Mama’s Soul Food — Restaurant in Lakeland

New to the Lakeland area and was looking for new places to try. Since I am on Memorial for different reasons, I knew I would end up checking this place out. I will start by saying it is very clean. The location makes a very good presentation. The staff was actually very nice. However, that is the last good thing that I can say about my experience. In regards to the food, not what i hoped for. The first thing that we didn't really care for was that there was all of this food to choose from, but it all looked the same, and there was no signage or anything that told you what was in each of the different serving pans. When I asked the young lady, she seemed a little confused also. So once you got the run down of what all the different things were, you had to try to remember what it is you chose when you got to the actual register. There were a few people ahead of us, and by the time we got there, we had forgotten our choices. But there was a handy menu there, so it was easy enough to jog our memory. Since I love meatloaf, I figured I would give their meatloaf a try. I'm simple, mashed potatoes with yams and macaroni and cheese. All of those things are pretty simple, staple foods, but everything that I mentioned was either barely warm, almost room temperature. The meatloaf and it's brown gravy, were very salty. The mac and cheese was pretty flavorless. As for the yams. They were sweet, but I guess in my mind, I was expecting more of a candy yam, but the yams were good. My mother, who was dining with me opted for smothered chicken With rice and gravy, greens and macaroni and cheese. The chicken rice and gravy were so salty that it was barely Edible. And the greens.. In another post by someone else , they mentioned that the greens were oily. I never could have imagined what they were talking about, but yes, they were oily with some odd taste to them. Again the macaroni and cheese was flavorless. And lastly my mother had peach cobbler. It was completely cold. It wasn't warm it was cold. We asked someone if they could heat it up for us, and they politely did.

Though we will not say that this was a terrible dining experience because it wasn't. The food was decent, it was just disappointingly salty on some items, flavorless on others and odd flavored on others. Top that off with barely being warm and this wasn't a good experience. Mom and I both agree that we may go there again.We just won't expect anything any more than what we had. I think we were expecting something different, but now that we know we'll probably go again. It was surely reasonably priced. At about fifteen dollars per person, we have paid that much for a drive through at Wendy's, so this would surely be a better investment ...

This is my second time visiting this restaurant the first time me and my husband dined in and we noticed that the same guy that took our order was waiting tables but that’s just the first thing we noticed. When we received our food we received our sides in to go containers instead of it just being placed on our plates like normal. They also wasn’t fully functioning like an organized restaurant because when our drinks needed to be refilled the guy wasn’t able to do so because he was too busy taking orders from other customers that came in ,so my husband had to get up to get our drinks refilled. Far as the food it was ok especially if you like your portions being cut short to why I’m going to tell you about my 2nd visit. So I go back today which is Sept 7th and I got my meal to go this time and only got this selection called the veggie plate where you get four sides so I put my order in I got Mac and cheese , cabbage, dressing and yams. Well I got to my car look at my order and noticed I had a bed of rice in my container in the biggest compartment which I didn’t even order while my dressing and Mac and cheese is in the other two compartments. I hope you see were I’m going cause my other two sides were in two small to go containers in my bag. So I go bak in they stated that the rice was a extra and it was free and I told them idc I didn’t order it and why didn’t they just put my other two sides in my container with the rest of my sides. The cashier stated he forgot to mention to me that I got it for free while the cook say just throw it out!! I’m like throw it out ?? With no intentions on fixing my order the correct way so I walked out and at that point I knew I would not be going back ever again. I’m big on customer service and they are only about making money they weren’t trying to fix the problem to satisfy me they just acted like o well we could care less. The food was not good at all btw the cabbage was watered down , yams was cold and too sweet nothing was good so that’s another reason I will never visit this...

After looking at the reviews, I thought this was gonna be one of my go to spots for some good soul food. I was totally disappointed.The kids meal fries were unseasoned and soggy as well as the chicken wings . The macaroni and cheese was spoiled, it taste like they use old milk and cheese. The Chicken Sandwich was not a Chicken Sandwich. It was 2 tenders strip on a piece of bread with brown lettuce and tomato. The pork chop was too dry and hard to even chew and make matter worse it was on top of 2 brown pieces of lettuce. The cabbage was mushy and very unseasoned and the black eyes peas "The Cajun Rice "Supposed to be Cajun rice was very salty with no ground beef in it has some type of meat in there that I don't even know what that is. Charged me an extra dollar for it without even telling me that it was going to be up charge. Besides the the warm welcome when you come in and the people that work there, the food is not worth the money. I will advise you to go somewhere else than trying to go to this establishment because the food is not worth it.Very disappointed threw everything in the trash. when I came home because I was so upset of how my food tasted.Whenever you to send something out with brown lettuce on there, You do not have care or compassion for the food that you're putting out for the people that's in this community. The red velvet cake is just like a cake.It does not have no butter cream on there no Walnut, pecans on there.Nothing. I don't even know what that is on top of that, but it was just a sprinkle of something on there.It was not no love in that kitchen and the food that they are serving. It does not feel like mama's kitchen at all! Just a kitchen trying to get by and pay the bills. Soul Food is from the soul ...ya'll have lost your soul for the food. Very...