SYLACAUGA — Marie Cardwell has been serving old-fashioned home cooking to the community for nearly 30 years.

Most people may know Cardwell better as “Mama Ree.”

Her family-owned and operated restaurant has been in business for 29 years. The former school teacher said she and her eldest daughter, Debbie, opened it together.

“My daughter passed by here one day and saw the building was open,” Cardwell said. “She just asked me, ‘Mother why don’t we open that restaurant?’ I had always loved to have parties — cook for people — I had always done that.”

Cardwell learned at a young age the secret to people’s hearts.

“Even in high school, I’d cook candy for boyfriends that I wanted to impress on the school bus,” she said.

Cardwell recalls the first years fondly but said there were some tough times. She said the converted “Stuckey’s” building had a long line of businesses in it before she got there.

The family put all of their money into opening the restaurant.

“If there was enough to get paid you got paid, if there wasn’t then you didn’t,” she said. “But we did not go hungry.”

Hand-breaded chicken tenders, homemade mashed potatoes, fresh-picked lima beans, cobblers and other desserts made from scratch are some of the dishes Mama Ree’s success was built on.

Cardwell said everything that can be made from scratch is in her restaurant, an oddity in the world of fast-food and national chain eateries.

And all of her recipes have been handed down from one generation to the next.

“My mother was an excellent cook,” Cardwell said. “She cooked the old-timey, old-fashioned way of cooking. And I do the same thing today that she did when I was growing up in her kitchen.”

The passing of the torch has continued to Cardwell’s daughters: Debbie, Denise and Delaine. The three girls and their children have all learned under Cardwell, as will her young great-grandchildren.

And they have all been put to work at the restaurant.

“She just works us to death,” Delaine said with a smile.

Mama Ree’s has built its business not only on the home-style food, but the home-style atmosphere. Cardwell said she has many customers who come on a daily or weekly basis.

There is even a pair of “regulars” tables to your right as you walk in the door. Everything from the weather to the world gets discussed at these tables.

“I think sometimes they come in to see who they can see and to visit with people they haven’t seen in a while,” Cardwell said. “It’s just a lot of visiting going on.”

Delaine said the restaurant has been around long enough now that they have watched families grow up.

“We’ve seen people that were newborn babies that are now grown adults that still come in here without their moms and dads,” Delaine said. “Now they have kids of their own.”

Cardwell’s connection to her place of business began well before she signed the lease. She recalled a trip with her parents as a young woman to the place she would one day own.

“This was my mom’s favorite place,” she said. “I don’t even remember who ran it then. I remember one weekend she wanted to come here and eat. We sat right in the corner, and I’ll never forget how special they made my momma feel.”

“I try to carry that through, that you make people feel special.”

When you cook good food and you cook it from scratch, everybody wants to know your recipe. But Cardwell said she would not hand out a family secret to just anyone.

“I do if they live out of town,” she said.

All kidding aside, Cardwell said she does share her recipes. But some are more special than others.

She began talking with a woman one day and found out their husbands had a mutual friend. Her new friend was especially taken with one of Mama Ree’s desserts of the day.

“It may have been the chocolate cobbler or the apple crescents,” Cardwell said. “She said, ‘How do you make this? I’ve never eaten anything so good.’ She said, ‘Would you give me the recipe?’

“I said, ‘Well … where do you live?’ She said she lived in Texas. I said, ‘I’ll give it to you.’”