Classic Southern cuisine, with its Native American roots and African and European influences, is renown for home-cooked soulfulness and lip-smacking delicious yet may be bad for you goodness. Owned by the church located just next door, Mama Nem’s is a place that serves truly comfort food for the soul and deservedly earns the Best Soul Food of Orlando title. It is definitely not a place to go for a healthy meal, but rather a place to go to enjoy some good southern style comfort food like fried chicken, mashed potatoes, and green beans. They have heaping servings of the best southern home-style cooking in the area. Everything from their sides to main course are heaping.
Mama Nems, located on Kirkman Road just south of the SR 408 exit and just past Old Winter Garden Rd, is not a newcomer to accolades (its won best soul food from the Orlando Sentinel’s Foodie awards in the past and even was a finalist in Tom Harvey’s “Hoodie” awards for best soul food, attracting mega stars like Shaq to visit)
The place is pretty nice, definitely not a hole-in-the-wall place, clean and brightly lit by flourescent tubes, large booths for seating as well as smaller tables. There is often a wait here, always a sign of good food within, but usually not more than 10 minutes.
With each entree, you get three sides to choose from as well, all enough to feed two people or one very very hungry hippo. They range from fried okra to corn to mashed potatoes, collard greens to fried sweet potato fries.
They bring you a side of cornbread and fruit to begin. The cornbread is baked fresh and you can even see pieces of corn in it as you bite. The fruit changes with the seasons, in the past it was melons, and today it was watermelons.
CORNBREAD!!!!
WATERMELON!!!!
My sister had Mama Nem’s fried catfish ($10.95), 2 huge, freshly country fried pieces of cat fish.
On a past visit, I had the chitterlings and hog maws dish over rice, which was tasty and fun to eat though a bit salty for me. Other recommended dishes include the fried chicken and the lip smacking pot roast, a tender braised roast of meat.
Not fine dining and probably not the greatest of all time, but I love Mama Nem’s offerings and that is fine by me.
Tasty Chomps rating!!!!
4.5 out of 5 TASTY CHOMPS!!!!
Mama Nem’s Soul Food
(407) 253-7744
805 S Kirkman Rd
Orlando, FL 32811
www.mamanemssoulfood.com
