‘MaMa E, it’s time.’ Fort Worth BBQ-home cooking shop reopens after storm, tragedies
Gone seven months, “MaMa E” knew it was time to come back to her barbecue and home cooking restaurant near downtown Fort Worth.
After family deaths and storm damage forced Ernestine Edmond to take a break at MaMa E’s Bar-B-Que and Home Cooking, it took great-granddaughter La’niyah Reed to look her in the eye a few weeks ago and say, “MaMa E, it’s time.”
“Out of the mouths of babes,” Edmond said, pointing to a Bible verse scrawled on a menu board about “they that wait upon the Lord.”
“I was waiting for him to tell me it’s OK,” she said.
Six weeks later, business at MaMa E’s is more than just OK.
Grateful customers have poured back into the tiny restaurant at 818 E. Rosedale St., one block east of Interstate 35W.
“I need some of those smothered pork chops,” one customer said at lunch this week, as others asked for chicken-and-dumplings with collards or Smokey Denmark sausage sandwiches.
They knew Edmond couldn’t stay gone long.
After all, she opened the restaurant 18 years ago because she needed something to stay busy. Both her husband and a daughter had just been called up by the U.S. Army and sent to fight in the Iraq War.
Since then, she has come to see the restaurant as less of a barbecue stand — she is one of Texas’ few women pitmasters — and more of a faith outreach.
MaMa E’s is surrounded now by fancier barbecue restaurants.
“They’re good — but they can all go ahead and do what they do, and I’ll do what I do,” Edmond said.
“I’m not here for competition. I’m here because I love what I do. And I’m here because I love seeing these people.”
The barbecue is basic. It’s old-time oak- and pecan-smoked brisket, ribs, sausage, bologna and turkey or chicken legs, with a choice of sides.
MaMa E’s has become better-known for her homestyle cooking and daily lunch specials ($13.99) such as pork chops, beef tips, meat loaf, chicken spaghetti and baked chicken with dressing.
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The chicken and dumplings, for example, starts with dumplings cut from her mother’s biscuit recipe.
She offers individual pecan, sweet potato or lemon chess pies and bakes larger pies by special order. The dessert menu also includes cobblers and banana pudding.
MaMa E’s is in a long-ago KFC location in a rebounding neighborhood that will soon be home to a National Juneteenth Museum.
It’s open for lunch through midafternoon daily except Sunday; 817-877-3322.
The reopening was first covered in the Fort Worth Report.
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This story was originally published August 3, 2023 at 5:30 AM.
