Dream fulfilled, taste buds thrilled

After their day jobs, a couple spends time tending to the soul food business they built from scratch.

By MOLLY MOORHEAD
Published July 1, 2007

Walter Finley watches the flames rise on his grill before putting on the ribs at Ment and Finley's Soul Food Restaurant in Dade City.
	[Times photo: Lance Aram Rothstein]

ADVERTISEMENT [Times photo: Lance Aram Rothstein] Walter and Armentha Finley, the owners of Ment & Finley's Soul Food in Dade City both have day jobs -- she's a school custodian, he's a supervisor with DOT -- but they always wanted to own a restaurant.

DADE CITY - At Ment & Finley's Soul Food, everything comes in Styrofoam.

Armentha Finley -- she's the Ment in the restaurant's name -- says that's because startup costs were already mounting even before buying plates and silver.

But it's just as well, because good food is good food on any platter. It's as humble as soul food itself, the creation of early slaves who had to make do with discards.

Besides, there's no leaving this place without leftovers.

Armentha, 58, always wanted to own a restaurant. For the last couple years, she cooked dinners for her church to raise money for a new building. The folks who bought them finally talked her into it.

But the seed was planted long before that.

The daughter of fruit pickers, Armentha learned to cook -- taught herself, actually -- as a teenager. Her parents worked in the groves all day, then came home to fetch their kids after school and headed back to the groves with them until dark.

"I used to go at first, until I started cooking," she says. "Then I got to stay home."

The recipes are still in her head. If she ever hires another cook, that's when she'll write them down.

Ment & Finley's has been open about four months on the north edge of downtown in a former barbecue joint. Inside the small, simple dining room, there's not much to look at in the way of decor.

Again, it's just as well. The magic's on the Styrofoam.

Collard greens, lima beans, fried okra.

Smothered ribs, fried pork chops, chuck steak.

Red velvet cake, banana pudding, peach cobbler.

And sweet tea.

Is there another kind?

This mystical menu -- no exaggeration -- raises the very serious question of why Dade City didn't have a soul food joint, or six, already.

For an area with a big church-going crowd, a tradition-loving African-American community and a brisk downtown lunch business, Armentha and her husband Walter could reasonably be regarded as ... saviors?

"It's the best thing that's happened in Dade City," says four-times-a-week customer Greg Williams, who drives here from Sumter County for fried chicken wings.

Time together

It all comes together after-hours, when the restaurant is closed to customers. Walter and Armentha, married 25 years, have full-time day jobs.

She's a custodian at Centennial Elementary. He works for the Department of Transportation. So they tend to their dream at night. She's in the un-air-conditioned kitchen working over steaming stainless steel pots, and he's on the barbecue porch, minding the ribs. Then there's cleaning and bookkeeping and shopping.

"It's probably the only time we really get to be together because when we go home we go to sleep," Walter, 62, says. "You call that quality time over a mop."

From scratch

Armentha agreed to share her banana pudding recipe with St. Petersburg Times readers, reciting the measurements from memory: one can of condensed milk, one cup of sugar, a tablespoon of flour, and so on. Then she described how you mix it all together.

A day later she called back. It's two cans of milk, not one.

Molly Moorhead can be reached at 352 521-6521 or moorhead@sptimes.com

If you go

Ment & Finley's Soul Food Restaurant

14519 Fifth St., Dade City

(352) 518-0555

Hours: 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. Wednesday through Saturday; 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. Sunday; closed Monday and Tuesday

Recipe

Armentha Finley's Banana Pudding

2 small cans Carnation condensed milk

2 1/2 cans water

2 tablespoons flour

3 egg yolks

1 cup sugar

1 tablespoon vanilla extract

2 boxes vanilla wafer cookies

5 bananas

Pour milk and two cans of water into mixing bowl. Fill milk can halfway with water, stir in flour and pour into the bowl. Add egg yolks and sugar, mix thoroughly. Pour the mixture into a pot and heat on low, stirring frequently until it thickens into pudding consistency. In large pan, spread a layer of cookies, a layer of bananas and another layer of cookies. Pour pudding over cookies and bananas and chill.

[Last modified June 30, 2007, 20:25:40]