Retired baseball player Andre Dawson and his brother Vincent Brown bring us an upscale soul-food restaurant with stunning decor and fine renditions of Southern classics like chitterlings, fried chicken and shrimp grits as well as Caribbean favorites including jerk chicken wings, conch salad and pigeon peas and rice. The service could use more polish, but the overall experience is a delight.
Mattie Brown greets you at the door of The Mahogany Grille. It's her food that you'll be eating, some of it prepared with a bit of a twist.
In the kitchen, her seasonings flavor the braised oxtails, the fried fish, the grits. In the dining room, she inspires her sons, baseball legend Andre Dawson and multitasking attorney Vincent Brown.
Mattie Brown, 67, died of heart failure last year, before The Mahogany Grille opened, but it is clearly her restaurant.
''Mom could cook just about anything,'' says Dawson, 52. ''It wasn't rare for her to just invite anybody in for a meal.''
A black-and-white photo of her as a glowing young woman with an engaging smile hangs at the entrance of The Mahogany Grille in Miami Gardens, a rare white-tablecloth establishment in an evolving African-American neighborhood.
''Our concept for the restaurant -- and Vincent and I went back and forth on this -- was not just to do soul food,'' Dawson says. ''We serve foods with a Caribbean flair and a Southwestern flair. We bring in the Louisiana style of cooking and the Southern, too.''
Tender oxtail and saucy ribs barely cling to the bone; stewed conch has a bit of cream and crab meat mixed in; when shrimp and grits aren't on the day's menu, some regulars groan.
Mattie Brown cooked professionally for 30 years. ''She was the baker for Biscayne Cafeteria. Vincent was in diapers then,'' Dawson says. ''She also worked at Toby's Cafeteria.''
The half brothers talk lovingly of growing up in South Miami, savoring what their mother served them and, in Dawson's case, cooking with her on the job.
During a couple of summer breaks from Florida A&M University, the aspiring baseball player joined her on the cafeteria staff at the University of Miami's Rosenstiel School of Marine Science.
''I was the dishwasher. My mom taught me how to work the grill.''
Dawson, who hit 438 homers and stole 314 bases in a 20-year career with the Montreal Expos, Chicago Cubs, Boston Red Sox and Florida Marlins, is now on the Marlins' front-office staff.
Younger brother Vincent, 42, took a different path, but it, too, led to a stove.
''Grow up cooking? No. But I would always be at home when my mother was cooking,'' he says. ''I was always fascinated, and when I moved out I had to learn to fend for myself.''
While a student at Clark Atlanta University, 'I was the 'chef' for everybody in Atlanta who was from Miami,'' he says. ''I would always have a Friday-night dinner party to watch Miami Vice.
''It seemed to come naturally. As I grew older, I took more of an interest. . . . I experiment with Italian and French. I already have a pretty good handle on soul food.''
Good thing. In addition to being a lawyer, a funeral-home director and the owner of a real-estate company, Brown -- The Mahogany Grille's bookkeeper, controller and check writer -- dons an apron and heads into the kitchen on request.
''Some customers want me to go in and cook their food for them -- 'Can you make this for me?' If we have the ingredients, we'll make it for them, even if it's not on the menu. . . . Someone even asked me to make a Diane sauce for the rib-eye.
''We aim to please -- I learned a lot from my mother.''
This is not exactly what Dawson and Brown envisioned. The plan was to create a place where their retired mom could cook or not, run the show if she chose or drop in when the mood hit.
Mattie Brown herself was more than a little skeptical. When Dawson told her they were opening a restaurant, he says, she replied: ''You all don't know what the hell you're doing.''
She knew what she was talking about. Restaurants are a tough business -- something that's confirmed for her devoted sons on a daily basis.
''One of the challenges you face is the constant turnover in staffing,'' Brown says.
(Most times, service is dead-on, but occasionally, the earnest, young servers are a beat behind, or the kitchen can't keep up with the demands of a full house.)
Running a restaurant, Dawson says, ''is a bigger challenge than trying to go out and hit a baseball. It's not even close. You can get out of bed and hit a baseball, if you're good. Running a restaurant -- each day is a new challenge.''
(This from the man who hit 49 homers and drove in 137 runs for the cellar-dwelling Cubs in 1987 to win the National League's Most Valuable Player Award.)
Still they are driven by, among other things, the memory of how a mother's love tasted on the plate.
''My favorite was always the baked chicken and dressing with collard greens, her potato salad and macaroni and cheese,'' Brown says.
''My favorite was her strawberry shortcake,'' says Dawson. ''It was made from scratch. It was four-layer cake with thickened whipped cream. I wouldn't eat the biscuit type.''
Speaking of biscuits, however, Mattie Brown's -- and therefore The Mahogany Grille's -- are pure, fluffy heaven. In truth, the recipe was passed down from the brothers' great-grandmother, and they are not about to share it.
Rather than a gift to a beloved mother, The Mahogany Grille has turned out to be a tribute to her.
''Mom visited the restaurant once, and not long after that she passed away,'' Brown says. ''She had been ill and did not want us to know about it.
''Now she's looking down from heaven seeing what we do -- we're here till 2 or 3 in the morning. She was smart not to want to be in the restaurant business.
''We want to make Mom proud of us, more than anything.''
