Saturday, August 8, 2009
New Haven's Got Soul By Thomas MacMillan Thursday, November 27, 2008
A yankee gets schooled at Mama Mary's
Sun. 12 p.m.–6 p.m. 203-562-4535
mamassoulfood.com
As a lifelong New Englander, I worried that I was out of my depth when it came to reviewing soul food, the cuisine of the South. So when I visited Mama Mary's Soul Food on a recent Tuesday night, I took a couple of Georgia natives with me to get an authe
ntic Southern perspective on New Haven–style soul food.
Margaret and James were prepared for a let-down, scarred by past yankee attempts to imitate the fried chicken and collard greens they grew up on. An hour later, as we licked the grease off our fingers, they were not only unable to find fault with the meal, they were personally complimenting the chef.
When arriving for dinner (or lunch) at Mama Mary's you have your choice of cozy couples' seating or family-oriented booths formed by church-style pews that can accommodate eight hungry people. While the restaurant is tastefully appointed with dark wood paneling and bronzy fixtures, it's the beyond-friendly service that really sets the atmosphere. After our waitress told us how her great-grandma likes her fish, her mom fixed our dessert and her dad stepped out of the kitchen to say hello. Mama Mary's isn't a "family-style" restaurant — it is family.
The menu, like the "meat and three" style of ordering common in the South, presents diners with the opportunity to choose your own gastronomic adventure. First, you choose either a regular or a "signature" meat selection from an array of traditional Southern staples, including pork ribs, pigs' feet and chitterlings. Then, you choose two side dishes. Plates come in small ($10.60 regular, $13.78 "signature") and large ($12.72 regular and $15.90 "signature").
We chose a variety of soul food staples, including fried chicken, chopped BBQ, collards, fried okra, mac and cheese and candied yams. We ordered three small plates and ended up with more than we could finish.
There is a certain purity in the taste of soul food that provides a refreshing counterpoint to the chorus of flavors in other cuisines. To put the comparison in musical terms, while a spicy Southern Indian curry might be an ensemble show-tune number, Southern American food is a full-throated gospel solo for the queen of all spices: salt.
The beauty of salt is that it encourages foods to taste more like themselves. Used properly (which is to say copiously), it enhances and enriches the natural flavor of whatever it touches. The fried chicken that arrived on our plate, still crisp and moist from the fryer, was a case in point. No distractingly thick batter here, just a light dredging in flour and the perfect palmful of salt to allow the chicken to taste most gloriously of itself. It fairly slid off the bone, and into our mouths.
The chopped BBQ, made from minced pork shoulder and flavored with "Mama's signature BBQ sauce," was the only one of our selections that was spicy. (For those with a taste for the picante, there's a bottle of hot sauce on every table.)
The macaroni and cheese was just as it should be: comforting and unabashedly cheesy. Margaret dubbed it "the mac and cheese that your mom might make for you if she weren't at all concerned about your cholesterol." James favored the translucent cabbage, which he deemed the perfect vehicle for the subtle taste of butter. The collards, we all agreed, were just the right consistency, cooked to death but not too limp.
Then there were the candied yams (emphasis on candied). You might get a cavity just by sitting at the same table as these tender, bright orange morsels. The same could be said for the sweet iced tea that we had with our meal. James judged it to be perfect, so it's my understanding that Southern sweet tea always tastes like liquefied sugar.
We made the mistake of eating right next to the dessert case and were thus unable to leave without sampling the banana pudding, the red velvet cake, and the sweet potato pie ($4.24 each). All three were outstanding, but the banana pudding — made with genuine Nilla wafers — was our favorite.
I left Mama Mary's carrying the next day's lunch and accompanied by two happy Georgians. Northern soul food was no longer an oxymoron for Margaret and James.
Friday, August 7, 2009
Soul Food Elevates Whalley by Allan Appel | July 30, 2008 8:38 AM
Bus
iness is booming at Mama Mary’s Soul Food Restaurant, which opened two weeks ago on Whalley Avenue. No one was enjoying the collard greens and corn bread more than loyal customer Miss Daisy Jones. Owner Tanya Harris (on the right in the photo), along with her husband Robert, relocated Mama Mary’s from its longtime location on Congress Avenue to a well-placed spot across from Edge of the Woods. She said she and her husband made the move to expand the clientele. It’s already happening.
Tanya Harris said more than half of their old customers are coming by for the pig feet and chitlins (that’s stomach, according to chef Robert Harris, well-boiled) and the particularly popular chopped barbecue. Many others are discovering the cuisine, whose origins, in this family, go back to Robert Harris’s mother Mary. She came to New Haven from Alabama after World War Two.
“We have about 35 percent of our clientele who are relatively new, and many of them are not African-American.” She described a white couple who lives around the corner on Norton Street. “They were so delighted,” she said, “to find a restaurant that offered fine dining that they could walk to.”
The law firms in the area, the employees of the correctional facility on Whalley, the people who work at the pizza parlors all come to Mama Mary’s as well. Was Tanya Harris surprised? “Absolutely not. There are lots of people who want to delight their palates by eating, so to speak, out of the box.”
Tanya and Robert Harris — whose sister Sandra operated Sandra’s on Whitney Avenue until it closed about six months ago — have done an upscale renovation of the space that was formerly Stella’s kosher bakery and restaurant. It’s wood-lined, with an inviting oval refrigerator case that shows off desserts even before you order your main course. There’s a long cool granite counter where another longtime customer, who identified herself as Sharon and remembered previous Harris restaurants on Chapel Street, was ordering fried chicken.
“We’ve changed the location and the decor,” said Tanya Harris, “but absolutely nothing about the menu. The customers wouldn’t allow it.”
Another dish that Daisy Jones was looking forward to ordering on another day was liver and onions.
How is that dish done in soul food style? What makes it Southern?
“Well,” explained Jones, “it’s smothered in gravy and served over rice.”
Other food that’s a big hit so far, and usually in the summer, is the fish — porgies, whiting and catfish. The porgies too are fresh, caught by Robert Harris himself. He goes fishing for them up in Stonington or New Bedford. “He comes back,” said his wife, with evident pride, “with maybe a hundred of them and we freeze them, and then serve them. It’s a moist flaky fish, and Robert deep fries them in a fine light cornmeal, along with cornbread. We take the head off, but the fish is there, bones and all, of course.”
“I especially like it with cabbage,” added Daisy Jones.
Business, said Harris, was good for lunch and dinner both, even on the weekend, when churchgoers come in after services. They slide into booths which are comfortable wooden pews. “So they eat and pray at the same time.” (The restaurant closes on Mondays.)
What was Daisy Jones praying for? Tanya answered for her, “We’re praying for health and perseverance, and prosperity.”
Speaking of prosperity, how was the adjacent Jamaican restaurant, The Caribbean Connection, faring, now that Mama Mary had opened up? Chefs and owners Grygory Martin and Norma Potts, mother and son, were pleased. “We actually considered expanding into the space,” he said, “when it became available. But we couldn’t afford the rent. But it’s fine, we’re good for each other. Their customers come to us and ours go to them. And they’re really nice people.”
If people are tired of porgy, Martin suggested at his place they try a delicious Jamaican-style fish he calls brown stewed snapper. It’s a red snapper cooked in oil and vegetables and served with rice, cabbage, and plantains.
A Rastafarian whose goal is to become a complete vegetarian, he succumbs occasionally to chicken and still enjoys the fish he describes.He especially loves fishing. “I’ve asked Robert Harris to take me fishing, and he said he would, after he gets a little less busy.”
Which does not appear to be happening any time soon. Mama Mary’s Soul Food Restaurant can be reached by (562-4535) or through its website. www.mamasoulfood.com
The Caribbean Connection is reachable at 777-9080.