Words by Krishtine de Leon
Photos By Greg Bojorquez
Inside Vivian’s Café in Burbank,
a quaint locale scattered with potted ferns and patio furniture, sits one of the most prolific scene-stealers this side of the Mississippi: Mike Epps. Worlds away from Day-Day out of Rancho Cucamonga, a character most audiences would recognize from Next Friday and Friday After Next, Epps is every bit the jovial fella one would expect from his on-screen personas, except a little older and a lot more refined. With the help of George, the owner of the breakfast joint, he leads us to the back kitchen to make his specialty dish. “I’ma put together for you today an egg-white omelet with turkey bacon,” he beams proudly. “It’s what I like. It’s called a Bad Mutha Watch Yo Mouth Egg White Omelet.”
Smack in the middle of eight brothers and sisters, Epps grew up in Indianapolis in a house that nourished his funny bone from the very beginning. “Man, I got a gang of siblings,” he says, cracking an egg with gusto into a bowl, and clumsily breaking another one not too long after. Although he is the only one to make a career out of comedy, he insists that having a big family requires a sense of humor. “My momma and everyone else is funny, you know what I mean? My social worker was funny. My case worker was funny,” he laughs, scooping the yolks out with a long, wooden spoon. “I got family wherever the Martin Luther King streets is.”
A staff chef is on-hand making sure the culinary masterpiece doesn’t turn into grease fire, and offering pre-chopped veggies for the chef du jour. “Vivian’s is a cool lil’ spot,” he says, motioning to the dining area with his spatula. “You ain’t gotta dress up to come here. The breakfast is great. A lot of cool, artsy people come here.” Three exits north from the paparazzi-swarmed streets of Sunset, it’s a welcome change for an actor that has shared the silver screen with black Hollywood’s greatest, yet is perfectly content with playing the crazy-ass cousin. The upcoming Welcome Home Roscoe Jenkins is no exception. Starring opposite fellow Def Comedy Jam alum Martin Lawrence, Epps plays a thieving cousin elated at the prospect of Lawrence’s wealthy talk show host character returning home to his country roots.
“It’s always good to come together with great comedians and do good work,” he says about Roscoe Jenkins, which also includes James Earl Jones, Cedric the Entertainer and Joy Bryant. “We all crazy. I’ve done movies with every black person in the theater.” With an acting reel that boasts such hood classics as How High, 3 Strikes, All About the Benjamins, Roll Bounce and The Fighting Temptations, Epps is the type of guy to pick Tabasco over Grey Poupon any day—and his audience wouldn’t have it any other way.
Epps palms a bunch of sliced white mushrooms and starts crumbling them with his fingers into the bowl. In go the tomatoes. Then the green and red bell peppers. Then the spinach. Then the chopped mozzarella. It’s hard to believe there’s any egg left in the blobby mixture, until—plop!—it splatters onto a sizzling hot-plate much to the amusement of all those watching, including the standby chef. “Y’all taking applications?” he asks, perma-grin plastered on his face. He throws the turkey bacon onto the hot plate and soon thereafter, begins chopping it with the metal spatula into tiny pieces to add to the bubbling egg whites nearby. His meddling has turned his Bad Mutha Omelet into a Bad Mutha Scramble.
“It’s ’bout to be done in a minute,” he says, as he finishes up his dish with his personal philosophies on breaking bread. Considering his busy shooting schedule and his All About the Comedy Tour, he doesn’t always have time to sit down with his ginormous family and eat holiday dinners. “Sometimes we have to make up a holiday,” says Epps, as he slides the mixture onto a chunky diner plate. He carefully places a piece of raisin toast on the edge, and completes the garnish with a fan of sliced strawberries. In regards to his own cooking, he is every bit the grown man, and less the kooky cousin cameo. “I feel like, whatever your taste acquires, that’s your ability to cook. If you know your seasonings, you might be able to make a good dish,” he says, half-convinced of his own wisdom. Then his smile fades a little for the first time today, as he says to his entourage “…my weed is wearing off.” That’s one special herb the Café can’t provide, but at least his dish tasted good. Really.
