Where Spoon Bread Goes to Heaven

M & M may be better, Aunt Kizzy’s more crowded and Dulan’s more elegant, but Maurice’s Snack ‘N Chat is probably the most famous soul-food joint in Los Angeles, a “secret address” of half the Industry and a staple of the travel guides--as likely to be packed with the points-on-the-gross set as with people from the immediate neighborhood. (The place even used to have an unlisted number, like Ma Maison, and it’s still a good idea to reserve a table a day or two in advance.).

You may have noticed, on a Saturday night, the Rolls-Royces, Mercedes and Grand Cherokees parked along a stretch of Pico more usually populated by primer-colored Monte Carlos. Maurice’s may have many virtues, but one of its specialties, it must be said, is being situated five minutes from Beverly Hills. The restaurant’s original slogan (“Better than home . . . and cheaper, too”) seems to have been lost to time, and also to dinner checks that give a run to their uptown counterparts at Georgia or Creeque Alley.

Inside, it’s always Christmas at Maurice’s, with a roomful of sparkling lights, a patio when it’s pleasant, shelves of tchotchkes and waitresses who sometimes sing along with the Otis Redding pumping out of the tape deck. The wall of autographed photos rivals that of any restaurant in town, featuring Barry White and Lena Horne, Lionel Richie and Emmanuel Lewis, Jerry Brown and Harry (Sweets) Edison and Tone-Loc and Johnny Cochran, many faded with age and water-stained as if they’d been tacked up on the side of a barn, with inscriptions pledging undying love for Maurice.

Maurice herself, recipient of mayoral proclamations, culinary society awards and a place alongside New Orleans’ late Chez Helene in the soul-food pantheon of no less than Calvin Trillin, is usually on hand, dressed a little as if she just happened to stop by the restaurant on the way to the opera, holding court with her customers, dispensing child-rearing advice and career consultation, scooping out samples of her spoon bread from a big Pyrex bowl if there happens to be any left in the kitchen. It’s worth chatting up Maurice a little if it gets you a taste of her spoon bread, a spongy, yellow mass that is the African American kissing cousin to a cornmeal souffle, slightly sweet, finely textured, with a chewy brown crust and a numbing richness that can come only from vast quantities of butter. (Usually, you have to call a couple of hours in advance for spoon bread, but there often seems to be a little hanging around.)

Once you get past the spoon bread, Maurice’s serves your basic Southern meat-and-three dinners: chewy braised short ribs, soft baked chicken, pan-fried fish filets served with long-cooked string beans, milky macaroni and cheese and intensely liquored candied sweet potatoes that taste as if they were handed down intact from somebody’s great aunt’s 19th-Century recipe book.

Fried chicken is reliably good here, if not astonishingly so, juicy and obviously pan-fried to order, but somewhat bland, often a little scorched around the edges and rarely as crisp-skinned as the very best bird.

Meatloaf is wonderful, coarse and a little chewy, redolent of peppers and a handful of spices, served with a little pitcher of brown gravy on the side. Try the meatloaf with a bit of Maurice’s spicy chow chow relish.

If there are enough of you, small bowls of well-cooked vegetables will appear to cover the table: collard greens stewed with fatback and black-eyed peas stewed by themselves, mountains of rice and gravy, spicy boiled okra, marvelous sweet corn spiked with what tastes like sherry, the candied yams, hot corn muffins with butter and heavily margarined hunks of toast, steamed vegetables as plainly prepared as they would be at a health-food cafe in Encino. At a place like Maurice’s, your entree is more or less an excuse to eat some vegetables.

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WHERE TO GO

Maurice’s Snack ‘N’ Chat, 5549 W, Pico Blvd., Los Angeles, (213) 930-1795. Open daily, for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Discover, MasterCard and Visa accepted. No alcohol. Street parking. Dinner for two, food only, $26-$32.

WHAT TO EAT

Spoon bread, sweet potatoes, fried chicken, meatloaf.