Menu envy, or order envy as it’s sometimes known, is a real thing: The food hits the table and you know you should have ordered what your friend ordered. But the opposite feeling has to exist, too. Sometimes you’re the one smiling, as fellow diners sadly compare their plate to yours.

I don’t know what that latter feeling is called, but I was the one gloating on a lunch visit to T. Marie’s Ristorante Italiano, a year-old Midtown venue that has been generating strong word of mouth in Mobile.

My lunch companion went for something a little smaller than his usual hearty preferences, a sandwich called the Italiano ($12), featuring a wealth of traditional Italian treats – ham, salami and provolone cheese, served on a crispy bread that had been run through a panini press. It was dressed with tomatoes and lettuce, with a small bowl of tangy Italian dressing on the side.

My companion reported that the sandwich was solid, and that dunking it into the vinegary dressing made it pop. But the woebegone look in his eyes signified that I had won. He pouted so much that he wouldn’t even finish the bean-dip appetizer ($3) we’d ordered, even though it was impressively savory and you can put it on T. Marie’s addictive house-made rolls. (Strangely enough, my companion’s problem may have been that he was ahead of his time. More in a minute on a pending transformation of T. Marie’s sandwich menu.)

All I had done to win a slam-dunk victory was to go to the made-from-scratch, build-your-own pasta menu, choosing ribbon-like tagliatelle topped with spicy arrabiata sauce and Italian sausage ($12 for the pasta and sauce, $6 more for the sausage).

The fresh pasta was a springboard for the arrabiata, which had quite a kick thanks to hot peppers, and this spiciness was accentuated by the sausage. T. Marie’s gives you more than a dozen pastas, nine sauces and five proteins to choose from on the lunch menu, so there are a lot of fine combinations to be had. Readers, this one was delicious. Almost as delicious as the jealousy on my friend’s face.

On a dinner visit with the different companion, I once again found that indulging yourself is the secret to enjoying T. Marie’s. This time it was a win-win. My dinner date went for the tagliatelle pasta with Salsa Rosa (pomodoro sauce augmented with real cream and parmesan) and house-made meatballs ($19), and was delighted, particularly with the flavorful, substantial quality of the meatballs.

I strongly considered the Pesce Rosso Al Limone: A redfish filet served with a white wine and lemon caper sauce, with homemade au gratin potatoes and asparagus on the side for $20. But I was tempted away from it by the Eggplant Parmigiana Deluxe ($22). Ever found yourself struggling to choose between eggplant parm and chicken parm? With this dish you get both. You could call it two meals in one but it was literally two meals, since even this professional gourmand had to take half of it home.

And man, it was good: Mouth-watering presentation, a symphony of textures, flavors that popped.

“It’s a lot of food,” agreed Tammy Marie Sanderson, the venue’s lively owner. “I actually dreamed about that.”

After hearing that things come to her in her dreams and wind up on the menu, you won’t be surprised to hear that Sanderson has the restaurant business in her blood. That’s been the case since her first gig as a 15-year-old hostess at a long-gone El Chico, she said.

The experience she draws on at T. Marie’s is an interesting mix. Leading into the pandemic, she owned Mirko Pasta, a franchise of a small Atlanta-based chain, in a beltline shopping center. She was already craving a format that would give her a little more freedom when the COVID-19 shutdown hit, and that put the writing on the wall. “I knew at 50% capacity I was not going to make it,” she said. She closed down.

Her parting of ways with the Atlanta-based franchise left her with the right to use, and more importantly, the right to modify Mirko recipes, she said. She still wasn’t sure that she wanted to open a new place, but she couldn’t resist, especially once she learned an SBA loan was available to help kick-start the venture. She opened T. Marie’s in January 2022 on Government Street in Midtown’s Korbet’s Square shopping center.

“I love people too much to not take care of them,” she said. “I love serving the people and talking to them and hearing their stories.”

“I knew that I had a vision of what I wanted,” Sanderson said. “All we want to do is create as authentic of a menu as we possibly can, but still keep it at an affordable level.”

That’s not easy these days.

“I don’t want to raise my prices so much that I run people off,” she said. “But even vegetables are so expensive right now. Used to, you could get a head of romaine for 95 cents. Now they’re costing us over $2 a head, and we’re buying wholesale.”

Even so, they avoid shortcuts at T. Marie’s.

“Everything that we make is made in house, including the pasta,” she said. “We have about a $45,000 pasta machine, and we make all the pasta in-house and all the sauces are made from scratch as well. We don’t make anything ahead of time except the lasagna. We want it to be as fresh as possible.”

“Our chicken is not pre-breaded or anything. We cut our own chicken,” she said. “Even our soups don’t come from a bag. We make all of our soups from scratch. I think when you offer people things from scratch, they appreciate the freshness, and it makes for a better dish. A lot of restaurants, they serve pre-breaded chicken on parmesan. They just stick it in the fryer. That’s not how we do it. We don’t bread anything until you order it.”

No wonder my dinner companion and I watched T. Marie’s go from empty to slammed in less than an hour on our weeknight visit.

Conversation with Sanderson revealed that if you want to keep up with her, you’d better run. T. Marie’s is not resting on its laurels.

The eggplant parm? It’s being replaced with a new version that looks like the leaning tower of Pisa, with rounds of fried eggplant and a special cheese sauce layered atop a bed of capellini alfredo and topped with a drizzle of pomodoro sauce.

The specials? Among other things they’ve started offering steaks on Thursdays. They’re marinated for 24 hours in a bourbon-based concoction and are so tender you can cut them with a butter knife, Sanderson said.

The sandwich menu? One of Sanderson’s other formative experiences in the business came as the owner of a Quizno’s. She’s about to install one of those conveyor sandwich ovens.

“Those ovens make the best sandwich ever. You just cannot beat those conveyor ovens,” she said. “We’re going to increase our line of sandwiches for lunch and we’re going to start putting them in that oven.”

The lack of space? Customers have been asking if T. Marie’s can accommodate parties in the 75-to-100-person range, and the answer has been no.

“We can only seat 57 people in the restaurant,” Sanderson said. “Even if you rented the restaurant we couldn’t help you.”

That’s about to change: Sanderson has acquired an event space that she’s in the process of turning into something suitably elegant.

So, the bottom line on T. Marie’s is that the bottom line hasn’t been written yet. This year-old restaurant has established its bona-fides, but you’ll want to keep an eye on the menu, and the Facebook page, for new offerings.

“We’re constantly trying to make it better,” said Sanderson. “We’re still not at a point where we’re content with what we have. We listen to our customers and we’re trying to make it what they’d like to have.”

T. Marie’s Ristorante Italiano is at 2056 Government Boulevard. Call 251-300-8885 or visit www.facebook.com/tmariesmidtown.