Five Sisters Blues Cafe

Five Sisters Blues Cafe is a great addition to the restaurant scene in Pensacola. Located just on the outskirts of downtown on Belmont Street, Five Sisters serves up southern food that I swear comes from somebody's grandmother's kitchen.

Sausage Gumbo Cup $5.25//Bowl $6.25

I love to try gumbo at different places, because even though the base of the recipes are the same; each cook put their own twist on the dish to make it unique. Five Sisters has a gumbo du jour.  Today, it was a sausage gumbo.  I ordered a bowl to share with my brother and wished I was a bit selfish. The gumbo was very tasty. There was so much sausage there was barely any room for the soup.  The okra wasn't slimy and still had a bit of a crunch.  The rice was cooked just right.

When I asked a few friends what I should get at Five Sisters, one suggested the country fried steak and another said the Fried Chicken.  I had the opportunity to try both because I stole it right off my brother's plate.  Of course, he didn't mind.

3 Piece Fried Chicken $9.25

Let's start with the fried chicken.  For $8.25, you can get 2 pieces of chicken and two sides. However, for a buck more you can get another piece of chicken. My brother decided to go with the 3 piece chicken meal. Tho chose fried okra and collard greens as his sides.  He also got some cornbread but I'm not sure if that was a mistake or did it come with the collard greens.  Because come on, what's collard greens without cornbread?  But I digress,  this meal is huge.  It basically came with half a chicken - there was a breast, thigh and drumstick.  All were cooked perfectly.  The meat was still nice and juicy while the breading and skin was spicy and crunchy. Both the sides were decent but I am not sure if they were made in house.  For the collards, I was expected more of a smoke ham hock flavor that I didn't get. It would also be better if it had a few more dashes of hot sauce. The cornbread tasted homemade though  (none of that jiffy mix stuff).  It's slightly sweet and super moist.  It accompanied the collard greens well.

Country Fried Steak $11.25

I had the Country Fried Steak with mac and cheese and cornbread dressing.  The steak was so very tender.  I tasted a lot of pepper in the breading and it was served with a brown pepper gravy so it gave the steak a bit of a kick. The cornbread dressing had a little of that pepper gravy on top too. It's the kind of dressing most people only take the effort to make for the holidays.  The same quality could be said about the mac and cheese.  The pasta and cheese sauce was cooked just right.  I had to add a bit of salt and pepper to suit my taste buds but otherwise it was also a real winner.

1/4 GOB, $5.99

If you have a picky eater in the family, Five Sisters have something for them too -  Good Ol' Burgers.  There's a couple of choices -1/4, 1/2 or 1 pound - burgers along with a variety of fixins.  My friend, Meg, decided she just wanted a plain cheeseburger.  It came with fries, pineapple coleslaw and a pickle spear for $5.99.  That's not bad a deal at all.  Meg said the burger was delicious.  I could tell it was cooked about medium well and was still very juicy.  I really wanted to talk about the pineapple coleslaw.  Why haven't other places picked up on this?  The pineapple made the ordinary coleslaw into something really special.  It made it a little sweet and a whole lot fresher tasting.

"Pecan" Cobbler a la mode $4.99

By the time the main dishes was cleared, I was completely stuffed.  Then came the dessert pitch.  My ears and taste buds perked up with I heard "Pecan Cobbler."  What in the world? How does someone make that?  My brother loves Pecan pie so he was dying to have some of this cobbler.  I ordered one serving with several spoons to share.  I think it was more of a bread pudding with tons of pecan inside and scattered on top.  It was oh so good.  The cinnamon in the bread and the crunchy toasted flavor of the pecans was a great combination; especially when you get a scoop of cold ice cream to eat with the hot "cobbler."  It was the perfect end to the meal.


Five Sisters looks to be a great place for a quick lunch or a family dinner.  I believe Thursday through Saturday, there's also live music as well as a jazz Sunday Brunch.  There's an outside patio I think would be great in the fall or early winter.  Inside the restaurant, it's very rustic with lots of drawings and paintings of some great soul and jazz legends.  There's sketch of Tina Turner and Diana Ross I couldn't stop looking at as well as a fabulous painting of BB King comprise of big swirls of blues, reds and black.  I would say the restaurant could comfortably fit about 60 people.  The chairs are comfortable even though some tall people might have some trouble fitting their legs underneath the table.

Service was a little all over the place at Five Sisters.  When our server came to our table, the first thing she asked us was is this our first time.  When we replied yes, she then kinda of berates us for not trying Five Sisters out sooner.  It was all in fun, but definitely unexpected.  If we weren't just a jolly bunch, we could have been offended by the intensity of her introduction.  Good for us, we're not a shy bunch at all.  There was a good amount of time lapse between that first visit to the time it took to get our drinks out.  Runners brought out our food so that was in a very timely manner.  However, getting drinks refilled was another issue as was the time it took from when we finished our meal to get the checks squared away.  It wasn't all together bad; just an area that could be improve upon. To check out Five Sisters Blues Cafe's website, click here.