“In Portuguese, we say that food can be so good, it touches your soul,” says Marcio, the boss man of Mama’s Soul Food, hidden in a warren of dark kitchens on the outskirts of Ardwick. “When your grandmas or your mums cook, it’s so good that it touches the soul.”
And while the phrase ‘soul food’ might be more often akin to the cuisine of Louisiana or New Orleans, Marcio and his daughter Andrea, who run the kitchen together, have a pretty solid claim to it too.
Their idea of soul food is a fusion of flavours and similarly, Andrea calls her background a ‘fusion’ too. “We’re a fusion of Portuguese and Angolan, so we have so many dishes from back home,” she says. “There’s nothing like getting together with family, having a meal and having a laugh.”
Marcio pivoted from a career in banking to cheffing just a few weeks before COVID shut down the country. They all learned some important lessons about what not to do before hitting their stride (he thinks he even fired Andrea at one point, he laughs), but after a ridiculously difficult start, they’re now ready for anything.
Their is generous food in every sense, and the star of the show at Mama’s Soul Food is their signature seafood boil, basically a who’s who – or what’s what – of the ocean, from spindly snow crab and meaty lobster tails to giant, head-on prawns and mussels, grilled in the shell.
A kind of surf and turf, it comes tumbled together with hunks of chicken sausage, soft new potatoes and boiled eggs, and it’s liberally spiced in the New Orleans style. Tubs of melted butter – laced with garlic and herbs, or a spicy version – are provided for extravagant dipping.
The seafood boil was originally a Cajun tradition – the French Acadian exiles who arrive in New Orleans and the Gulf Coast of the US in the 1750s – but at Mama Soul, they’re tracing it back further.
“[Soul food] is based on African food, truly,” says Marcio. “The inspiration is New Orleans food, and that’s the heritage, from people who came to America whichever way – as slaves – from Africa, but it has been modified, so New Orleans has a massive French influence [for example]. So that’s a part of it, and then we started adding our own recipes.
“So it’s like a fusion rather than strict New Orleans. Back where the seafood boil started, they would have a massive table, and boil the seafood in drums, and the whole family and friends would sit down.
“The original tradition would be that you eat off the table. But that’s where the generosity of the portions comes from.”
Eating off the table might be, well, off the table these days (though you could go native and put some newspaper down at home), but the spirit of the seafood boil is all in these dishes, as well as nods to the West Indies too, with melting oxtail and mac n’ cheese also on the menu.
As globe-trotting cuisine goes, you can travel the world without moving with this exceptional food.
Uber Eats are running 40% off the seafood boil, starting from 17 January.
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