Mama Irma Restaurant

Today we had lunch at yet another new establishment in Fountain Square, Mama Irma Restaurant. Just northwest of Prospect and Shelby on Virginia Avenue, the restaurant is small but comfortable, the walls a bright, but not overhwleming, yellow. Someone forgot to give owner Hilda Cano a copy of the memo that says any new restaurant in Fountain Square has to ooze with a vaguely pretentious air of trendiness. I’m not sure if it was the bright colors on the walls, the minimal decor, or the way that our server knew the menu cold, including pronunciations; but something about the place was charming right down to the ground, in a “where everybody knows your name” kind of way.

The restaurant features the cuisine of Peru, about which I knew practically nothing before we sat down to eat. I don’t know much more about it now, except that the menu is long on rice and noodle dishes, fried seafood, and a ceviche that the two press reviewers who wrote about the restaurant in NUVO and the Star couldn’t get enough of. I had the Arroz con Pollo, described as “cilantro base rice, paired with chicken, and vegetables.” Amy had the Camarones al Ajillo, “sautéed shrimp in special Peruvian garlic sauce, served with fried Yucca root.” We also got an order of fried plantains to start, though that and the entrées came out together, after what felt like sort of a long time, given that we were the only two diners in the restaurant, other than a couple that was already on dessert.

The plantains were tender and sweet, but not as crispy as some, and a little bit on the soft and oily side. That could be the way they eat them in Peru (though Amy’s fried Yucca root, nearly a kissing cousin to the french fried potato, was quite crispy), but it could also be an indication that the temperature of the fat they were fried in wasn’t high enough. A minor quibble, though, as they provided a nice counterpoint to the savory, earthy flavor of my chicken and rice. I wasn’t sure I could taste cilantro the way I was expecting to taste cilantro; but once again, that could just be the Peruvian style, and the fact that I’ve never experienced it before to know what it tastes like. Whatever I was tasting, it was very good, and very hot (not spicy, but hot like it had just come out of the pan or the oven), and very satisfying. Amy’s shrimp also were very good, their garlic seasoning a bit more familiar.

Toward the end of the meal, the owner, Hilda Cano, came out of the kitchen and said hello both to us and to the other couple, who were finishing their dessert and settling up. She addressed the gentleman by saying, “You’re back!” He had apparently been in a day or two earlier, and had come back because he had to have some more of the ceviche, which he said he had been craving and could not get anywhere else. It was not the sort of thing you would have experienced in a chain restaurant, where the manager wears a hands-free communication device and makes the rounds asking how everything is only because the corporate policy says he’s supposed to. He doesn’t really care what you think of your meal, only that you finish quickly so he can turn the table; and, of course, chain restaurants do not have actual owners—never mind owners who are actually in the kitchen cooking the food that you eat.

Fountain Square has so much going for it in terms of food that you could eat one meal a day at a different independent restaurant in the neighborhood, and it would be going on a fortnight before you had to repeat yourself—maybe even longer than that. I’m not actually keeping score. Go all the way back up Virginia Avenue into downtown proper—with a side trip up College Avenue to hit Iaria’s and the Milano Inn, and you could well go a month without eating at the same place twice, and without eating at a chain place at all.

And I was mostly kidding when I made that crack about being too trendy earlier. I’ve only gotten that vibe at one place in Fountain Square, and the food was so good that it wound up not bothering me. Most of the places are comfortable and kitschy and historical; and Mama Irma Restaurant totally gets the neighborhood vibe. Run, don’t walk, yo.

1058 Virginia Avenue

423-2421

www.discoverfountainsquare.com/merchant.cfm?id=270