Anytime you see a hand-painted sign proclaiming “Soul Food” in bold black letters, you can assume good food is simmering somewhere inside.
Beyond the homemade Pepsi sign and through the screen door of a little old house in West Tampa, Mattie Royal, 80, is frying catfish in a big black skillet.
“What’s good?” I ask.
“Everything is good,” says a woman nearby.
The fried catfish isn’t ready yet, so I spring for the oxtail stew and a big gulp of lemonade. Orders are placed through a small window that opens directly onto the kitchen. Styrofoam containers of hot stews and fried chicken come out through a swinging door. Ms. Royal’s been cooking soul food out of this kitchen for 43 years.
“My mom did a lot of cooking,” she says. “But I learned how to cook myself.”
She grew up on a farm in Georgia and moved to Tampa 46 years ago.
“We raised everything ourselves,” she says. “Chickens, goats, and hogs.”
Mattie Clark, her mother, passed away a little over a year ago.
“She was one old wife,” she says smiling.
Ms. Royal’s son Bobby helps her with the business. A steady stream of customers swings through the door, looking for fried chicken and catfish.
“I do my catfish in cornmeal, seasoned with a little salt and pepper,” she says. “Then I fry it in this long skillet my late husband made me. It’s a big black skillet.”
Not too many husbands can make a skillet for their wives these days. The menu rotates daily, and your best bet for a hot meal is Monday through Friday around lunchtime. Bring cash.
“I cook soul food,” she says. “Like collards, green beans, and fried and smothered pork chops.”
She cooks up classic dishes like curry goat and beef stew. There’s also okra, rice, mac & cheese, and potato salad made with “bell pepper, celery, mayo, a little mustard and salt and pepper.”
Her cornbread is made stovetop, and tastes more like a thick and supple corn pancake than the usual grainy square biscuits. She also makes sweet potato pie and lemon pound cake.
“My favorite thing to eat is the fried chicken with collard greens and rice,” she says.
In addition, Ms. Royal’s kitchen is one of the few eateries in the area making chitterlings, or chitlin’s. Made from carefully cleaned hog intestines, it’s a very hard-to-find Southern meal.
“I love cooking for people,” she says. “That’s my hobby.”
New Soul Kitchen/Sandwich Shop, 518 N. Willow St., Tampa.
This article appears in Jun 6-12, 2013.
