At M&R Cafe, you can find oxtails, fried chicken and sweet potato muffins. But a unique Southern pairing has also emerged amid the soul food sceneof East Tampa: baked spaghetti with a side of fried catfish.
M&R Cafe’s chef and proprietor Maria Rumlin has evoked comforting nostalgia and some raised eyebrows with this dish, but come Fridays it’s a favorite nonetheless.
The spaghetti is divinely rich, meaty with umami from tomatoes, ground beef and Italian turkey. Baked to gooey perfection, there’s mozzarella cheese caramelized on top and a layer of ricotta just beneath, the creamy cheese complementing bell peppers, onions and tomatoes simmered with the ground meats. The catfish is first soaked in a hot sauce and seasoning bath, then dredged in a savory housemade breading. It is pleasantly crunchy with lightly flaked white filets that are firm and juicy.
Traditionally, spaghetti has been served as a side with fried catfish in Southern cuisine, but Rumlin inverted that pairing by placing her baked spaghetti front and center. The two components pair surprisingly well together, the unctuous cheesy savoriness of the meaty-spaghetti casserole complementing the salty crisp exterior and sweet flesh of the catfish. The channel catfish so prominent in Florida’s fresh waters has found its perfect running buddy.
Rumlin was born and raised in Tampa and grew up in Ybor City. She credits her mother, who’s from Thomasville, Georgia, with her cooking prowess.The youngest of three sisters, Rumlin remembers her mother sitting her on the kitchen counter while she cooked. She used to mimic her mother’s techniques as a child, like making hamburger patties outside out of dirt, Rumlin said.
“The spaghetti thing came from our childhood, because as kids, my momma would always make spaghetti and she would always either fry fish (catfish or mullet), or a pork chop or chicken with spaghetti,” Rumlin said by phone in early December.
“Much like chicken and waffles, shrimp and grits, and okra and tomatoes, fried fish with spaghetti is one of soul food’s greatest culinary combinations,” wroteJames Beard-award winning author and soul food scholar Adrian Miller in 2019. “Black Southerners were early adopters of spaghetti decades before the dish entered the American mainstream.”
Rumlin’s mother served spaghetti from a pot; the baked version is Rumlin’s evolution. She said she tried a dish called Pasta Napoletana at The Cheesecake Factory, asked them what they put in it and then recreated it. One day Rumlin made her version at home, posted it on social media, and it caused a little controversy, she said. Some people who hadn’t heard of the classic pairing were intrigued, but she also received some puzzled inquiries.
“When I started making it people were like, ‘who does that?’” Rumlin said. But in time she received a lot of feedback from people from the South who remembered a similar tradition and were nostalgic for the food of their childhood.
“It became like a big thing at the cafe, but I only do it on Fridays. So they come when they want to taste the catfish with spaghetti,” Rumlin said. “People want to know what that’s like.”
Baked spaghetti with fried catfish isn’t easily found around Tampa Bay. However, baked spaghetti itself can be foundat bodegas around East Tampa: at Silver Dollar Food on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays and at Xpress Food Mart & Deli on Thursdays. The Outside Kitchen will sometimes offer specials like fried catfish with shrimp pasta. Rumlin said she started doing her version about two-and-a-half years ago at the cafe and she didn’t see anyone serving baked spaghetti in the area before they started offering it.
Rumlin traces her culinary history through Ybor and East Tampa, the latter in which she has deep roots: Her father was raised about three houses down from M&R Cafe. She has memories of walking that block to go to Jackson’s Market to buy penny cookies and candies, she said.
Her connection to the food she cooks stems from her mother and her grandmother, and goes back to Tennessee and summer holidays in Georgia at her grandparents’ place. According to Rumlin, you could smell the ham from down the road. The spread of food was massive when you finally made it down the mile-long drive to her grandparents’ small white house, “past the cornfield,” Rumlin said.
Rumlin recreates those experiences at M&R Cafe. She’s had customers in tears by the time they leave, remembering the meals their grandmothers, aunts and mothers cooked for them.
“That feeling they got, from the cafe, took them back to their childhood,” Rumlin said. “That’s what we want to represent at M&R Cafe.”
M&R Cafe is located at 3220 E. Osborne Ave., Tampa.
Open Thursday noon-6 p.m., Friday 2-6:30 p.m., Saturday 1-7 p.m. and Sunday 11:30 a.m.-6 p.m.
They only serve baked spaghetti with fried catfish on Fridays.