Lowered Expectations Might Help: Mama's Café

Many restaurants stay in business, and even prosper, with no exceptional attributes. The bland cuisine of most chain restaurants, for example, is legendary, and accurately so; they stay alive because they offer food that is just good enough, and maybe because they're in convenient locations -- locations they got through a combination of research, timing, and money, things which one-off local restauranteurs usually can't provide -- and because they offer visitors a known quantity: sameness of food, which is enough on many occasions, and sameness of ambience, which makes visitors more comfortable, especially when they travel. I know this from personal experience, as when, after several adventurous weeks in Europe, I stepped off a train in Salzburg at dawn and found a Wendy's open. I don't know what I ate that day many years ago, but I'm sure it was the best I'd ever had.

Closer to home, there are a lot of restaurants that I used to go to on a somewhat regular basis. Nowadays, hankering as I do for the novel, the exotic, the untried, I tend to pass them by, but every now and then their blend of convenience and familiarity, plus the fact that I can predict they will meet a certain minimal standard for cleanliness, service, and value, pushes me through their doors and back in time.  Most recently, I settled on lunch at Mama's Cafe, on Nacogdoches just outside Loop 410, a place I was once almost a regular at, but hadn't been to for ... oh, more years than I will admit to. In this case, the immediate provocation was a coupon, plus a lack of interest in the frequently heard discussion: "Where do you want to go?" "I don't know; where do you want to go?" "I don't know; what are you hungry for?" "I don't care; anything's good. Not ________" (insert ethnic cuisine here).

The place hadn't changed, that I could see, since Henry C was mayor: the same rustic look, the too-cute metal signs that had never graced a service station, television tuned to the same sports channel. Ah, so familiar. It's like one of those songs that you hated when it was new, but now that it's 20 years old you can't bring yourself to change the station when it comes on the radio. Think anything by REO Speedwagon.

We thought briefly about a table outside, but traffic on Nacogdoches is heavy, and the freeway is very close by. So a booth in back, near a table of about 30 women celebrating somebody's birthday or something. They were well-behaved for such a group, but big groups like that do tend to absorb the available service in a place. Yet, we were fairly well looked after by a woman named Morley (according to the bill), although we got the impression it was near the end of her shift. No complaints, just the observation that she was probably more cheerful a couple of hours earlier. Much more cheerful.

What does that mean?

I went with the grilled chicken salad. I must have been feeling guilty about all the things I normally eat, or maybe my better nature ordered for me. My companion went for the Buffalo chicken sandwich, with half onion rings and half french fries.

The salad was straight from a bag, reasonably fresh and crispy but nothing special in the least. The chicken was adequate in every respect: mundanely seasoned and grilled according to some strict corporate timetable, cut into regulation-sized strips and mounted according to some diagram in some three-ring binder kept in the main office. The Buffalo chicken sandwich, though, was apparently dipped in ambrosia before being lovingly shepherded through the cooking process by a wizened instructor of the Cordon Bleu. I never got to taste it, but I sure heard all about it. The onion rings -- I snatched one as my fee for having driven that day -- were perfect: hot, crispy, just a tad greasy, and coated with a well-seasoned batter before being carefully deep-fried. The fryer's one place where rigid corporate standards come in handy. The french fries were good, too, when they were hot, but when they cooled they got chewy.

Like I said: everything's just good enough.

My only complaint -- and I have to mark the "Value" rating down for this -- is the price of drinks. Our coupon was for a free entrée with the purchase of one entrée and two drinks. Now, I know that drinks are high-margin items in restaurants, and am willing to forego my usual glass of tap water if the coupon savings require it. But $2.19 for a glass of iced tea, and $2.19 for another glass of lemonade, is way too much, even in the 21st Century. Since I had the coupon I didn't feel entirely ripped off, but let's face it, if I weren't saving eight bucks with the coupon I'd've been really, really pissed about the drink prices. I'd've ordered my water with a touch more resentment than usual, and it would have put me in a foul mood for the rest of my time at Mama's.