On Mobile’s west side, Mother Mary’s Family Restaurant on Blackburn Drive has been feeding hungry customers for 18 years with no-frills, made-to-order country cooking.
“We are just catering to the everyday people, we are not trying to be ‘high-class,’ just your basic country cooking,” said owner Sherie Frei, who describes the restaurant as a meat-and-potatoes style breakfast and lunch spot.
The restaurant takes its name from Frei’s mother, Mary, who helped her daughter launch the business. A veteran of the food service industry, Frei said she decided to go into business for herself rather than keep working for someone else. “And it worked out, so far,” she said.
Regulars have come to count on the familiar menu and steady prices. The club sandwich, hamburger steak and the daily plate lunch are among the most popular items. Hamburgers are hand-formed from fresh meat and cooked to order on a char broiler, and the daily lunch special includes meat, two sides, bread and tea for $7. The loyalty of working customers has helped keep the dining room busy.
“A lotta guys who come here only have thirty minutes for lunch,” Frei said. “They know they can come in, sit down, get it, and be gone.”
Staying consistent has not always been easy. Frei said she did not change her menu prices for three years even as her food costs rose repeatedly. Competition from corporate fast-food chains that opened nearby ultimately forced the restaurant to trim its operating hours, but by focusing on its core breakfast and lunch crowds, Frei said she has still managed to turn a profit.
One longtime fan even volunteered to paint a mural in the dining room. In an era of quick-serve chains, Mother Mary’s remains a place where the plate-lunch special and a friendly face are the daily special, and a hungry diner can still sit down to a hamburger steak with gravy and onions, or a fully dressed fried shrimp po-boy, for a working man’s price.