Dining for $25 or less: M & J's Soul Food

By Karen Nitkin | Special to the Sun

June 19, 2008

Behind the counter of M & J's Soul Food, Janelle Robinson is working at a big wooden table, cutting up fruit. She calls out friendly greetings to customers as they walk in, laughing and chatting with a few. To everyone, she is known as Big Momma Robinson, the one who cooks all the ribs, fries all the fish and candies all the yams.

"The key thing to the restaurant and the food is the love that goes into it," she says. And she gives plenty. For 17 years, Robinson was a cook at Leon's Pig Pen. Now, she's working with her nephews, brothers Milton and Joseph Blackston, who opened the Charles Village restaurant in February.

Together, the family members crafted a menu of their favorite foods -- meatloaf ($7.49), pork chops ($8.50) and catfish ($9) -- as well as a childhood favorite they call "turkey things" ($7.49), made from slices of smoked turkey, wrapped around cornbread stuffing and covered in gravy.

I was eager to try this unusual combination, but it was sold out during our recent visit for a late lunch. So was the baked ham ($8), the sweet potato pie ($2) and the apple cobbler ($2). Lesson learned -- arrive early for the best selection.

Most of the food, including meaty ribs and piles of chicken wings, are on display in warming dishes behind the counter. A sweet woman also grabbed a fresh-looking, neatly wrapped chef's salad (not on the menu) and showed it to us. I shook my head -- we didn't come to M & J's to nibble on lettuce.

"Oh, you want food," she said, a hint of approval in her voice.

Customers place their orders at the counter, getting two sides (think mac and cheese, collards, baked beans, potato salad) along with their generous main course. The food is presented in takeout containers, and customers are given plastic utensils and paper napkins to take to the simple dining area, with vases of fake flowers on the tables. Drinks are bottled sodas.

The great thing about M & J's is that it is exactly what it presents itself to be -- a family-run restaurant serving hearty, inexpensive home-style food that has not been modified to meet current dietary standards or culinary trends.

The bad news is the same.

A meal at M & J's will weigh you down for hours. The seafood platter ($13) provides a ridiculous amount of food -- a slab of crunchy battered fried fish larger than my hand, a baseball-sized crab cake with a nice flavor but heavy with mayonnaise, and five large fried shrimp shared the takeout box with a generous mound of macaroni salad (my least favorite of everything I tried) and ultra-sweet candied yams.

The barbecued ribs ($8.50) are good greasy, messy fun -- boiled and then slow-cooked so the meat becomes super-tender and doused in a distinctly vinegary sauce. A side of mac and cheese was the real, creamy, cheddary thing, and fat ribbons of steamed cabbage provided a welcome counterpoint to the richness of the meal.

A baked quarter chicken ($7.49) was simple and flavorful, though the juices and fat pooling in the bottom of the takeout container lessened the appeal.

All desserts at M & J's are homemade, but they go quickly, and we missed the cobbler and the sweet potato pie. A slab of layered coconut cake ($2) made a decent consolation prize -- it was tender and fresh, with the most intensely sweet frosting imaginable.

We would expect no less.