Three generations of Johnsons sit at a four-top table in the front of Mama J’s restaurant, an almost 17-year-old Jackson Ward institution.

“Tell her the joke,” says Lester Johnson.

“It’s your joke, you tell her,” throws back Velma Johnson (AKA Mama J).

Her eldest son smiles, acquiesces. Beside Lester sits his 9-year-old daughter — and Velma’s youngest grandchild — Lena.

The long-running gag is that any time something goes awry, Lester says to his mother, “Well, you’re the one who wanted a restaurant!” And vice versa.

“We kind of play hot potato,” says Lester.

For the record, the restaurant at 415 N 1st St. was Lester’s idea. The Mama J’s storefront was supposed to be a hub for Velma’s popular catering business, which she’s been running for 40 years. When Lester approached her, his pitch was, perhaps, misleading.

“He said, ‘Mama, I found your catering space,” Velma recalls. “But it’s a small restaurant with a small kitchen.’”

Too small, it turns out, to ever be used for catering.

“The idea was that we would cater and run the restaurant on the side,” says Lester, adding that his mother had been catering in Richmond for so long, that once the word was out that they were opening a restaurant, they almost immediately had customers. “It never really worked out the way we intended, but it worked out.”

Since they opened in 2009, folks have been lining up for dishes like fried chicken, catfish, collards, mac-and-cheese and fat slices of cake (order the pineapple coconut). They’re open daily for lunch and dinner, with talks of breakfast in the mix. “We get a lot of requests,” says Lester.

For her part, Velma used to lead the kitchen charge, no small feat after working for 17 years as a deputy sheriff while also catering. Today, the chef — she tells folks she’s “two years away from 80” — sticks to the baking: eight flavors of cake, pies and cornbread. She’s still catering, too.

This January, Mama J’s catered Governor Abigail Spanberger’s inaugural breakfast. Even Lena threw on an apron. The Johnsons formed a connection with Spanberger during a campaign tour bus stop at the restaurant in fall 2025. “An incredible crowd and delicious meal,” Spanberger raved at the time.

The soul food at Mama J’s is just that — simple, well-made and so delicious it will cure whatever may ail you. Or fuel your journey to becoming the state’s first female governor.

Home on the Range

Cooking comes naturally to Velma. A Richmond native, she and her 13 siblings grew up with “chickens in the backyard and fishing in the river,” says Velma. “My dad was adamant about us learning everything.”

Lester posits that between his aunts and uncles — skilled in the way of everything from woodworking to upholstery — the family could make up their own little, self-sufficient town. Barring that, they’ll continue to create a home-away-from home for folks in Jackson Ward.

Diners will spy a high school classmate they hadn’t “seen in years,” says Lester. Couples will have their first date at Mama J’s and then return for every anniversary.

Lester recalls a time when a customer brought in her father for his “first good meal” after being released from incarceration. “That’s the type of thing that really keeps us going and makes us feel like we’re making a difference in the community,” he says.

Although they’ve been in business for nearly two decades, Lester has the verve of someone who’s just getting started. There’s talk of a cookbook, and a line of Mama J’s packaged goods.  Velma admits he’s always been full of ideas; when he was a child, she called her friend for reassurance because of Lester’s alarming behavior: He couldn’t keep his nose out of a book.

Maybe it’s his inner nerd that drives him to keep creating, or maybe it’s the goodwill he’s inherited from his mother.

As part of a 2013 Southern Foodways Alliance oral history project, Velma told her interviewer: “You have to help people because you don’t know who is going to have to help you.”

The newly opened Mama J’s Market embraces this ethos. Stocked with fresh food, pantry items and grab-and-go containers of Mama J’s meals and sides, the market offers a much-needed food hub for folks in the neighborhood. Lester also foresees them using this space for community-based initiatives like food drives.

They plan to expand the Mama J’s Foundation, a pre-pandemic project that Lester intends to “lean into” this year. Lester says they won’t create their own programming but will instead support longstanding organizations whose missions align with their own, especially those that address food insecurity and aid local education initiatives.

“I think if everyone just does their part, if everyone just does a little bit, it won’t be so much of a burden,” says Lester.

Mama J’s (415 N 1st St.) is open for lunch and dinner 11 a.m.-9 p.m. Sunday-Thursday and 11 a.m.-10 p.m. Friday and Saturday. Mama J’s Market (101 E Clay St.) is now open 11 a.m.-8 p.m. daily.