It seems that most people have a bucket list. Mine is exceptionally long, and every time I check off something, three more things replace it. My bucket list also includes legendary restaurants or some that just fascinate me.
On that special section of my bucket list, there are a few: Joe’s Stone Crab in Miami, Dan Tana’s, which I just added on my last trip to L.A., Stinky’s Fish Camp on 30A, which is on because I just love that name, and the one that started the restaurant section of my bucket list, Doe’s Eat Place in Greenville, MS.
Last weekend I had planned to be at Joe’s in Miami, but aborted the trip when I realized that I just can’t leave now for any unnecessary trip. Immediately I shifted to getting away closer to home, for one day only. I would do the Mississippi Delta.
Doe’s Eat Place is quite famous and has a storied history focused on rural race relations in the early 20th century. The website describes it well. A little later, it was a favorite of Bill and Hillary when they were in the governor’s mansion in Arkansas.
It came to my attention when Tom and I started dating. He mentioned having gone there, and I have wanted to visit ever since. As a passionate fan of tamales since the days in the 1970s when my dad brought home the greasy bundle from Manuel’s, I had to try these famous tamales from their point of origin, the Delta.
What has happened in the last twenty years as marketing has come to supersede even goodness (not true in this case) the Mississippi tourism industry has dubbed that part of the delta The Tamale Trail. Just the very idea ramped up the interest for me.) I am so highly susceptible to marketing that it is embarrassing.)
What I didn’t realize until this trip was that most of The Tamale Trail is north of Greenville. On this abbreviated trip, I could only do a few stops.
I was so unsure how to get there and what to do that I contacted Anne Martin, the author of the wonderful book "Delta Hot Tamales: History, Stories and Recipes." She was very excited and had sort of prepared an itinerary for me to meet the tamale purveyors nearby, at least the ones still around. Her favorite tamale man had just died and his kids plan to reopen, but it will be a while before those tamales are available again. Another is battling cancer, so that one is also temporarily closed.
Stan Meadows, our fun roaming correspondent on The Food Show, and part owner of the wonderful NOLA restaurant Trenasse, told me in his weekly Wednesday report that he would be heading back to New Orleans by way of The Tamale Trail, the very day I was planning to be there. We arranged to meet at the first stop Anne had planned, Hot Tamale Heaven.
This place is the domain of The Harmon family, which is large and has several arms of the company operated by different siblings. Hot Tamale Heaven is a converted fast-food joint that was minimally renovated, and not at all the joint I expected.
The Harmons were seated at a table for a chat. Stan and his companion Jennifer joined us. They had already been to the Morgan Freeman-owned Blues Club and tamale joint in Clarksdale, and a few other places collecting tamales.
I only ordered a half dozen tamales, a decision I immediately regretted when they arrived at the table. I should have gotten a dozen. They were large and encased in a true cornhusk, which I definitely prefer. But the taste wowed me. They were meaty and spicy and big enough for a meal. I loved these tamales.
Before we left they insisted I try their fried tamales, which were breaded out of the husk and served with a ranch dipping sauce. These were also very good and completely different. The meaty flavor was concentrated here and the spice level seemed heightened. These were great too.
Hot Tamale Heaven is aptly named, with a menu that includes tamale pie and fried tamales, as well as tamale nachos.
The Harmons told us that they sell a lot of tamales to restaurants that don’t want anyone to know are not made in-house. I can easily believe that.
Next, we tried some that are highly touted by all, the ones from Joe’s White Front Cafe in Rosedale. Anne brought a big pile of them with her because Rosedale was too far north of Greenville for me to actually visit. These tamales were much larger and not nearly as flavorful as the ones I had just had from Hot Tamale Heaven. Anne said that she was disappointed too, but it must have been an off day. She is usually a fan of these. Stan and Jennifer had already had the Rosedale tamales on a previous visit and didn’t remember them this way either.
Our little party split up when Stan and Jennifer had to cross the river back to Arkansas, and Anne and I left for Doe’s Eat Place. It was only a mile or two up Hwy 1, and we turned into an old neighborhood in extreme need of gentrification. I was surprised to see the little clapboard shack on a corner in a neighborhood. I had pictured it on the highway by itself. It was shrouded by a low-hanging tree. Even though it was closed till 5pm, there was plenty of activity there.
You walk into Doe’s Eat Place not to a host stand but right into the kitchen. To the right is the walk-in cooler and in this room, employees are busy prepping for the evening service. A second kitchen where the real stuff happens is next, and then a dining room is to your right. Walk all the way through this kitchen to a dining room, and another behind it. Calling these rooms dining rooms is a stretch. The tables and chairs and plastic checkered tablecloths more resemble a church social or VFW Hall. But all of this is part of the charm, including window AC units.
Charles Signa graciously showed us around, including an outside tour of the neighborhood circa 1941 when Doe’s began. Charles is the younger son of the founder of Doe’s, Big Doe. His older brother Little Doe recently passed away. Charles explained that the neighborhood in 1941 was comprised mostly of restaurants and stores owned by Chinese immigrants. He talked of his own Italian heritage on both sides. Signa is short for Signorella, he explained.
We went into his cooler, where he showed off his excellent beef, heightening my desire to stay till dinner service. The steaks and fresh-cut fries are indeed excellent. I’ve had them at the Baton Rouge outpost. Charles explained how they came to franchise.
But mostly we focused the conversation on tamales, and how to eat them. He was very clear about this. They are to be unrolled completely before eating, but pulling at the casing with your teeth bite-by-bite is also accepted practice. He was very proud of his tamales and had me do a taste test on two tamales: one that had just come from the pot, and another that had finished cooking a few hours before. He said they were different, and they were, though we disagreed on preference. He likes the ones fresh from the pot, which to me were too soft. I preferred ones that had set more. And he had me taste some that were done completely off-site, which were much darker and entirely different, or so it seemed.
Charles chatted with me on a brief cut-in to The Food Show (airs weekdays 2-4pm on 990AM) after first protesting that he was too shy. I so enjoyed our visit on and off the air that I wanted to have dinner with him, and not just because his steaks and fries are divine.
Anne had planned for us to visit another tamale place after this and they told us we had to be there before the evening rush, so we had to bid Charles goodbye prematurely, at least for me. We rushed over to make the deadline for Scott’s Tamales, and we were the only ones there. This is a tiny little place the size of a snowball stand, sitting in a rocky parking lot on the highway. The property is owned by a cousin who has a metal fabrication business there. The family matriarch sat in a car in the parking lot, and two of her nine children sold the tamales.
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They offered me a bundle of hot ones out of the pot but I was so full of tamales at this point I only had one. These were also in corn husks and very good, though not up to the Harmons of Hot Tamale Heaven. They were almost as spicy, but they did have more juice to them, which l like.
I had to leave from this point. It was an absurd idea to do this in one day. The way to do the Tamale Trail is to stay over somewhere since Vicksburg and Greenville are the southernmost stops. There are places in Vicksburg, and of course, the Alluvian Hotel in Greenwood, but an overnight stay seems essential if one is to savor the pace of the Mississippi delta and its most famous food.
