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.
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