La Cocina de Mama

Where I come from when Mama calls. you come a’ running.
Now, it doesn’t take a restaurant name like Mama’s Kitchen to get a TexMex junkie like me in the door… but it sure doesn’t hurt either.
Like just about every other small Latin American restaurant I’ve been to in Atlanta (and just about everywhere else for that matter) Mama’s Kitchen is loud and cramped. The restaurant definitely has a woman’s touch and the menus are elegant and explained well in English and Spanish. The owner herself waits on you, is very sweet, and she also speaks perfect English which makes dining here a lot more approachable.
Things started off with some of her house made tortilla chips which were served with a fired roasted salsa of medium heat. The chips were straight from the fryer and tasty although we would have preferred if they had been a little crispier.
We ordered:
Seafood Stew
1 Beef Huarache
Chicken Enchiladas in Red Sauce
1 Beef Tongue and 1 Pork Taco
The Huarache, essentially a chalupa on a very thick masa ‘shell’, was good although a little unwieldy and the Beef Tongue taco was tasty and a little fatty in that special tongue/​barbacoa flavor kind of way.
The pork tacos (served on homemade corn tortillas) were delicious, especially when augmented with the ‘fixins’ on the table, and we discovered a little pineapple cooked in to the meat which really brought the flavors together.
The Seafood Stew was a dud. While it looked good, the quality of the seafood was poor and the head on prawns, which at first seemed the most appetizing, were overcooked. The lone bright spot was the bolillo roll that came with it for dipping into the soup… but more on that a little later…
The enchiladas were good and piled high with lettuce, crema, tomatoes, and cheese in a style that reminded me of the TexMex in my home town of San Antonio, Texas. What stood out the most, though, was the delicate /​bordering on sweet flavor of the enchilada sauce. It wasn’t the red sauce I had ordered, but rather the house blend of Mole that includes gingerbread as one of the ingredients. You can taste it but it blends so well with the other flavors that it stops just short of being overpowering.
All in all the food was good and tasted just like Mama made it. That bolillo roll in all of its pillowy glory, though, had us captivated and it turned out it was made at the bakery, Panaderia La Potosina right next door. Why yes… I think I do have time for another review…