Happy Friday to all!!
I’ve been playing catch up since New Years, so I’ve had a hard time getting caught up on blog posts! To help me out, my awesome friend Mary Straton from Olive You Darling is guest posting for me today! I think y’all will enjoy this… 🙂
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Hot tamales and they’re red hot, yes she got ’em for sale
She got two for a nickel, got four for a dime
Would sell you more, but they ain’t none of mine
-“They’re Red Hot” by Robert Johnson
By way of my job, I’ve had the opportunity to travel all over the world. It’s the best education money can buy, and there’s truly no better way to feel like you’ve really learned something about an area than to eat your way through it. I can tell you where to get legit teppanyaki and ramen in Tokyo, the best fish-and-chips in England (bonus points if you dash them with malt vinegar), and which hotels in Germany have Nutella on their breakfast buffets.
Still, one of my most favorite places to travel is the Mississippi Delta. In his memoir Where I Was Born and Raised, Greenville, Mississippi native David Cohn wrote, “The Delta begins in the lobby of the Peabody Hotel in Memphis and ends on Catfish Row in Vicksburg.” But the Delta is so much more than a directional geography or an alluvial plain (it’s not actually a delta at all!). If William Faulkner was right about Mississippi being a microcosm of the world, the Delta is the same for Mississippi. I used to live here, and I can honestly say there’s nowhere else like it. Not only the most Southern place on Earth, it is truly a melting pot of cultures, races, arts and food.
Probably best known for catfish – the Catfish Capital of the World is in Belzoni after all, something even more indigenous to the area is hot tamales. Sure, you can find their Mexican cousins at various Tex-Mex places all over the country, but just like Blues music, you can still get the best, real deal, undiluted versions in carts, restaurants and holes-in-the-wall in Mississippi’s flatlands. Recipes for tamales vary as much as the people that make them, but invariably, they consist of spicy meat surrounded by masa dough, rolled up and are boiled until soft and delicious.
If you know of tamales in Mississippi, chances are you think first of the James Beard Award-winning Doe’s Eat Place in Greenville. I’ve never been known to turn down a Doe’s hot tamale, but if I’ve got my druthers, I want my tamales from the White Front Café in Rosedale, just outside of Cleveland. Channeling Henry Ford’s famous quote about his Model T (which also happens to be the name of a Delta Blues musician, “T-Model” Ford), a visitor to the White Front once said, “you can get anything here you want, as long as it’s a tamale.” And let me say, that is just fine with me.
As with many hot tamale havens, the White Front ain’t nothin’ fancy. You might think the old wood floors will collapse at any moment, and the inexpensive vinyl tablecloths cover tables are dressed with little more than a few napkins and some Crystal hot sauce (don’t you dare put Tabasco on a “hot”). You don’t get more authentic than the tamales here. If Guy Fieri is really interested in diners, drive-ins and dives, he would have heard of this place long ago. The tamales are served up hot as hades, wrapped up in corn husks in ties of three. Just once, embrace the grease. Take a whiff. You’re about to consume a part of history. Scoop a little, put it on a saltine with a dash of Crystal, and consider yourself well-traveled.
Thanks to Laurel for asking my humble opinion on my favorite well-kept secret in Mississippi. For more information on hot tamales, please check out the Southern Foodways Alliance’s Hot Tamale Trail site.
