Cuisine Review

Home cooking. What does that term mean to you – is that out of the house cooking – in a restaurant, your church or Grandma’s house? I just returned from a family reunion where everyone brought their specialty and everything made the grade.

“The best home-cooked food in town” is claimed by Cheryl’s Café and Market in Spanish Fort. Located at the top of the hill, in the Rite Aid Shopping Center, when asking friends where I should go next, this kept coming up. And they quoted the motto. So I grabbed a longtime friend and traveled across the pond.

I never saw anything that resembled a market, but it is most definitely a café. There is no real atmosphere to speak of, but the kitchen is open and it looks just like Mom’s or your church kitchen. There is a large stove, the eyes filled with pots of food cooking and a counter where I assume the sandwiches are made. The staff is friendly and attentive. Each day they have three home-cooked specials and a selection of sandwiches and salads.

The menu is fairly basic. Some of the sandwiches are referred to as “specialty” and these include two kinds of clubs (one with roast beef another with bacon), Rueben, Monte Cristo and roast beef. These sandwiches are in the $6-$7 range. The rest of them consist of basic turkey, ham and cheese, tuna or chicken salad, corned beef. All sandwiches come with one of the following – pasta salad, cole slaw, potato salad, fruit salad or a twice baked potato for an extra $1.50. Twice baked potatoes by themselves are $2.25 (huh?).

Salads are basic, other than a Chinese chicken salad (I neglected to ask just what this is) a salad trio and a stuffed tomato with choice of chicken or tuna salad. We focused on the white board with the three daily specials. The first was a chicken breast with mushroom sauce, a parmesan-crusted pork chop or a hamburger steak. You can choose from either three vegetables ($8.48) or two ($7.48) from a lengthy list. The choices were rice and gravy, mac and cheese, spinach, green beans, squash casserole, sweet potato casserole along with a few others. My friend chose the hamburger steak with rice and gravy and squash casserole. I got the Parmesan crusted pork chop with green beans, sweet potato casserole and spinach.

The food was most definitely home-cooked, but as in, church type food. Or what your mother may have cooked on a weeknight. I just want you to be prepared. This is no Mama’s or Tiny Diny, but I consider them restaurants who have crafted the art of recreating home cooking. The pork chop was of nice size, but the crust was not crusty, but mushy. The green beans were quite flavorful, with a slight addition of brown sugar. The sweet potato casserole I enjoyed because it did not have the addition of lots of sugar. The sweetness of the actual potato is what came out, with toasted pecans interspersed.

The hamburger steak was rather bland, plain tasting. The white rice and gravy were mostly the same, a bit dull. The squash casserole top was a bit burned which permeated through the dish. Now, for dessert, this was worth the trip – anytime. While the banana pudding looked appealing (can you believe that I tried banana pudding for the first time this past weekend) they had made homemade (just like it!) fresh peach ice cream. This was incredible, chunks of peaches in rich milky cream. And they gave us two large bowls.

The subject of and this experience with “home cooking” was on my mind at another type, yet altogether different, experience I had recently in Asheville, N.C.. Asheville has a vibrant, exciting and people filled downtown. It is an arts and outdoors town, which creates a laid back, more upwardly mobile hippie atmosphere. And, they have developed their own sense of food style.

Over two visits, I have discovered cooking that takes organic produce and meat – much of it local and made into dishes with their own unique flair. Now, I know that organic and “local, fresh produce” is the hot thing now in cuisine, all stemming from the success and influence of Chez Pannise. But, my point is that in our area you can get a great steak, or piece of fish but there is no style, no influence of cooking out of Mobile.

There could be. We have many talented chefs around. Perhaps they are hesitant due to a concern about lack of a receptive audience. But I encourage, and would like to see, a conversation in the community of cooks about where our roots come from in cooking and to encourage inventiveness.

There is nothing wrong with the current state of cuisine. In fact, our restaurant scene has never been healthier or better. To continue to move forward and develop as a city, it is necessary to not always emulate but innovate.

Kinnon Phillips is Lagniappe cuisine editor. Contact him at kphillips@lagniappemobile.com.

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