M&M Soul Food Café
Fried Pork Chop, Grits, Buttermilk Biscuit, 2 Eggs Over Easy
Cornbread Pancakes
Chicken Breast and Waffles
Chicken Thigh
Banana Pudding
Sweet Potato Pie, light whip
A long-term member of my Las Vegas short list I’d originally planned to visit M&M Soul Food with a friend over a year prior when the flu confined me to my hotel room and as such perhaps it should have been no surprise when it was myself suddenly facing a last minute cancellation this time around, the resulting solo visit a bit of letdown in more ways than one. Obviously not brought up on “Soul Food” but raised close enough to Detroit that it played a big part in childhood memories I’ve since sought out, those looking for collards, chitlins, or gumbo should be aware that none are available before noon on weekends (despite the online annotated 11am,) nor is fried chicken beyond the wing (though if you ask nicely they may be able to accommodate after a substantial delay…IE, the thigh arrived with dessert,) and moving past these inconveniences be advised that service, while friendly, is constrained – a pair of young ladies and an elderly fellow managing a capacity crowd of ~80 with wait times up to an hour during my stay. Moving past the ‘issues’ and onto the food and décor suffice it to say that the interior replicates the façade and with a small kitchen at work behind makeshift walls the food arrived at an awkward pace with mixed results, particularly in the proteins where both pork chop and breast were dry and flavorless despite excellent, crispy breading while the thigh was expectedly more succulent but also far better seasoned, as if from an entirely different batch. Speaking to the rest, mostly carbs and a pair of over easy eggs, it was in these items that M&M shined – the waffles a soft wheat batter and the ‘cornbread’ a pair of pan fried flapjacks needing only a touch of syrup to balance the savory notes, something neither the sweet potato pie nor the banana pudding would require at all – the former a well done classic and the second far more dense than any take on the dish I’ve found and all the better for it, a sort of bread pudding made with only a bit of liquid and a lot of ripe bananas juxtaposing softened nilla wafers.
