Wednesday 13 May 2009

Review - Momma Cherri's Soul Food Shack, Brighton, UK

Momma Cherri's Soul Food Shack was made famous by featuring in Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares. I watched that episode and the restaurant stuck in my memory.

When it recently was time for my first visit to Brighton I decided that was where we should go for dinner. I guess it's debatable if it is smart to decide on where to eat based on the fact that the restaurant had featured on that show.

Since the show they have apparently done quite well and have moved to a, new, bigger location.

The fact that it was a bigger location was made quite noticeable by the fact that there was only two other diners when we turned up.

We were met by friendly staff and soon had our drinks in front of us.

We had already scouted the menu before turning up so we had made our minds up to try the 10 dish 'Soul in a bowl' menu.

This consisted of 10 different dishes, starters and mains, that gave us a good variety of samples from the different dishes on the menu.

Among the dishes were Soul Food classics like jambalaya, corn bread and gumbo. All dishes came in big enough portions for you to be able to sample them properly and we were definitively not hungry when we left the restaurant.

The quality of the food was a letdown though. The food was not bad in any way, but it didn't really reach any greater heights of excellence either. To be honest, I've had similar tasting food in Old Orleans and TGI Fridays. The one dish that really stood out and almost made the visit worthwhile on its own was the onion rings. They were probably the best onion rings I've ever had but I don't think that I could justify going back just to have them again.

I'm not sure if I had built my expectations up too high but the food failed to excite me.

I must say that the 30 - 40 seconds of 'gangsta rap' (complete with a couple of f-bombs) that was piped out over the loudspeakers was one of the more exciting things of the evening.

The fact that the prices were fairly decent probably keeps this review on the positive side. However, I don't think that I would have been happy to pay too much more for this level of performance.

I have no idea why but the restaurant has two, very different, websites. If you want to have a look at the menus etc you can find the sites here: http://www.mommacherri.com and http://www.mommacherri.co.uk.

Mikey says: None of the food was actually poor or unedible, it was just nothing that I'd go back for if I had other choices. You could find worse restaurants in Brighton, but you would not have too much of a hard time finding a better one.

4 comments:

  1. Hi Mike,

    I would go back for the world's best onion rings! I might even travel to the moon for the world's best onion rings!

    Sorry the rest of the food was a letdown. To me, mediocre food is a waste of calories.

    ~Laura

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  2. Laura,

    Thanks for commenting, it's always nice to know that people read what I write.

    It is true that the onion rings was really awesome. Normally all you get is something slimy in a batter lacking any kind of flavour. These though...

    I'm with you there. You would think/hope that they'd raise themselves over the chain restaurants but no such luck.

    Ok, we might have been there on one of their bad days but I really hesitate to give them a second chance.

    // Mike

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  3. We have been wanting to come here for some time and booked a table. We came down from Surrey specially. We had booked an early table for 5. When we arrived at 5 we were turned away as the waiter was on the phone and 'not quite ready'. We returned 20 minutes later but should have taken that as an omen and not bothered!

    The waiter was friendly but started by telling us about all of the beer that they didn't have (they were out of everything).
    We ordered the tapas and didn't have to wait too long. The onion rings were soggy and the chicken wings were dry. The ribs were cremated and definately were glues to the bone. I think that they must have been re heated. The Gumbo was like a tin of Ratatouille with a few Okra thrown in, the chicken wings were lovely and crispy but lacked any flavour at all and the Jambaleya was also reheated.

    We were dying for anohter drink but the waiter was no where to be seen and was outside on his mobile. Would not recommend this place to anybody and will never go back! Wish we got chips on the beach, would have been much more satisfactory and much cheaper!

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  4. Edel,

    Sorry to hear that you had such a bad experience. Much worse than what we had.

    I thought they were closed now? Something about being back into administration?

    // Mike

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// Mike