FORAGER AT BIG MOMMA’S IN OAKLAND, SOUL FOOD WITH A SIDE OF STORY.
Isabella Coffey, a.k.a. Ms. Coffey, believes food is love.
She runs Big Momma’s Kitchen in Oakland out of a modest black, red and yellow building in Fruitvale, on a portion of International Boulevard known more for tacos than soul food.
During most afternoons, the “sixtysomething-year-old” slides between the kitchen and the dining room with ease, flipping her silver dreadlocks while greeting regulars and introducing herself to first-timers.
“It’s good to see you, sweetheart.” “How was the food, baby?” “Come back and we’ll have a meal together, sweetie.”
Ms. Coffey’s personality is infectious. She laughs with her shoulders and talks with her hands. Her volume carries through the shop, belying her diminutive frame. She has a funny story about each employee and food advice for every customer.
A kiss on the cheek from her can be followed two seconds later by a roll of the eyes, each representing the same thing in her world — love.
“It’s like a family here,” she says. “That’s the way it’s supposed to be.”
Big Momma’s opened on International Boulevard roughly two years ago. How it came to be is a web of stories stretching from Oakland to the banks of Lake Pontchartrain in New Orleans, where Ms. Coffey was born.
Her family moved to Oakland in 1969. The migration was common in the 1960s as groups of Gulf State natives saw the West Coast as a land of financial opportunity, and a place of political awareness that was not common back home. Huey Newton, cofounder of the Black Panthers, was born in the north Louisiana city of Monroe.
“I remember before we came, my older family members were saying there was gold in the hills out here,” she says with a laugh. “There wasn’t any gold in these hills. We had to work our butts off for everything we got.”
While Ms. Coffey doesn’t hide her pride for her hometown, she also isn’t bashful about the love she has for Oakland. In what is quite possibly the largest display of homerism in any soul food place in the city, Big Momma’s walls are covered in images of famous Oakland natives, and paintings of political movements with roots in the area.
“There’s a story behind this wall,” Ms. Coffey says about the dining-area mural
“My heart is in this place. I want to help everyone I can. And I want to make sure anybody that comes here eats good.” Isabella Coffey, Big Momma’s Kitchen owner
with Gary Payton, Marshawn Lynch, Jason Kidd and Jon Barry.
A few years ago, Ms. Coffey’s sister died of cancer. The family spent days putting together an obituary with pictures of family members. Someone made the suggestion to put the photos on the wall at the restaurant.
“But I knew if we left someone off, all hell would break loose,” she says.
So she decided against it. While she was dealing with funeral arrangements, Ms. Coffey said, her family covered the wall with athletes’ photos as a surprise gift.
“I nearly lost my mind when I saw it. It was so special. I loved it,” she says.
The first pieces of Big Momma’s culinary backstory can be traced to a space on 79th Street in Oakland where, years ago, Ms. Coffey made and sold sandwiches. The business was the byproduct of the popularity she gained in her neighborhood for, as she puts it, “being the lady that made some amazing sandwiches.”
Crime in the area eventually made her leave that first restaurant space. When Big Momma’s opened on International Boulevard, it too was just a sandwich counter.
Describing the food at Big Momma’s these days requires a tactful approach. The menu is much longer, still with a few sandwiches. Everything has Southern influences but isn’t just simply “Southern food,” an encompassing term sometimes erroneously tagged to soul food, which is what Ms. Coffey makes.
Each dish — whether fried fish, a smothered turkey plate, collard greens or the shop’s signature shrimp rice — has Cajun spices familiar to south Louisiana. Entrees cost $9-$17, with smaller sides like macaroni and cheese around $4.
Ms. Coffey says the restaurant has changed with the tastes of the neighborhood.
“People just kept showing up and asking ‘Ms. Coffey, can you make some macand-cheese? Can you make some greens? Can you make that gumbo?’ ” she says. “They just kept adding and adding to the menu. Eventually I was looking around like what kind of sandwich place is this?”
Ms. Coffey said she doesn’t treat Big Momma’s like a restaurant; instead, customers are guests in her home.
“My heart is in this place,” she says. “I want to help everyone I can. And I want to make sure anybody that comes here eats good.”