{"id":107808,"date":"2026-01-06T17:45:09","date_gmt":"2026-01-06T17:45:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/107808\/"},"modified":"2026-01-06T17:45:09","modified_gmt":"2026-01-06T17:45:09","slug":"in-east-tampa-baked-spaghetti-and-fried-catfish-offer-a-twist-on-southern-food","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/107808\/","title":{"rendered":"In East Tampa, baked spaghetti and fried catfish offer a twist on Southern food"},"content":{"rendered":"

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.<\/p>\n

M&R Cafe\u2019s chef and proprietor Maria Rumlin has evoked comforting nostalgia and some raised eyebrows with this dish, but come Fridays it\u2019s a favorite nonetheless.<\/p>\n

The spaghetti is divinely rich, meaty with umami from tomatoes, ground beef and Italian turkey. Baked to gooey perfection, there\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

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\u2019s fresh waters has found its perfect running buddy.<\/p>\n

Rumlin was born and raised in Tampa and grew up in Ybor City. She credits her mother, who\u2019s 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\u2019s techniques as a child, like making hamburger patties outside out of dirt, Rumlin said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe 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,\u201d Rumlin said by phone in early December.<\/p>\n

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\u201cMuch like chicken and waffles, shrimp and grits, and okra and tomatoes, fried fish with spaghetti is one of soul food\u2019s greatest culinary combinations,\u201d wroteJames Beard-award winning author and soul food scholar Adrian Miller in 2019<\/a>. \u201cBlack Southerners were early adopters of spaghetti decades before the dish entered the American mainstream.\u201d<\/p>\n

Rumlin\u2019s mother served spaghetti from a pot; the baked version is Rumlin\u2019s 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\u2019t heard of the classic pairing were intrigued, but she also received some puzzled inquiries.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen I started making it people were like, \u2018who does that?\u2019\u201d 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.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt 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,\u201d Rumlin said. \u201cPeople want to know what that\u2019s like.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Baked spaghetti with fried catfish isn\u2019t 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\u2019t see anyone serving baked spaghetti in the area before they started offering it.<\/p>\n

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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\u2019s Market to buy penny cookies and candies, she said.<\/p>\n

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\u2019 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\u2019 small white house, \u201cpast the cornfield,\u201d Rumlin said.<\/p>\n

Rumlin recreates those experiences at M&R Cafe. She\u2019s had customers in tears by the time they leave, remembering the meals their grandmothers, aunts and mothers cooked for them.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat feeling they got, from the cafe, took them back to their childhood,\u201d Rumlin said. \u201cThat\u2019s what we want to represent at M&R Cafe.\u201d<\/p>\n

M&R Cafe is located at 3220 E. Osborne Ave., Tampa.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

They only serve baked spaghetti with fried catfish on Fridays.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"At M&R Cafe, you can find oxtails, fried chicken and sweet potato muffins. But a unique Southern pairing…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":107809,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[55218,13398,575,55216,55220,55217,55219,55221,135,137,136],"class_list":["post-107808","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tampa","tag-baked-spaghetti","tag-east-tampa","tag-food","tag-fried-catfish","tag-mr-cafe","tag-maria-rumlin","tag-soul-food","tag-southern-cuisine","tag-tampa","tag-tampa-headlines","tag-tampa-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/107808","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=107808"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/107808\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/107809"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=107808"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=107808"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=107808"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}