HOUSTON, meet "Mama." I'm, from Croatia. I cook Italian food with a Croatian touch. And a French touch. So how would you say it? It's Mama's cuisine.
My son says, Mama you want compliments or rnoney? I want compliments.
My son says, Mama, people are in a hurry. I say, if someone is going to movies, they should not want homemade delicious Italian food, I don't want to cook like on track. I tell my son, when I am dead, you can do what you want, Until then, I will do what I want.
You know that restaurant chain that says "the chefs run the company"? With us, its true.
It is true, sometimes to the cha-grin of Mama's son who put up the money for her little Pearland restaurant. But his smile, the shrug, says it all. It's Mama, what are you going to do? It's her way or no way. At least the customers seem appreciative.
They thank her by coming back. She estimates that 80 percent of the clientele at Santa Barbara Italian Cafe are regulars. They thank her by cleaning their plates, by coming over to compliment the chef on the way out.
"That was wonderful, Mama," says a silver--haired man (who's easily 10 years older -than she), paying his respects.
Mama, the chef is Jordana Putnik. For 2 ½ years, she has fed Pearland her versions of standards like chicken saltimbocca, veal marsala and fettuccine alfredo, a guilty pleasure if ever there was one. The same sinful cream/butter/cheese sauce also laps against ravioli ala mode, with spinach, and the pasta primavera.
Cream comes on strong in the shrimp étouffée, a decidedly non-Italian menu item. Chunks of tender shrimp and tiny bits of minced onions and bell peppers are suspended in the thick sauce served over fettuccine. Any richer, and the IRS would be licking its lips.
Mama likes cream. That's the French influence, she says.
Mama like food. She likes shopping for it, cooking it, serving it.
I see it in the grocery, I'm already seeing it on the stove, on the plate. "That's what I can do with this!"
For me food is a very important part of life. When I Go out to eat, it doesn't have to be fancy fancy.It just has to be good. She says she is always looking for (and rarely finds) a restaurant that makes her crave a dish enough to want to go back. She wants to feel like the piccata man. One man, he has been eating the chicken piccata several times a week for months. We ask him, are you going to try something different? He says, I just have a craving for the sauce; I'm sorry. That feeds her ego, but she's being honest when she says she can't understand not trying something else. And that goes for cooking as well as eating. She has taught someone else how to cook the menu items her way; she gets her kicks doing the specials. It's one of a challenge for me, you know? I'm tired of doing the Bolognese. She loves it that regulars often say, "Surprise Me." As time allows, she does. Other specials are inspired by, say, especially pretty jumbo shrimp or a choice cut of meat. She ticks off some of Santa Barbara's recent off-the-menu offerings; Twin chicken breasts stacked with feta and spinach between them, grilled and served with bowtie pasta in a cream sauce. Pan fried flounder with champagne sauce and jumbo shrimp. Shrimp Parmesan with fettuccine. Smoked salmon atop fettuccine with cream and spinach. A seafood melange of lobster, shrimp and clams over linguine with garlic and parsley. Grilled scallops. Because Mama won't but anything frozen, she usually can offer specials only in limited quantities. Today at lunch, we had a big table. First time this lady was here was Monday. She comes back today with a big party; there are seven people. I have steak for the special, nice marinated steak. All seven order steaks. I'm so embarrassed. I only have four steaks!

Mama's son, Lawrence Ignjatovic, shakes his head. Although Lawrence serves as general manager for another restaurant, part of a larger, successful chain, he also serves as advisor to Mama. Or tries to. It's not that quality is not important to him, he says, because it is. But he'd like to see her little restaurant turn a profit, like to see her take a day off once in a while. Is it really so terrible to buy frozen chicken? To let someone else schmooze the customers? To Mama's mind, Yes! People say, how can you spend 14 hours a day doing this? I say, I am an artist, it is not 14 hours of work. Customers expect to see me here. So they do, seven days a week. When not in the kitchen, Mama takes her place at the corner table near the counter. Her doctor has told her to stay off her feet as much as she can. Between specials, she sips coffee, has a smoke, maybe a cup of bean soup. She holds court, chats, basks in the appreciation. Sometimes, she can't believe she's where she is, doing what she's doing. Santa Barbara is her first restaurant. She's never done anything remotely like it before. Never in my life. And I'm not chef from any fancy culinary academy in Europe, I was a banker, a banker who could cook. I was always cooking, all my life. Collecting cookbooks, cooking for all my friends. They would say, you should have a restaurant. My son said, why don't I buy a little restaurant; you love to cook? I said, a small one, because otherwise I would have to have other chefs. I want to keep it small. In honest I don't even have an office. Mother and son hunted for a small location, something near her home, and the Pearland strip center fit the bill. They kept the semitropical decor and the name, though Lawrence thinks now it may have been a mistake. Business was painfully slow the first year. But Mama had faith that Pearland would come around, and it has; business is picking up as word of mouth is bringing in new customers, and new customers become regulars. Mama, the artiste, chastises her son, the businessman, for worrying so much about the bottom line. She has insisted all along on cooking to order, on taking her time and doing it her way, from the salad dressing to the tiramisu. We cook everything from scratch. I don't want to cook my chickens three hours before. We don't have complaints that it's too slow. If people order grilled chicken, our waitresses tell them it will take awhile. And people say that's okay it's worth the wait.