Mama E's

We arose from our slumber and focused ourselves on the task at hand. It was time to get back on task and pick the mantle of responsibility back up. We must go therefore and EAT!

So we got on the road to Mama E's, a soul food resturant.

 

Mamma E's is located in not the best section of town and their building architecture is early 90's home depot. Not that there is anything wrong with that doesn't the definition of DDD include Dives? What is "soul food" anyway? In our most common definition it means comfort food of black heritage. I don't actually think it can be properly prepared or served by any hodie-todie 4 star restaurant. It has to be experienced in a back water out of the way place where people only care about the food. This place definatly fits that description but never the less I was excited. I am actually a big fan of "soul food" and was pretty pumped to be getting the real stuff.

So we went in with high hopes. They are the only restaurant so far who actually acknowledged the DDD show and that they had been featured on it:

Notice Guy's stencil on the wall?. When they introduced their available dishes they actually named their famous "Waffles and Wings" as being featured on Food Network.

EAT went for the "Waffels and Wings" special which comes with sweetpotatoe pie and over sweetened KoolAid. She also selected what would turn out to be the best dish of them all, a side of their black-eyed peas. When we say "Waffles and Wings" it is just that. A fresh made Belgium waffle and chicken fried wings and powered sugar. Then they supplied us with a big bottle of syrup that is intended to be put over the whole thing. Strange. But the waffle was actually very good. Eating the wings proved to be challenging because they were fresh from the oil and were about 5000 degrees hot. We had to wait quite a while before we could even handle them. But the peas were great perfectly seasoned and probally worth the trip just to taste them.  I got things off of their pre-prepaired service line. I got the "Smothered Ribs", "Chicken and stuffing", "Mashed potatoes and gravy", and "Collard Greens".  

I enjoyed the potatoes and the chicken and stuffing were great. The chicken seemed to be roasted but were pretty much buired in stuffing, no problem there! The ribs were simmered in brown gravy and onions and I was quite excited about that until I actually bit into it and found it to be very tough. Not good. Tough ribs are a primary fo-pa in rib land. Ok but on to the collard greens. They did a pretty good job with them and they were obviously made fresh but I was underwhelmed. Don't ask me why they just didn't trip my trigger. Then EAT tells me that the wings were just ho-hum and the waffle had absorbed so much syrup that it was just a glob of sweet (that between us we managed to wolf down by the way). It was all starting to unravel. My expected experience of un known soul food tastes was fading fast. I didn't know what to do so we started talking about how full we were and the wait staff brought us a bag to take things to go. I picked up my teeth-chatteringly sweet KoolAid and we slided out the door heading for the truck. Only to be met at the door by the owner and cook:

He was reasonably asking us what we thought of the food so I came up with the quickest complementary statement that I could that wasn't a lie.  "It was better than the Cattleman's restaurant". He replied that his wife had been trying to get him to go there but he couldn't see spending the money. I told him not to bother that he had them beat.

Would I recommend Mama E's?  Yes, simply experiencing the delightful friendly and cheerful wait staff, the location, and the unusual menu is something that everyone should enjoy at least once. Will I be going back alone? In other words will I be going back without having someone else along for the purpose of giving them this experience for the first time? Probably not. I really hate saying that because I WANT the resturant to be great. It turns out that the owner is the pastor of a local Church and all the profits go into the Church. The restaurant is an income source for the mission of that Church.... I left a big tip.


When the wait staff found out that we traveled down just to eat at their place (along with other places) they brought us a magic marker and asked us to sign their wall (the walls are covered with messages from patrons. So if you ever go there look in the corner for "Amazing Grace Amazing Food SET and EAT broken arrow OK 9-02-09" that's us.

Nap revisitied

Eat. Just finished the Cattleman's Steakhouse blog. Our hotel has a courtyard and our room opens up to it. A lovely breeze is drifting in the room, the air smells clean and fresh, i stretched out across the bed with two soft cushy pillows under my head, I think...I...will....take...a...napZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZzzzzzzzzzzzz........

Nick's Grill

Full to overfull, about to go into some sort of coma state, it is only about 10am so what do we decide to do? Let's go to Nick's early to miss the crowd!

 

Nick's is an extremely small place with about  8 bar stools and three two person small tables. We got there at 10:45 and there were 4 bar stools left. Most of the patrons were still eating breakfast.

There is nothing wrong with eating breakfast at 10 or so but we were there for lunch, we had just had our breakfast. Just about an hour ago. A full breakfast that neither of us could actually finish. And here we are looking for lunch. WHAT WERE WE THINKING!

Nick's has a rather small menu there are really only about 5 lunch items but each of them are killer. He is famous for his burgers. In fact if you go read some of the other blogs some people think that eating a Nick's hamburger has changed their lives. Well I won't go that far but it is a mighty fine burger!  EAT and I just ordered standard cheese burgers and watched Nick and his assistant squeeze past each other trying to do work in a space that only an anorexic supermodel could actually turn around in (I know, I know, anorexic supermodel is an oxymoron). But they got it happening! The assistant asked us for our drinks and what we wanted we grunted back "Coke! Diet! Cheeseburger" trying our best not to let the food already in our stomachs spew forth because we slightly constricted our diaphragms to speak louder.  Did I mention that we were already full?

In some feat of telepathy the assistant communicated the order to Nick because we never saw anything written down nor did we see them actually talk about our order. Nick slapped down 2 balls of hamburger meat and things began to cook.

The picture is blurred by the steam but what you are seeing is buns, burgers, and a MESS of onions on the flattop grill. Nick is a master he put the meat down and never touched it again until he turned it once. The next time he touched them was to scoop some onions on them and put cheese to melt on them.  And thick! His burgers are as thick if not thicker than you would make for your own back yard grill. No mashed flat white castle burgers here!

The net effect is that almost all the juice from both the burgers and the onions went straight into the bun. Nick finished them off with shredded lettuce, tomato, and your choice of dressings. We had mustard. I don't really remember ordering fries but we both had a serving. There is actually a sign on the menu that split orders and sharing are not allowed so we HAD to order our own burgers. Really, they forced us.  Nick triple fried the absolutely fresh curly fries and everything was done right in front of us. We could have touched the fryer if we leaned over the counter and the grill was just a couple feet to the right of that.

The burgers were pretty much the best I have had in a long while, probably ever. And that's saying something I have had some pretty good burgers! The way the meat and onions and bread melded together made every bite absolutely a burst of flavor and goodness. I really don't want to gush on and on like everybody else does when writing about Nick's but you know what? It is deserved! This is the best burger!

And the joint is SO SMALL. People were standing behind me like Ethiopian refugees waiting for food. But I really didn't care because I had the burger and that's all that mattered.  I even heard another patron down the way say to someone "you can sit here I don't care what you do as long as I get a burger!". I was thinking "I'm with you buddy!"

And after we ate the strangest thing happened. I wasn't over stuffed. Neither was EAT! How could that be? We had stuffed and stuffed all morning and all of the sudden our bodies just found some place to put it all and let us be comfortable! Was this some sort of culinary magic? Are Nick's burgers magic? I don't know. I can't think anymore I need a nap.

The Diner in Norman

So I wake up at 5am for no good reason. The Elwood effect in action. I lie there in the dark and just think about things until EAT wakes up. Our plan is to get to Norman before 8 so that we can shoehorn in to the diner before the crowd hits. We needn't have worried, it is a college town, NOBODY was awake before 9:30!

EAT hit the shower and started yelping for some strange reason. Not to long afterwords she came out and declared that the shower was ice cold and that she rushed through giving out a scream every time the cold water hit a new part of her body.  Great! I thought the Builtmore was letting us down in yet a new way. But when I went into the ice cave of doom my shower was nice and warm. I figure that EAT ran the water long enough for the hot water to reach us from the boiler that must be a quarter mile away in this airport size motel. But I did think it was nice of her to draw a nice warm bath for me this morning.

Somehow I think that I will be taking the first shower tomorrow.

Going to Norman was a mostly uneventful trip except for a little arguing with the garmin and a dose of OKC rush hour.

"The Diner" Breakfast done right. Not fancy, not big but man let me tell you! This has got to be the best omelet I have ever eaten.  Really!

They only do breakfast and lunch and the menu has nothing special except that it does seem to have a few more Mexican breakfast dishes than you would think (but then again it is OKC).

The big special item was the "Chef's choice combination Omelet" so ignoring the lesson of ordering different things that we learned yesterday we both ordered the chef's choice. I did go for the biscuits and gravy and EAT went for dry toast so we switched it up a little bit.

We were not disappointed the eggs were cooked perfectly and where actually fluffy. It had mushrooms in it which most of the time when people put mushrooms in an omelet they end up being raw. These mushrooms were obviously fresh but had actually been cooked. In fact all of the ingredients were cooked and cooked just right. The big surprise was the inclusion of a nicely spiced summer sausage that they had obviously peeled the casing off of (nice touch). I got hash-browns (which I WAY recommend over the french fry option) and they were also cooked perfectly. Not greasy like you get from the deep fried kind but obviously cooked on the flat top to crispy perfection. I didn't even use any ketchup! It was all great and I couldn't stop eating. I knew I had to slow down and save room but I just couldn't. Finally EAT's more cooler head prevailed and she said "Stop Eating!". Only then did I put my fork down and take time to sample the biscuits. The biscuits were light and fluffy and again not greasy.

The gravy was a standard white sauce that in any other restaurant would be the star of the show but on this table was the last runner up. It was sort of like watching the Miss America pageant. I mean all the girls are beautiful and talented and even the last place contestant is a knock out but when in a room together the stars obviously outshine the others.

The Omelet was the star the hash-browns were the first runner up. EAT and I are unanimous in this!

I would not make a trip back to the Cattleman's on purpose but I am really thinking about how we can find a way to swing back  to Norman and go to the "The Diner".

 

Stroud as Napa

There are actually many vineyards around Oklahoma I knew about the "Sparks" winery that is in Stroud and was mildly interested in finding it. But when we got into town I saw a sign saying it was about 12 miles away. We really didn't feel like going that far out of our way so, oh well.

On our way back from the booming metroplois of Kendrick I saw a small building and sign for a different wineary named Stableridge. So after the "Rock Cafe" we decided to stop by and check that one out.

It turns out that it was a family owned and run winery and vineyard that has been in operation for about 6 years.  The land that it sits on was next door to the land of the current owners and when the 1999 tornado came through it wiped out the previous owners who put the land up for a steal. The current owner bought the land just to clean it up and preserve his property but on a lark he started with messing with growing grapes. Starting with 10 vines and getting up to about 1000. At that point he figured he may as well start making some wine with them.
They have been pretty busy building their business and have won over 40 international wine medals for their wine. In fact one of the wines we tasted had just come from a contest the previous week where it won four awards by itself. What an unexpected treat. Here we are in bo-diddley Italy Oklahoma and we come across a small multi-award winning winery!

We met with the owner and he took us all around the vines and the winery and explained their journey from not even being wine drinkers 6 years ago to being award winning vintners now.

And had the most fun showing us the outdoor pizza oven he had just built and describing the dinners he likes to put on using the oven. We have got to figure out a way to get invited to one of those!

And to top it all off their shop and office was a prestate-hood catholic church that just happened to be on the property and just happened to survive the tornado note the arched windows.

Lots of atmosphere, great wine, direct conversations with the owner, private tour, what a gem of a find! and to think we almost just drove by.

SET

The Cattleman's Steakhouse

Hey it's Eat, After my heavenly nap we made contact with the Sapplings. I finally got to see their new apt, it is in Brick Town area, very DINK interurban chic.

Saw just a streak of CAT but that was it. LSappling says that it take only 10 minutes on her bike to get to the medical college all very convenient. The Sapplings look content, cozy, and happy. Soon we were off to the Cattleman's Steakhouse. Even before Diners, Drive-in's, and Dives I was aware of the reputation of the Cattleman's Steakhouse.

As we got closer to the stockyards (yes it is right at the entrance gate to the stockyards, can't get fresher than that) it was cowboy world. Western wear, cowboy boots and hat stores galore. The interesting thing I'm really enjoying so far are the signs outside the restaurants, original 40, 50 and 60's design, no retro junk here, just classic tacky, I just love it. Upon entering the tacky continues but it is in a good way,  you feel that you are back in the 60's and LBJ is president, you gotta know that he carried Oklahoma in the 64 elections. We were seated in a curved corner vinyl bench and table. Drawing of famous country and western singers who have graced the establishment are on the walls, I didn't have a clue who most of them were.

We placed our drink order, believe it or not they have a wine list, we ordered a Pino Noir 2007 from Oregon, very nice. For appetizers we ordered Lamb Fries, yes lamb fries (when we got back to the hotel we checked online for Lamb fries, and Wikipedia listed Cattleman's Steakhouse as one of two resturants famous for them. And yes you knew it was coming...Lamb Fries are a unique dish to Oklahoma. At least according to Wikipedia.). Yes Lamb fries are what you think.

So the question on your blog reader mind is what do they taste like? Well if you squeeze lemon juice on them and then dip them in cocktail sauce they taste like fried something (dip it and fry it, it's the Oklahoma way) with lemon and cocktail sauce. The disturbing thing is how soft, tender, and slightly chewy they are eat, no balls of steel here!

Next our salads arrive and they were not worth describing or of recall. L & JSapplings ordered petite steaks, while I ordered a fillet Mignon and Set ordered a PRIME grade rib-eye steak (if you don't know the difference between choice and prime, look it up). All steaks were cooked as ordered and very delicious.I remembered seeing a baked potato on my plate but can not recall how it tasted. For desert the Sapplings ordered blackberry cobbler and we ordered strawberry shortcake. LSappling thought the cobbler was great and after tasting the cobbler I didn't have the heart to tell her tasted like pie filling since she tells me they are mostly living on mac and cheese. The strawberry shortcake was to mushy, too sweet, too forgettable. Would I recommend the Cattleman's Steakhouse? Yes I would especially if someone else was picking up the tab!.

EAT