Mom's Soul Food and Crab Wings (their menu shows crabwings.com as their Web site, but it wasn't working as of the writing of this post) just opened a second site in Pearl City, Hawaii and my friends and I decided to check them out last night.
We arrived rather late (7:20pm) and the parking lot was full and so was the dining area. I was surprised to find that they actually had a dining area. When I was growing up, that spot was a KCF, and it was just a walk up counter so I was surprised to see that they could actually fit sit down dining space inside the building. Inside there were actually six four-seater tables, and while it was a bit tight, it didn't seem overly crowded, even though all the tables were full.
I know this might sound racist, but one of ways that we judge a good Chinese restaurant is when you see a lot of actual Chinese in the restaurant. Paralleling that to Mom's Soul Food, we had high hopes for it since the clientele and the servers were predominantly black.
We were seated pretty quickly and the servers were all very friendly (throughout the entire night). The menu was pretty simple: fish, chicken wings, garlic roasted crab, prawns (fried or garlic), oysters, meat loaf, pork chops, smothered steak, spaghetti, and garlic noodles.
My friends decided on the fish and chicken combo ($11 for 1 piece fish and 3 wings, or $11.75 for 2 pieces fish and 2 wings) which included one side and corn bread. They both chose the snapper (you could also choose catfish or whiting) and one chose fried okra as his side and the other chose french fries. I decided on a two-choice Combo Plate ($14.99) of chicken wings and pork chops. My plate included two sides and corn bread, so I chose mac and cheese and green beans. I was sad to see that they had crossed off the option of "upgrading" to collard greens or candied yams, and these were only available as ala carte side dishes ($4/small, $7/medium, $9/large).
It took quite a while to get our food, but the servers were really nice about it. They kept apologizing for it taking a long time and assuring us that it was coming. When it finally did come, it didn't all come out at once--each dish came out separately with about a 5 minute delay between each.
Once we got the plates, we knew what was taking so long...the chicken wings. There were scalding hot, definitely fresh from the oil. We couldn't even bite into them. The rest of the food unfortunately wasn't as hot. My friends reported that the fish appeared to have been sitting under a heat lamp, and it was really dry and didn't have much taste. Adding the hot sauce (which looked really watery) from the table didn't really help with the fish.
Unfortunately, I couldn't say the same about my pork chops. It looked really good, smothered in gravy as promised. But when I actually bit into it, it found that was barely room temperature. I would have been more happy if it had been sitting under a heat lamp, it appeared that my pork chops (and the rest of my plate) had been cooked early and just set on the side to wait until the chicken was ready. Thus the mac and cheese, white rice, pork chops and gravy were all cold--I considered sending it back, but since it had taken so long to get to us (and since we were eating late, I was already hungry when we sat down) I decided against it.
Even cold, the pork chops still had a really good taste (I'm sure it would taste really good if it was hot) and once the chicken wings cooled enough to eat, I was able to confim that they too had a really good taste--definitely tasted like what I think of as southern fried chicken, perhaps a pinch heavy on the salt. When I think about it, both the pork chops and the chicken had a very similar taste, I wonder if they used the same seasoning for both...
The mac and cheese was disappointing, the cheese had already started to clump, and the green beans were even more disappointing. The green beas were basically canned green beans, with what looked like just some pepper added to them. It wasn't until I got the bottom of the beans that I found that they had been cooked in what some kind of butter sauce, but they hadn't been cooked long enough for the taste to be pervasive.
Both my friend's sides were good though, the french fries were medium cut and freshly cooked, and the fried okra was probably the best thing that night. They were breaded (not battered) and tasted fresh and crisp.
While there were some issues with the food, given the price and quantity, I still feel that it was it was a good deal. By the end of the meal I was definitely stuffed and didn't have any room for dessert.
Since they just opened earlier this week, perhaps they need some time to get their act together and adjust to the new kitchen. But when I searched for them, I did find a review on Yelp where the writer experienced the same slow service and cold food issue at Mom's Soul Food Waipahu location--so maybe there isn't hope for them. I guess we'll just have to wait and see...
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