I love when we travel! I get very excited when I start Googling restaurants for us to try. Admittedly, I'm food-obsessed, so it's like finding a new vein of drug to explore and try. I probably need an intervention or some form of rehab but as I often say to Big Daddy, if food is my only vice, it's an addiction I can live with. Recently we were in Richmond, Virginia for the season two premiere of author Iris Bolling's The Heart TV series.
Our first night a friend gave us two suggestions to try. My Google search put them at number one and number two on the best places to eat in Richmond. We both got very excited! Our first choice was Mama J's Kitchen which promised authentic soul food. When we arrived, there was a line waiting to get inside. We took that as a good sign. The building is exceptionally small. There is enough table seating for maybe twenty-five to thirty people with an additional eight seats at the bar. Business is brisk as they also do take out and that was a whole other line! The wait wasn't as lengthy as we initially predicted and we were seated in under thirty minutes. There were only two servers and a third person who seemed to do nothing but deliver food and plates to the tables. The two servers were hustling about taking orders. The young man who was delivering the food didn't move with any sense of urgency. I'm thinking that if he had hustled a little harder, the lines might not have been that long. The young woman who took our initial order was very pleasant. Then the tide turned as she stood huddled with one group of young men and then another, someone or something souring her mood. Service went downhill from there.
One of the servers had recommended the pork chops, promising Big Daddy that he would not be disappointed. I chose the fried catfish. The portions were large so I traded the big guy one of mine for one of his. Sides are a la carte. He opted for the mashed potatoes and gravy and I selected the macaroni and cheese. A single dinner roll came with our plates.
Now, I'm not a fan of a la carte menus. I believe they only serve to run up the bill in order for you to get a full meal. I tend not to order much when all of the sides are a la carte but that's just me and Big Daddy doesn't always agree with me. The fish was my favorite part of the meal. It was nicely breaded, the cornmeal coating absolutely divine. It was seasoned nicely and fried to sheer perfection. We have had better pork chops. They were just okay. Half the flour coating had fallen off so part was crispy and part wasn't. It was also exceptionally greasy, indicating that the oil might not have been hot enough when it was put into the fryer. And don't even get me started on that one cold dinner roll! It was really bad. The sides were nothing to write home about. I enjoyed the macaroni and cheese but I was also hungry. It wasn't the best I've ever had but it also wasn't the worse. The same can be said about mashed potatoes. The sweet tea was just okay and since getting our server to handle refills seemed to be a challenge, it wasn't anything special either.
Since we'd heard much about their desserts we ordered a slice of their chocolate chocolate cake to share. Hands down that was the best part of the whole meal. We devoured it before I could get a picture! The cake was rich, decadent with the creamiest icing. If we hadn't been full we would have ordered another slice!
We weren't disappointed with our meal but we weren't as thrilled as we had hoped to be. On a scale of one through ten I'd give it a seven. He gave it a six. We'd both try them again and we'd order the fish.
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