. A restaurant built to honor memory became a space where people created new ones.
Today, lines still form on weekends. Coffee still pours. Kids still swing their feet beneath tables as parents cut up pancakes. The Midtowner still tastes like comfort and resilience. And its story continues to grow. A sister restaurant, The Downtowner, is set to open on the Mississippi Gulf Coast in Gulfport, extending this breakfast legacy from the Hub City to the shoreline.
Ask Heritage what makes The Midtowner special and she does not talk about the building, the brand, or even the menu, though fans of chicken and biscuits would argue it speaks for itself. She talks about the feeling.
“Families love to go to breakfast,” she says. “It is something that is really special to them. We were able to offer that feeling and connect it locally to Hattiesburg itself.”