After several kitchen shuffles and legal scuffles, Carmine’s chef John Mims is back in the kitchen, bringing Creole-Cajun fare to burgeoning Phoenixville

John Mims took possession of the cozy Phoenixville storefront space that hosts his new restaurant, Daddy Mims Creole BYOB, on a Monday this March—and he opened for dinner that Friday. It seems that when you are, as Mims grumbles, “working to pay the attorneys,” the normally slow-going business of launching a restaurant can be expedited at a surprising rate.

It also helps that Mims didn’t have to go to the trouble of designing a new menu: “It’s the same menu that I’ve been using since I started Carmine’s Creole Cafe in Havertown and Narberth.”

After all, he says, “I am Carmine’s Creole Cafe, so all the recipes I’m doing here are what I was doing back at those locations.” The difference is, after moving his long-running Main Line institution three times—the last being much in the news following a messy and much publicized split with Mims’ erstwhile business partner, Penn Valley lawyer Howard Taylor—Mims says that, now in up-and-coming Phoenixville, he’s here to stay. “This is my last restaurant: My lease is for 20 years,” he says.

And, for Carmine’s fans, it will be just as they remember. “This whole restaurant feels like the first one. I’m really going back to my roots. I started out 10 years ago in Havertown with no pretentiousness, just good food and good service at a good price, and in a small space. This space is just 45 seats, and it’s only me and one other cook in the back. Before, I went through bigger locations, liquor licenses and it didn’t work out for me. So I’m back to bare bones.”

For those who didn’t grow up on Carmine’s, the food is “contemporary New Orleans Creole with accents of Cajun, Caribbean and French.” Mainstays include starters like crawfish spring rolls with soy ginger sauce and duck jambalaya croquettes, and oversize entrees like the towering lump crab meat cake with roasted red pepper remoulade and sauteed baby spinach, and blackened rack of lamb with Madeira sauce, smothered collard greens and brabant sweet potatoes, (pictured, $23).

But Mims says nearly three-quarters of his customers go for the $30, four-course, nightly prix fixe, a package that on a recent evening included sweet potato-truffle vichyssoise; blackened salmon served over sauteed spinach with balsamic reduction butter sauce; beef tenderloin with crab meat bearnaise over andouille mashed potatoes; and a chocolate pâté.

Mims says loyal customers from 10 years back are already making their way up to Phoenixville, where he likes to dash out of the small, partly open kitchen to greet them.

And he’s hoping they’ll catch on to his new endeavor just next door, Johnny’s New Orleans Pizza Kitchen, a concept featuring individual, brick-oven thin-crust pizzas with flavored olive oils and fresh-grated Asiago on the table, and pizzas from $7 to $14, including pies with jumbo lump Dungeness crab meat with boursin and chili aioli, or jambala-style andouille sausage, shrimp, bell peppers, onions, celery, mozzarella and a spicy Creole tomato sauce. There are also salads, baked pasta dishes and desserts like a Sweet Dixie Pie with ricotta and brown sugar topped off with vanilla, candied pecans, white chocolate and dark chocolate sauce. If it works out, Mims says, “I want to open three or four of them. The pizza kitchen is how I’m going to cash out.”

Of course, those pizza kitchens won’t be anywhere near the Main Line unless Mims prevails in the ongoing “bloody” court battle involving a noncompete contract that prevents him from working within 10 miles of Carmine’s current Bryn Mawr location. A Montgomery County judge issued an injunction against Mims in January, barring him from Mims Food + Drink (Wayne’s former Freehouse), and Mims is appealing that decision to the Superior Court of Pennsylvania. But, says the phoenix-like Mims, “We’re pretty optimistic about the outcome.”

As for us, we’re just ready for dinner.

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