MaMa Chicken — Restaurant in Palisades Park

Had a very weird, borderline offensive experience here.

For context, I’ve worked in healthcare for years and often travel. Whenever I’m in NJ, I make it a point to stop here and have been supporting this restaurant for 3–4 years, often spending $60–$100 per visit. I usually order takeout since I’m on the go, but today my mom and I decided to dine in — and unfortunately had a very uncomfortable experience as Black customers.

Everything started fine: we were greeted warmly, and our food came out fresh and promptly. However, as we started enjoying our meal, they began playing explicit rap music loudly, with repeated use of the N-word. In all my years coming here, they have never played anything like that, and it felt especially uncomfortable since we were the only Black customers — and at first, the only customers at all — until a small group came in later. Neither my mom nor I listen to rap music or anything with that kind of language, so we ended up playing K-pop (Seventeen) from our phones to try to drown it out. Only then did they finally change the music back. (See screenshots from my Shazam app during this experience.)

Later, after eating, I tried to ask for to-go plates, but one of the workers (also a minority) ignored me. It could have been because she was wearing AirPods, but she was responding to the other table just fine. I even tried making eye contact and lightly waving to catch her attention, but she continued to ignore me — until my mom asked loudly, at which point we finally got our bill.

After paying, I noticed the same worker and possibly the manager watching us, seemingly to see if we would leave a tip, since we hadn’t left one on the receipt. Initially, we decided not to because of the strange treatment, but as soon as I put my money back into my purse and we turned to leave, I heard them laughing amongst themselves. It could have been unrelated, but given the common stereotypes about Black customers not tipping, it felt pointed. Feeling uncomfortable, I turned around and left a $10 tip.

I don’t want to believe any of it was intentional, especially since this is a minority-owned business and past visits have been positive. I would like to believe this was all just a misunderstanding. However, this visit has definitely made me hesitant to dine in again — and think twice about...

Heard many good things about the fried chicken, so decided to see for myself and give it a try. We went there randomly last Saturday night with a group of 6; when we got there, there was a line out the door and we had to wait around 30 minutes to be seated. After being seated we got some complimentary starters, white radish, coleslaw, and spicy rice cakes. We then got the cheesy corn, spicy rice cakes, cheese balls, and French fries. The French fries and spicy rice cakes with cheese were great but the cheesy corn was mostly overcooked corn with no taste and the cheeseballs were not good at all, tasted like plain bread. Was looking forward to eating the cheesy corn with my chicken so kind of a disappointment hopefully in the future they can fix the recipe. They also kept bringing food out randomly which was not ideal, and it took them awhile to refill drinks and bring extra stuff we needed. My boyfriend got his drumsticks first while the rest of us waited another 20 minutes for ours to come out.

For our meals we each got the 8-piece wings; some with soy garlic and some with sweet & spicy sauce. The wings were amazing, especially the soy garlic. Crunchy on the outside, moist on the inside, and super nice flavor. If you can’t handle spicy, I would not recommend the sweet/spicy it was just extreme spiciness. They also gave us gloves and a bucket for the bones which was cool.

I would definitely come back on a day less crowded and just specifically for the wings, radish, cheesy rice cakes and fries. Everything else...

I drive one of the NJ transit lines that travels past that restaurant. Everyday I’d look at the pictures in the window of some of their dishes they offer. What drew me in was the crispy fried boneless white meat chicken breast. So when I ordered it and got home to eat I was thoroughly disappointed to see instead of a row of sliced boneless chicken breast I had balls of over cooked fried dark meat chicken!! The sauce they offered, which I thought looked interesting tasted heavily with MSG. Soon as I tasted it my heart started racing. They also had some sort of cubed veggie in a clear soup like broth that tasted interesting but again tasted heavily of MSG. Considering the price, $16.00, and my anticipation of what I thought I was getting, I felt a major letdown! Perhaps some of the other dishes in their menu are good but I’ll never find out. I consider being shown one type of food, boneless chicken breast and served over cooked balls of dark meat chicken thighs in its place to be a major fraud. Also there would be a big difference in price between the two. I will say the onion rings were very good. The only thing I liked out of the whole meal. I can get good onion rings for a hell of a lot less than $16! I posted pictures of the chicken but for some reason it’s not showing up when I post! If you want, I’ll gladly email them to whoever asks...