Pieday: Caramel Apple Nut at Mama Max's

I love home cooking. I really can’t get enough of it. I don’t mean greasy home fries and some thrown together stuff that some restaurants call home cooking. I’m talking about the sort of food your mamma would cook for ya if she had the time and she really loved you. The sort of food I can recall from childhood, everyday stuff we’d have whenever, usually heavy on vegetables and light on meat.

Done had a meal like that at Mama Max’s in Prescott — and the best part was, I also got a great dessert. Can’t beat that with a stick.

My photographer and I stopped in on our way to the Texas State Fair last week. I have been meaning to make it to Momma Max’s for a while but was always either too early or on the wrong day. This particular Wednesday we were in luck. The place was bustling and it had just started serving lunch.

It took us a little while to decide on our lunches. I had originally intended to check out the highly recommended burgers, but once I saw the list of vegetables (which is the first thing on the menu) I changed my mind.

The list was extensive — mustard and turnip greens, pinto beans, PurpleHull peas, lima beans, beets, candied yams, fried okra, potato salad, cole slaw, mac & cheese, fresh fried corn, green beans and mashed potatoes. Yeah. It made my pescatarian photographer happy, too — knowing he could get some good eats.

He chose himself a vegetable plate ($1.50 a vegetable), picking up some of those PurpleHull Peas, the macaroni and cheese and some fried corn nuggets (located under appetizers). He told me the corn nuggets were some of the best he’s had, nice and corn packed and buttery. He also bragged on the macaroni and cheese, which was made with elbow macaroni and Cheddar cheese. Yes, it looked like hell since Cheddar doesn’t melt as well as other cheeses. But it was good stuff.

I’d been talked into some cornbread to go along with my Chicken & Dumplings ($7.50), a big bowl of dumplings and shredded chicken with two sides. Of course I went for the PurpleHull Peas, and some Lima Beans too. I knew with the fair challenge coming up I would need all the energy I could muster.

The Chicken & Dumplings were good — a little undersalted, maybe, but the dumplings were nice and firm and the chicken had a lovely flavor to it. There was a low broth-to-dumpling ratio, too — more like an entrée than a soup.

I dug my peas and beans, though. The PurpleHulls had just a hint of liquid smoke flavor to them, just enough to enhance the little sweetness to them.

The Lima Beans were excellent — buttery, sweet and falling apart.

And that cornbread…

I hadn’t eaten corn in weeks, and was happy to discover the cornmeal didn’t set off a reaction. The cornbread is very buttery, moist and hardly sweet at all. It was perfect

crumbled up in the peas and beans, a sopping cornbread.

Of course, I haven’t even touched on the pies yet. There’s a pie case when you walk in that, depending on the time of day and the day of the week, will be anywhere from half to completely full of pies and cakes and whatnot. Pies are $3 a slice, cakes $2.50 and the homemade turtles $2. I passed up a chance on a very tall, very rich looking chocolate cake for pie.

My photographer chose the lemon icebox pie, which was homogenously smooth and sweet with just the right amount of tartness.

My Caramel Apple Nut pie, though… now there’s you a pie. A prime Southern pie filled with heat-softened chunks of pecans in-between the two different types of slow-cooked apples. The crust was nice and savory, a salted top and bottom flaky crust that soaked up the apple essence quite well.

What made it over the top good, though, was the drizzle of melted caramel over the top. That burnt sugar flavor was just the right thing to balance the tart apples and meaty pecans. That dang pie ate like a meal, and I was already about stuffed.

But I ate it. I ate it all, even though it hurt. It was too good to leave.

The whole meal was less than $20, and we weren’t even hungry for about eight hours. It stuck with us. I do have to say, one of the diners at the next table over ordered a barbecue sandwich while we were in there, and I am going to have to go back for that. Oh, it smelled divine.

You’ll find Mama Max’s at 1102 West Main Street in Prescott — that’s Highway 24. If you take the first Prescott exit from I-40 heading south (the one with the Low’s Truck Stop) it’s a short jaunt down on the left. It’s open Wednesday through Saturday 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. and Sunday 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. They do carry-out, too. (870) 887-5005.

 

Prescott's Broadway Railroad Cafe: Lost In Time.

• KAT ROBINSON
• AT THE COUNTER: Inside Prescott's Broadway Railroad Cafe.

Somewhere in the shuffle of last year’s big breakfast piece, I forgot to come back to a little place in Prescott I was meaning to tell you about. I mentioned I’d stopped there on my way down to Magnolia to get a Spudnut. My bad.

I revisited the Broadway Railroad Café (huh, the name’s different!) on my way back from my Texas trip a few weeks ago. We were needing some sustenance and had been on the road six hours, arriving around nine in the morning.

Now, I’d told the hubster about the place, and Hunter thought the idea of being by a railroad was cool. So we park, go in — and there’s no one inside. Really. It was very odd.

Well, they were there, just out back. I went back to the kitchen and called out and soon we had service. We wiped the bleary out of our eyes over beverages (coffee for the hubster and myself and milk for Hunter) and figured out what we were going to eat.

• KAT ROBINSON

I noticed that what I’d ordered last time around was no longer available. That is, the meat item. See, I was there back in August of last year, doing research on the story. I was meaning to drive all the way to Magnolia, but I was really hungry and there was breakfast involved.

That morning I ordered a short stack of pancakes with a side of turkey sausage — which was on the menu at the time. Problem was, it’d been so long since someone had actually ordered turkey sausage that they didn’t have any in the restaurant. I settled for a ground beef patty to go along with my flapjacks. And it was a good first breakfast.

• KAT ROBINSON

This time around, I knew I wanted pancakes and some eggs too. I knew what to expect from the pancakes. The ones at the Broadway Railroad Café are fluffy and sweet even before the syrup. They’re thirsty pancakes, too — and that dollop of butter is just enough to get the pancakes going for me.

Expertly cooked eggs, that I didn’t photograph for some reason. Over easy. I wanted over easy. Shoulda ordered toast — they were really runny! But the pancakes sufficed. Most pancakes wouldn’t have.

• KAT ROBINSON

The hubster wanted more substantial fare and asked for sausage gravy and biscuits. Gravy is usually just cream gravy, but the cook obliged, creating a very thick sausage gravy served up in a crock along with the two golden biscuits and a side of hash browns. The hubster said the flavor was dead-on right, even though the gravy was almost too thick to spread. A real stick-to-your-ribs meal, for sure.

• KAT ROBINSON

Of course, the real test was Hunter. We got her a pancake and she did damage. She was in a funky mood and wanted to be fed, which we were willing to do since as I mentioned we’d already been on the road six hours and her schedule was out of sync. And she ate every bit of it.

Thing is, there’s a lot of neat things about the Broadway Railroad Café that go beyond the food. It’s been in operation since 1920, making it one of the oldest continually operating restaurants in the state (Franke’s, I believe, is the oldest since it’s been open since 1913). The décor is certainly train-themed, but a little something more. This is a location frozen in time, with separate dining areas in the old hotel the café is located inside, with old furniture and old décor, neat as a pin and no dust at all but still a memorial to a different time. In a town laid out like a Railroad Crossing sign, it’s a gathering place that deserves a little mention.

I need to go back and have catfish some Friday night. It’s supposed to be some of the best in the state, but I’m never in Prescott around or after dark any more.

You’ll find the Broadway Railroad Café at 123 West 1st Street North (Highway 67) in Prescott. It’s open every day for breakfast and lunch and on Thursday and Friday nights for dinner. (870) 887-8817.