Mama Nem’s Soul Food

Mama Nem’s Soul Food

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.

Mama Nems is a Orlando Magic fan!

The staff are accomodating and cheerful, if not a little unsure at times as the place does get a little busy, but always friendly and welcoming. The prices are also more than reasonable for what you get, most dishes under $10.00.

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.

Gabe, our friend, had the meat loaf ($7.95), two generous cuts of delicious meat loaf topped with that drool inducing brown gravy.

I had originally wanted to try the ox tail for this visit but I was told that the chef was still cooking it for a while and it would not be ready in time. Instead, I ordered the seasoned roasted pork shoulder ($8.95), a tender pork dish slowly roasted and topped with their delectable brown gravy sauce that makes your mouth drool.

I also tried (for the first time) fried green tomatoes for one of my sides, fried in a country-fried chicken type batter and still tart and fresh from the zest of the green tomatoes.

FRIED GREEN TOMATOES!!

For dessert, we enjoyed Miss Celia’s Red Velvet Cake ($3.50), a luscious cut of moist, layered, sweet chocolate cake topped with cream-cheese icing.

RED VELVET CAKE!!!

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