News from My Table
Dining Without Borders #84: You Know It When You Taste It
By Dennis Abrams
The Oxford Companion to Food defines soul food as this: “A phrase which came into use in the 1960s, expressing the idea that the ‘soul’ of African Americans would be fortified by the preparation and consumption of the foodstuffs and dishes which belong to their culture and traditions. Typical items of soul food are hominy and grits; cornbread; black-eyed peas and collard greens; chitterlings; hog jowls and pigs’ feet. The appeal of soul food stretches out beyond ethnic boundaries, appealing to many Americans as part of the American tradition, but especially in the Southern states.”
I applaud the idea of soul food appealing to many Americans (it certainly appeals to me), but I’d like to expand on this topic before moving into the review proper. It seems to me that defining “soul food” as strictly African American does make a certain amount of sense, but it’s also too limiting. I mean, isn’t the appeal of soul food that it’s a cuisine that takes inexpensive ingredients and, through the skill and love of the cook, transforms them into something sublime? And doesn’t it follow that all “peasant” food is really soul food? When an Italian eats pasta and bean soup, pasta e fagioli, or an Indian sits down to a dish of cooked lentils, dal, these are dishes of poor people, composed of humble ingredients — heart-warming soul food in every sense of the word.
But anyway, to get back to talking about what we think of as American soul food — and maybe that’s what we should call it — Houstonians are lucky. We have more than 24 soul-food restaurants in the greater Houston area.
How did I choose the two restaurants for this article? I skipped over the obvious choice, This Is It!, because, well, it’s too obvious. Many of the other soul-food restaurants on the list, such as The Breakfast Klub, are not open for dinner or close too early in the evening to make them a useful dinner recommendation. One thing and another, I winnowed the 24 down to two: The Kitchen and Yo Mama’s Soul Food Restaurant.
The Kitchen first. Like many soul-food restaurants, it’s steam table — get in line and select your entrée along with your choice of sides. There were four of us there, and among us we managed to try most of the entrees and all of the sides available that day. (Bear in mind that what we had may not necessarily be on the steam table when you visit, but I can’t imagine everything won’t be as good as what we had.)
I loved the oxtails (but I’m easy — I nearly always love oxtails); the ribs were tasty if not Houston’s finest; fried pork chops (not on the steam table, but cooked to order) were crisped, spicy and juicy; and perhaps best of all was the meatloaf. Not normally one of my favorite foods, this was moist and flavorful and delicious — just what meatloaf should be but usually is not. The only entree I didn’t really enjoy were the smothered pork chops. They were tough and dry, as though they’d gone from being smothered directly to rigor mortis.
The sides were equally impressive. You can skip the corn and black-eyed peas, but the red beans were good, the yams even better, and so was the cabbage. But it was the greens that knocked my proverbial socks off. Tender but not cooked to mush, swimming in a beautifully seasoned potlikker, they were the best greens I’ve had in a very long time. And The Kitchen’s excellent cornbread is perfect for crumbling into the spicy broth.
Desserts were sweet and traditional, or perhaps sweetly traditional (although the banana pudding, more like a spiced cake with banana cream poured over it, was a bit unusual). Even sweeter than the desserts was the restaurant’s owner and chef, Rosie Marmol. I was talking with her as I was paying the bill and was surprised to learn that she was from Costa Rica. “How did you learn to make such delicious soul food?” I asked her. Marmol put her hands together in a prayerful position, lifted her eyes up to the skies (well, the ceiling of the kitchen, but you get the point), and said, simply, “God.” Who, I ask you, wouldn’t fall in love with a restaurant like that?
My next stop, Yo Mama’s, is a much larger restaurant than The Kitchen, and there was a line waiting for the steam table when we arrived one rainy Friday night. Now, I’ll be the first to admit that the place may look a little intimidating from the outside. But as soon as you enter and get to talking with the friendly customers and staff, you’ll know that you’re in the right place.
Again, the oxtails were delicious, meaty and tender, swimming in a light flavorful gravy that was an ideal foil for the rich meat. The fried dishes — catfish and chicken — while not fried to order, somehow survived their time on the steam table without damage, their crusts remaining light and crisp. Without a doubt, however, the star of the entrees was the smothered pork chops. The fork-tender chops came completely smothered in what the restaurant endearingly calls “40-weight gravy.” The name says it all. They were everything that one could ever want to eat on a cold, rainy Houston night, food that warmed both your body and your soul. Especially if accompanied by the cabbage, which was, in a word, extraordinary. It’s possible that my opinion of the cabbage was swayed by what seemed to be nearly a side of bacon cooked along with the cabbage. (Perhaps the dish is perhaps best described as bacon cooked with cabbage.) Either way, though, the dish was a nearly perfect example of soul food: simple inexpensive ingredients combined to make something greater than the sum of its parts.
And that is why I love soul food, whether it’s traditional African American, French, Italian or whatever. One doesn’t need lobster, foie gras or rack of lamb to dine well. All one needs is food prepared well, with love, by cooks who know how to make the most of what they have to work with. Cooks who cook with soul seem to make everything taste delicious. And that’s what both The Kitchen and Yo Mama’s Soul Food Kitchen provide.
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THE KITCHEN
9381 Richmond bet. S. Gessner & Fondren, 713-977-2333
TIP Arrive before 6 pm for the best selection. Owner Rosie Marmol recommends the gumbo and the chicken and dumplings, both of which were already gone the night I ate there.
YO MAMA’S SOUL FOOD KITCHEN
5332 Antoine Drive bet. Tidwell & Pinewood, 713-680-8002
TIP No wine or beer is served or allowed on premises. However, there are two huge urns of iced tea, sweetened and unsweetened, both marked “God is Good.”
