Li'l Mama's Soulfood Cafe

I kept waiting to see Alan Funt walk out with a big grin on his face. For those of you too young to get it, he was the guy who popularzed the hidden camera gags.

My brother, Dale, and his wife, Donna, Vicki and I went to the 7th Avenue party to see the vintage cars and check out the booths and fun that goes on out there. And there were some very nice old cars and cool shops. There were also a lot of places to eat. One that looked interesting was a soul food place. The menu was great with all the stuff you would expect, greens, catfish, chicken, ribs, cornbread, mashed potatoes and gravy, and much more. So we decided to check it out.

The first thing that tipped us off that this would be one to remember was that the table was small and very unstable, and that there were a lot of people in the place but hardly anyone actually eating. There was no silverware on the table, no waitress asking for drink orders and a lot of people looking around with expectant faces. It was only about 6:00 in the evening on the night of a street party that was probably a local highlight and they (when we finally got to talk to a waitress) were already out of things. Not unusual stuff like Heineken (which they ran out of by our second round) but gravy. I found out about that after I had ordered and had already had an appetizer and a Corona. Now mashed potatoes and smothered chicken without gravy is ..... what?

While we were waiting people were leaving and orders were beginning to show up with no one to claim them. It got to be kind of a joke, "Any one want the pork chop with mashed potatoes and no gravy? I didn't order that but if you could throw some greens on there and a piece of cornbread I'll take it."

Dale's meal showed up first (after about an hour) but there was still no silverware so I went up to the register to ask for some. After talking to three different people I finally got one set. Now all we needed was our food and three more sets of silverware. They gave me two and I told them that we could make it work, you know, share the fork and the table next to us had a knife and no food so we could probably work something out.

When I got back to the table 10 minutes later (I'm not joking) Dale had already tried eating the beans and rice with his bare hands so he was quite relieved to see me. Our food arrived over the next 15 minutes and finally 5 minutes after that the other 2 pair of silverware. Donna was already holding her porkchop and gnawing away when the silverware showed up. Lucky for me eating chicken by hand is socially acceptable but no napkins was more of a challenge. We got to speculating that this place must be a front for a drug operation, you know, "Shit Carl, they's people out there orderin stuff. Anyone here what can fry chicken?" The food was good but it was hard to ignore the awful service. I have to go with half a star.