Mother's
Bistro & Bar
409
SW 2nd Ave.,
464-1122
Lunch
11:30 am-3 pm Tuesday-Friday; breakfast/lunch
9 am-3 pm Saturday-Sunday;
dinner
5:30-10 pm Tuesday-Thursday; 5:30-11 pm Friday-Saturday.
Two snapshots from Mother's:
1) A guy sitting next to us, solo, baseball cap turned
around, tough-looking bloke, reading a recipe that has a
whole salmon steaming in a dishwasher, and drinking with
his meal--what else?--a nice tall glass of milk.
2) Lisa Schroeder, Mother's irrepressible and haimish
co-owner and chef, acts as a kind of ambulatory nursery,
striding around her place holding a baby who can't be two
months old, chanting a veritable mantra--"Oy, a baby to
squeeze"--and burping the tyke while its parents dine on
mushroom barley soup.
After a season of heirloom tomatoes and delirious dishes
piled so high that Rem Koolhaas ought to be doing the reviews,
it is sheer pleasure to return to origins and submit to
a woman who understands exactly what we all crave at times--inspired
regression. Not to infanthood, to be sure (there's no Gerber's
here, though Schroeder might keep a private stash for her
youngest clients), but to those times before we knew about
sea scallops baked in parchment with fennel-truffle sauce,
or quail braised in a coulis of pinot noir-infused marionberries,
glazed with a ginger-pear reduction and ringed with morels.
Mother's lets us regress to a time when we were comfortably
and well nourished by the maternal hand.
In a recent discussion of dining out in The New Yorker,
Adam Gopnik says the restaurant "isn't a whorehouse or anything
like it, but often you take someone there because you would
like to have sex with that person afterward." This is an
unthinkable thought at Mother's. It's one of the least conventionally
romantic places I know. And yet it is one of the most enjoyable,
precisely because images of the post-modern, new millennial
world are banished. A partial inventory of the decor will
make the point: photographs and reproductions of mothers
(with and without children) from Mary Cassatt onwards; wooden
trestle tables; crystal chandeliers with beads that could
have come from a Belle Epoque gown; gold and green slatted
wainscoting; lamps with frilly fringe; wood plank floors;
and, a necessary part of the decor, waitresses who sass
you like an Auntie Mame but hover maternally over your every
move.
Every 30 days, the restaurant features a Mother of the
Month (M.O.M.) and translates her home-cooking into recipes
that make their way onto the menu. Schroeder tries to have
a range of ethnic cooking mothers--Italian, Irish, Jewish,
Ukrainian.
Simple, basic, home-cooked food is neither trendy nor chic.
You won't find chicken and dumplings on the menu at Bluehour;
Bruce Carey would die before serving chopped liver. If one
history of American Jewry is constituted by the journey
from bar mitzvah sculptures carved out of chopped chicken
liver to foie gras sautéed in Armagnac, Mother's
stands firmly on the near side of the divide.
Not all the food is stupendous (that adjective probably
has no place in motherdom, anyway), but most of it is solid
and easy-to-take, and besides, familiarity arouses nostalgia
(literally, "homesickness"), a worthy goal in its own right.
My favorite meal here is lunch. I usually start with the
matzo-ball soup (the waiter shouts "cuppa matz"), its broth
laced with diced carrots, shreds of chicken and one huge
dense ball (a sinker, not a floater). I'll always try Mother's
mac-and-cheese du jour. A favorite comes with ham, mushrooms
and really gooey Swiss cheese. On the plate it looks like
authentic penne di carne al funghi, but it miraculously
tastes like the best old-fashioned mac and gooey swiss cheese
you've ever had.
Everything is made from scratch at Mother's, and tastes
it. Pierogi, little potato-filled dumplings, come with a
compote of sautéed and caramelized onions as well
as the traditional sour cream. The meatloaf sandwich (meatloaf
must be the universal transcendental signifier of comfort
food) is a bit overdone for my taste; Schroeder, like any
good mother, fears E. coli and cooks the hell out of her
chopped meat. But this works perfectly well with the pot
roast, smothered in gravy and served with potatoes that
are hardly cumulus-cloud airy but have a genuine chunky
feel to remind you that skins come on those spuds.
The gravy in the chicken and dumplings is rich, yellow
and smooth; it was a favorite Sunday dinner in the 19th
century, so we might excuse the broth for being unfashionably
thick. The chicken is beautifully tender and tasty, and
the dish will take you back to the South. Terrific corn
bread comes along for authentic sopping.
You'll always find several slow-cooked, long-simmered dishes,
such as braised chicken in red wine and a number of stews,
on the menu.
Mother's does wonderful things with mushrooms, especially
an appetizer of thinly sliced grilled portobellos on a wild
green salad. One might skip the fried calamari, however;
it strikes me as a decidedly unmatriarchal matter, though
my dinner partner allowed as how even squids have mothers.
Desserts shine here. The coconut cream pie has a satisfying
fudge crust and billows with light and frothy whipped cream.
Best of all is the Mascarpone rice pudding, as good a version
of the classic as I've tasted; my mother tried hard but
somehow never managed the silken luster of this version--but
then my mother might have thought a mascarpone was an Italian
racing car. You get a few little cookies as a bonus, but
you might order a plateful--the best chocolate and shortcake
cookies around come from Mother's bakery.
It may seem odd to go out for the kind of food you're supposed
to be able to make yourself, but in this era such domestic
expectations have long since disappeared. We have to look
to our grandmothers, or to places like this wonderful new
anti-experiment experiment. We salute Mother's for its revivalist
idea and its dedication to honest, down-to-earth cooking.
And one more grace note: The waitress never asks you what
label of bottled water you'd like with dinner.
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