Intern Ailene Sankur refs the Brunch Battle of the Bay: Mama vs. Mama.
This culinary clash takes place between two cross-bay heavyweights—brunch staples with a maternal instinct to make sure you get your most important meal of the day: the one at noon that takes away the shakes. Oakland’s Mama’s Royal Café is a hipster enclave in the Temescal District while San Francisco’s Mama’s is a bougie North Beach eatery. Both are cash-only neighborhood favorites (I’ve said it before--the less a restaurant wants to convenience you, the better it probably is.) Let the fight begin!
Round 1—The Line
Both Mama’s Royal Café and Mama’s are, apparently, worth waiting for. The wait at Mama’s is known to take over an hour, while I’ve never waited over thirty minutes at Mama’s Royal. Both restaurants operate on the “turn and burn” philosophy: moving people in and out quickly to turn over the tables. At Mama’s Royal, sign up on the clipboard, grab a mug from the pile and pour yourself coffee. Then lounge in the front--with the ironically acid-washed-skinny-jean clad hipsters--smoke a cigarette and wait for someone to yell your name. At Mama’s, you wait in a line sans coffee--unless someone holds your place in line so you can run to Caffe Roma two blocks away--sandwiched between an ex-Cal frat boy/junior assistant something or other talking on his cell about how wasted he was last night and two impossibly thin and good-looking parents with impossibly “precocious” children. Either way, bring the paper!
Winner: Mama’s Royal Café. Come on, Mom would never make anyone wait outside without offering them a hot beverage.
Round 2—The Scenery During the Wait
Mama’s Royal is on a rundown strip of Broadway always “on the verge” of becoming the next up and coming shopping district (you say Temescal, I say Piedmont). The windowless front of Art’s Crab Shack—an intriguing retro Oakland institution from the 60s—stares blankly from across the street. Mama’s boasts bucolic Washington Square Park and the pristine front of Sts. Peter and Paul Cathedral.
Winner: KO Mama’s.
Round 3—Ambiance and Service
Mama’s Royal is all about the kitsch: what looks like an Asian pagoda along the counter, antique radios, vintage aprons and advertisements hanging all over the walls, and napkin art from the eponymous contest. The servers are all about the attitude; piercings, tattoos, ubiquitous scowls. They don’t like you, you needy, demanding baby with your “refill my coffee and put the dressing on the side.” Somehow, I always end up feeling inadequate, apologizing and saying thank you a lot, and making only the most necessary of modifications.
Mama’s reminds me of a sunny country B&B, from the too-precious green awning with “Mama’s” written in squiggly cursive (heart in place of apostrophe! awww) to the creamy yellow wall paint to the lemon-yellow and blue tablecloths topped with flowers in lil’ vases. Wicker baskets and pine armoires complete the picture of warmth and down-home friendliness. Order at the counter, be waved into a seat, and the coffee you’ve been ready to kill for in line is rushed right over. Food comes out soon after drinks; coffee and water are constantly refilled by hovering wait staff, and everyone is happy.
Winner: Shockingly, it’s a tie between the two matriarchs. Sometimes I like the diner feel—I can imagine ashtrays and a gum smacking polyester-clad waitress—of Mama’s Royal, and sometimes I want to brunch at a cutesy café. Mama’s Royal does ironically what Mama’s Oakland does earnestly; Mama’s Royal gives me my morning S&M (“Your boyfriend is a loser”), while Mama’s smothers me with needy affection (“When are you going to get married?”).
Round 4—Coffee and Coffee accoutrement
I must preface this by saying I have a ten word long Starbucks order. I like my non-fat milk and I like my Splenda. Mama’s Royal has decent coffee, but only half and half and a big sugar dispenser on the table. And I don’t want to ask the scary servers for non-fat and sugar substitute…
Mama’s has good, not great, coffee, half and half on the table, and a sweet sucrose selection.
Winner: Mama’s
Round 5 for the Win—The Food
Another preface: I always order the same breakfast of Huevos Rancheros, one pancake on the side. I hold it up as my benchmark, the litmus test of a breakfast place. Mama’s Royal not only offers me Huevos Rancheros but Tofu Rancheros as well. Both are amazing -- honestly, the best huevos/tofu rancheros I’ve ever had. The eggs are the right amount of runny, and the tofu is perfectly sautéed—chewy enough to substitute for eggs. The eggs or tofu snuggle with tomato and tortillas which have sopped the liquid and flavor from both. The whole gushy mess is smothered with jack cheese and topped with a thick dollop of sour cream. The beans’ liquid hasn’t been drained completely, only reduced, thickened, and spiced added into a goop-ily good mixture to put on top of the whole delicious mess. Lightly toasted flour or corn tortillas come on the side, perfect to make little tacos of cheesy, eggy goodness. Whew. The pancake is standard buttermilk, light and fluffy.
At Mama’s the huevos rancheros are inexplicably renamed “Nelson’s Rancheros.” Also inexplicably, they are tasteless and dry. The eggs need salt, the tortilla (singular) on the bottom needs salt. The beans aren’t a thick, gooey, flavorful mixture soaking into the tortilla and eggs, but thoroughly drained, rolling around aimlessly, as bored as the rest of the dish. Cheese and salsa are non-existent.
The pancake was another story; like Mama’s Royal, it was light and fluffy. Yet something was different; the pancake flapjack normalcy. A certain je ne se quoi, perhaps as simple as the syrup, served warmed and thinned so that it soaked into the pancake like some sort of maple-y tres leches cake.
Winner: Despite the last minute defense of the pancake, Mama’s goes down. KO Mama’s Royal!
CONCLUSION: Use the time you’d spend circling Washington Square Park for a parking spot for Mama’s standing in an hour-long line to cross that damn bridge. Mama (Royal) said so!
Mama’s
1701 Stockton, SF
(415) 362-6421
Mamas-sf.com
Mama’s Royal Café
4012 Broadway, Oakl.
(510) 547-7600
www.mamasroyalcafeoakland.com
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