Friday seems like the perfect day to randomly share odd tidbits on the site:
- Free admission to the Met and The Cloisters throughout the month of February.
- Fantasia Barrino set to star as Celie on Broadway in the Color Purple.
- Rumor has it that Ressie Mae’s is no longer affiliated with Amy Ruth’s. Daily News reviews Ressie Mae’s.
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NAT
February 16, 2007
Hot soul food on an icy day
BY IRENE SAX
Down home: Ressie Mae’s is short on decor, long on flavor.
Cook Sarr Arouna holds a take-out tray with Chicken, greens, yams and cornbread.
Ressie Mae’sSoul to Go
612 Eighth Ave. at 39th St.
(212) 382-3886
MUST HAVES:
Starter: Chicken and waffles, $7.50
Entree: Oxtails with two sides, $7.50
Dessert: Banana pudding, $3
Worth a trip: Borough
“Calm down,” said my friend. “It’s just collards. It’s just a green vegetable.”
Yes, but what a green vegetable. Crisp, tender and gently juiced with vinegar and hot peppers. A green vegetable to make you wonder why anyone bothers to eat salad. And it was only part of my plate at Ressie Mae’s Soul to Go, a super-simple storefront near the Port Authority Terminal. Not the usual location for culinary epiphanies.
An offshoot of Amy Ruth’s in Harlem, Ressie Mae’s looks so bland that having just come from it, I can’t tell you what it looks like. A steam table, pink tile, brown Formica tables. But I can tell you exactly what I tasted.
There were bony, meltingly tender oxtails served with creamy mac and cheese and those earth-shaking collards ($7.50). Peppery-crisp fried chicken – a plump quarter of a bird, served on a big floppy waffle, ready to drizzle with maple syrup ($7.50, and bits of the waffle were lovely dipped in the oxtail gravy). Tender meaty ribs drowning in a sweet barbecue sauce that slopped onto cole slaw and chunks of sweet potato ($8.50). And a soupy curried chicken like a gently spiced fricassee that I ate with rice and peas, Jamaican style ($7.50). All but the chicken and waffles came with two side dishes and small cornbread loaves. And for dessert – what else? – a plastic cup of banana pudding, that soul-food mock trifle made with layers of vanilla pudding, bananas and ‘nilla wafers ($3.)
Don’t expect one lick of dining elegance. Food comes piled in Styrofoam trays with paper napkins and plastic cutlery. If you want hot sauce for the rice and peas, they give you a little envelope that you rip open.
Maybe you can tell me: Since soul food was born in the hot South, how come it tastes just right in a frigid New York February?
Originally published on February 16, 2007