Sister’s Green Tomato Pickles
Calhoun County in the 1830s: Settling the Wilderness
This is another section (Chapter 3) of Mississippi governor and Calhoun County native David H. Murphree’s History of Calhoun County, which was published circa 1948. What’s riveting about this portion is an eye-witness account of the settlement of the land, descriptions now-vanished plants and animals, the people and provisions. Notes providing additional historical and genealogical information by James M. Young.
I wish that I might have had an opportunity to see the virgin country the greeted the eye of the first settlers in what is now Calhoun County, Mississippi. It must have been a beautiful sight. It was my privilege to have had a first-hand description of this land from Miss Elizabeth Enochs, who was the sister of my mother’s mother, and who came with a caravan from Tennessee as a girl of eighteen, not so awfully long after the Indians left. She said that it had been the practice of the Indians for many years to burn the woods each fall, so that there were few thickets; that therefore standing on one hilltop, you could see a man or a deer moving through the trees even to the next one; that the trees were all large in size and tall in the extreme. 
She described the time of their arrival in May, when the wild flowers were blooming everywhere in profusion and indescribably beautiful. “Switch” cane or short growth cane was to be found in all the valleys, and through these beautiful woods moved herds of deer, sometimes thirty or forty in a drove. Wild turkeys were everywhere and without much fear of man. Wild pigeons (passenger pigeons) according to “Aunt Bet” came at times in such immense droves as to absolutely darken the skies; when they alighted on the trees they did so in such great numbers that the branches often broke.
There was “bear sign” where these huge animals had reached high up on the tree trunks and scratched, sharpening their claws everywhere, and at night the wild scream of a panther sounding like 
a woman in keen distress was often heard, making the children hug the camp fires and their mothers shudder with uneasy fear. Small game like rabbits, quail, and squirrels were so numerous as to attract no attention whatever when sighted and so easily killed that the hunters refused to shoot at one single target, but waited to get two or more of the animals together so that they might be killed with one shot. The streams were all crystal-clear and huge fish could be easily seen drifting with the current or darting swiftly to seize some luckless worm or insect that had fallen in the water.
It was to such country that there came in the early 1830s a stream of pioneer men and women in covered mule or ox wagons, driving their cattle and other livestock, with a plow or so swung behind. These covered wagons were usually called “tarheel” wagons because the axles were wooden and must have every few miles an application of tar or some other kind of lubricant to keep them rolling. 
My father said you could hear them squeaking for miles. Bows of splits made from heart white oak were bent over the wagon high enough that a person could stand up inside and over the bows was stretched tightly a piece of tenting or “wagon sheet” treated to repel the rain. There was an opening at the front end and also the back, and inside these immigrants carried everything that they could store which they felt would be necessary in the wild new land. Of course, the “Tennessee Rifle” was a very necessary piece of equipment and most of them had in addition a long single barrel shotgun with which to keep the pot filled with the small game above mentioned.
Naturally here and there one of them brought with him his old time violin or “fiddle” as it was better known, and these instruments were from time to time brought into use at the “log rollings”, “corn shuckings” and “house raisings” which were so popular in the early days. 
Too, in addition to the well-worn copy of the family Bible, which each and every family brought and on whose pages were inscribed the names, date of birth, etc., of all the children as well as the dates of death of members of the family, a number of these folks brought with them copies of a peculiar book. It was the old “Sacred Harp” song book. These books were different in makeup from all other books, in that they were very wide in page width and narrow in page depth. The notes were differently shaped from other music notes. Singing in the Sacred Harp goes back for hundreds of years and even today many people who learned to love this music as they grew up feel that it is the most beautiful of all music.
An old fashioned black wash pot, made of iron, standing on three short legs, was also part of the necessary equipment and this pot was used for many, many things. In it the clothes were boiled for the weekly wash. Soap was made in this pot; hominy was also made in it; 
likewise water for the Saturday night scrub was oftentimes heated in it. When the hogs were killed in the fall, the lard was cooked in this pot. There were few kitchen utensils. An old fashioned oven with a heavy lid was one. In it bread was often baked and potatoes too. It too had many uses. Beds were usually homemade after the immigrants arrived. The “corded” bedstead was most popular. It was a four poster bed, with rope or cords stretched back and forth across from one side to the other and from one end to the other. On this was laid the “corn shuck” mattress, which as its name implies, was made from the husks or shucks from corn. For real luxury a feather bed made from feathers or down plucked from live geese and stuffed into a “tick” was laid on top of the shuck mattress. People slept on feather beds in even hottest summer time. The women brought a few seeds of flowers, sometimes if the season was right, a shrub itself, to reset in their new homes in the wild new country. The old spinning wheel was another piece of standard equipment for without it there would have been no thread for knitting socks and stocking, and likewise no thread to be use on the old hand looms for weaving for the clothes for the entire family.
Notes: It is positive that almost all of the first inhabitants of what is now Calhoun County came down the famous old Natchez Trace. (1) They came from the Tennessee-Carolina country. Crossing the Tennessee River near Corinth, then on down the Natchez Trace to Old Houlka where the Indian Agency was formerly located, spreading out over the section to the west, along the various creeks which ran into the Schoona and the Yalobusha rivers. In the beginning, these settlers did not open and clear the river bottom lands very much. They cleared the rolling hill sides and the creek bottoms. Their dwellings were built on high hills, often just where a spring bubbled out from under the hill below.
Of course, a number of these first inhabitants came from Alabama and Georgia. These came by way of Aberdeen, Columbus etc. However, the great majority of these first settlers came as stated above from Tennessee and the Carolinas. Governor Murphree says “it is positive” 
that almost all of the first inhabitants came down the Natchez Trace. However (probably after someone proofread what he had written and provided him comments to the contrary), he retracted that a bit and said “Of course, a number of these first inhabitants came from Alabama and Georgia…” In fact, many of the first settlers of Calhoun County came from Alabama into north Mississippi. The Murphree family itself came over from Alabama. Martin Murphree, DHM’s grandfather and David Murphree, DHM’s great grandfather, came from Alabama. As the Murphree Genealogical Association data states: “David Murphree remained in Tennessee about a decade. By 1818, however, records show that he was a Justice of the Peace in Blount County, Alabama and the same in Walker County in 1820. The David Murphree family is enumerated in the 1830 census of Walker County where the families of his sons Roland J., Ransom, and Samuel M. Murphree are also enumerated along with his son-in-law William Barton.
The Treaty of Dancing Rabbit Creek in 1830 opened Choctaw Nation land in north Mississippi and the Treaty of Pontotoc a few years later opened Chickasaw Nation land as well. 
For the next few years after the treaties, there was a great migration into the Yalobusha-Chickasaw area of north Mississippi. About 1835-1836 David Murphree and his wife Jemima, who were then about ages 72 and 63 gathered up their children, in-laws, and grandchildren, and with their neighbors — the Brashers, Collums, Lantrips, and Browns — made their way into Mississippi in a wagon train pulled by oxen, some 30 wagons all told. They apparently crossed the Tombigbee River at Cotton Gin Port near Amory and made their way into Chickasaw County and to the Indian agency at Old Houlka. From there, they spread out over the area to the west along the various creeks and rivers. Many of the early settlements were located on or near abandoned Indian villages.
According to one of David’s descendants, the late Jackson MS attorney Dale H. McKibben, the family first landed at Airmount, which was in the Choctaw Cession. When Chickasaw Cession lands became available about three years later, 
some of the families moved eastward from previous Choctaw lands to Chickasaw lands. Two of David’s sons’ families, Martin and Ransom Murphree, split off from the rest and moved eastward into the Rocky Mount/Oldtown area which was in Chickasaw County at first but became Calhoun County when that county was formed. Airmount and Rocky Mount are about 15 miles apart as the crow flies. Airmount is on the north side of the river which has come to be known as the “Skuna”, while Rocky Mount is on the south side. Travel between the two was arduous, especially during the winter time or in flood times, and remained so until relatively recent times. “ JMY
L’homme avec la caméra
Doe’s Eat Place
Jesse Houston: Chef on the Half Shell
We had a little oyster bar at Parlor Market. That’s how I met Craig Noone; we worked at an oyster bar in Stephan Pyles’ flagship, so with the tiny oyster bar in Parlor Market I got to see how Jackson feels about seafood and oysters. That planted a seed, and when I was leaving City Grocery in Oxford, I decided that Jackson would be a good spot for an oyster bar.
Since the oyster bar is the heart of Saltine, we keep the rest of the menu very seafood-centric, and being in the South, we keep the menu Southern-rooted. Then again being who I am, I like to keep things fresh and creative, to push the envelope. It’s a challenge with this concept because being in Jackson I think we get a little more of the old school mentality here towards Southern seafood, whereas at the Parlor Market, even though it was very much Southern-rooted, it was from the get-go known as a place where you could go and get an off-the-cuff creative meal. Here there’s a bit of resistance to that, so catfish, po’boys, the oysters, the wood-fired oysters, the redfish on the half shell are our top-selling dishes. The more creative dishes are harder to sell. We have an Asian influence in the calamari dishes, which is an ode to Paul Qui, who I got the opportunity to work with while I was at culinary school at the Le Cordon Bleu in Austin. He does a Brussels sprouts dish he’s very famous for that has the same kind of sauce with herbs, mint, cilantro and cabbage. The oysters Lafitte I would say is the most New Orleans-style dish we have, and we put that together while on a trip to Lafitte, Louisiana to fish for redfish, using what we had around us. 
We went into a little crawfish shack, ordered a couple of pounds, peeled them ourselves and put some on the oysters we had on the grill at the fishing camp. Then we have the white Alabama barbecue sauce, once again playing up Southern dishes. The citrus butter with coriander is a nod to a lot of the garlic butter oysters you’ll find at places such as Drago’s, but a lot brighter and more floral.
This summer when we opened the oyster market was very bad. It certainly wasn’t the prime season for Gulf oysters by any means, and due to different regulations in Louisiana that seek to control the quality of oysters, the only ones that could leave the state were those harvested on refrigerated boats. The oysters go straight from the water into refrigeration and from those boats into a refrigerated facility or on a refrigerated truck to Jackson. That’s a huge expense. There aren’t a lot of people who do that, so we had many customers who were upset because we didn’t have Gulf oysters. When we opened, our oysters were sourced from Virginia other places on the east coast. They were very inconsistent in size, people only wanted the big ones, so it was a struggle. But as the temperatures went down, the oysters have become more available, and we no longer have that issue. We have them coming in literally every single day. I probably get anywhere from eight to twelve sacks of Gulf oysters a day, almost a thousand oysters that we go through, and we get probably another twelve to eighteen hundred from other parts of the country: the Pacific Northwest, Virginia, Massachusetts, New York, all over.
Almost all oysters these days are farm-raised, but oysters out of out of the Gulf are still wild. Even though most of the wild oysters along the east coast were eradicated back in the 1800s, and they introduced new species, some of which were invasive and killed off the native populations, you can still get wild oysters from the Gulf. I’ve heard of some great oyster farm programs in the Gulf as well. Derek Emerson was sharing some great stuff with me the other day; he and Chris Hastings were talking about these oysters off Dauphin Island that are grown in baskets that tumble in the surf, which give the oysters a great shape and salinity, and have almost no mud or dirt because they aren’t on the bottom. The other day a supplier out of Birmingham offered me some oysters called “Bama Beauties”. They were sold out at the time, and they were expensive; they were (my cost) a dollar an oyster, and I’d have to be selling them at almost $3.50, the same price I’d ask for a really high-end Pacific oyster. More gourmet Gulf oysters are starting to pop up, but the challenge will be getting people who are used to $1 or $1.50 oysters from Mississippi or Alabama to buy them.
I never considered opening anywhere but Fondren. This is where I spend all of my free time; this is where my friends seem to gather, where I run into people I love. I thought with all the other great restaurants, we could create a wonderful restaurant scene here. Of course, there already was, but I wanted to jump into the middle of it. Duling Hall wasn’t my first choice, though when I first moved to Jackson, before the Parlor Market opened, Craig took us to Duling Hall, and I walked over to the space that is now Joan Hawkins Interiors and 
thought it would make an awesome restaurant. Fast-forward to last year when I was looking for spaces, I was actually looking for a house, so I looked on State Street and Mitchell Avenue, but we just couldn’t make anything work. I talked to realtor Mike Peters and told him I wasn’t totally committed to a house, and he walked me through this space. With all the original brick, windows and floors, it just came together, I couldn’t be happier, and I can’t imagine it anywhere else.
I put this restaurant in the hipster capitol of Jackson, and I anticipated my friends and younger people, but I have more of an older demographic. It’s really mixed. I do get some people from out-of-town due to the great articles in “Southern Living” and “Garden & Guns”, but for the most part it’s really different from my expectations. I’ve thought about how the restaurant will evolve a lot. Things are still up in the air as we try to keep the house packed and discover what will drive people in to build our lunch business and early weekend business. The craft beers have really picked up more than I thought it would before we opened. It was always going to be a bar that focused on craft beers. We have thirty-one draughts. At first wine and cocktails were ahead in the mix, but soon the craft beers began outselling them. So we’re pushing that envelope and advocating the craft beer scene in Mississippi, which has growth spurts as well as growing pains.
The creative food is where I feed myself, it’s what I enjoy doing and why I love being a chef, but I have to ask myself if it’s right for here. Whereas I used to be able to put anything I wanted in front of people at Parlor Market, people would try it because it sounded interesting and love it and embrace it, that’s a struggle here. It’s a learning curve on the floor and in the kitchen, and though because of the long hours I work it feels like I’ve been here for five years already, we’ve only been open for six months. I have to keep reminding myself that.
Prep for Hal’s St. Paddy’s
Hal’s St. Paddy’s Parade draws thousands to Jackson, and for over 25 years Charly Abraham has played a pivotal role in bringing the spectacular procession to life. In this interview, Abraham shares his insights into the behind-the-scenes happenings that come together to bring about Jackson’s signature annual event.
When do the organizers begin to put the parade together? Is a schedule in place by now?
Not really. Malcolm and I might mention it once or twice from April to December if we happen to see each other. Malcolm usually comes up with a theme and a Grand Marshal before the New Year starts. We really try to have everything as far as the public is concerned (theme, Grand Marshal, application, route) in place by the second week of January. The smaller details are covered as we can find the time. Remember that this event isn’t anyone’s main job; we do it because we love it. By the way, the official trademarked name of the event is “Mal’s St. Paddy’s Parade”. I see it called every possible variation, but it actually does have its own title.
Who are the primary people involved in the actual development and eventual operation of the parade?
Keep in mind that the parade is a multi-legged creature, with the big parade, the race, all the children and family events and the post-parade street dance. For 20 years or so, I pretty much ran it all. Since I am no longer at Hal & Mal’s (or in Jackson for that matter), my role has gradually diminished, a change that makes me happy. My life at Delta State University is so busy I have minimal time for anything else – particularly since the parade doesn’t fall on spring break week any more. As it stands now, I run everything from 7:00 a.m. until the end of the parade. My staff consists of Bob McFarland, who runs all of the kids’ events, Elton Moore, who handles all vendors, and Chuck Bryan, who handles float lineup. Captain Steve Bailey with the Hinds County Sheriff’s Office oversees security in the lineup area and at Hal & Mal’s. Of course, the Batson folks at the Blair E. Batson Hospital for Children handle the parade registration, and are there to check in participants as they arrive. All of these people have all been with this thing as long as I have, so they know their jobs extremely well. 
In fact, if we all do our jobs right in the planning stage, everything runs like clockwork. I don’t actually do much on parade day except handle the few problems that arise and make a few command decisions. I like to go watch the pet parade at 10:00 a.m.; it’s my favorite part of the whole event. Since I no longer work at Hal & Mal’s, when the parade is over, my role is over, and everything switches to Commerce Street. For the last couple of years, Arden Barnett has booked the street dance, and the folks at H&M’s handle all the logistics of the post-parade events. Hal & Mal’s is also in charge of the Friday night parade, which has never been my responsibility.
Any parade in any municipality requires the cooperation of local authorities, notably law enforcement and sanitation. As Mal’s St. Paddy’s parade has grown, how have the organizers’ relationships with the city of Jackson developed?
We have a great relationship with the city. Henry Brown is the special events coordinator with the Jackson Police Department and the city. 
I’ll chat with him several times by phone starting around October and meet once with the city special events committee. The city folks pretty much know their job, which is huge, and they handle it well. They seal off the city to most traffic early in the morning and handle traffic control all day. Once the parade leaves the lineup area, it is completely in the control of JPD; it is no longer our event. They secure the parade route to protect participants and observers. In addition to JPD, City Services puts out a mile of barricades, and Sanitation starts sweeping the streets as soon as the last float leaves. Trustees from the County Farm come in early on Sunday morning and clean the area around Hal & Mal’s and the Fairgrounds. We also hire an independent cleanup crew to hit any hot spots. It is important that every trace of the parade be gone by noon Sunday.
What are the biggest headaches year-to-year, and how do you deal with them?
The biggest headache without a doubt, year in and year out, is insurance. Fewer and fewer companies write event insurance, and the price is astronomical.
How many krewes are involved in the parade? Are most of them associated with businesses or are they private groups? Where are they from?
The parade is limited to 50 floats, and we usually end up with about 47. I guess you can call them all krewes. There are also the marching krewes that have been with us forever: the O’Tux Society, which is Malcolm’s krewe, is the only local men’s marching krewe.
Some years an all-male krewe from the Gulf Coast shows up. There are mostly female marching krewes; the oldest is Krewe of Kazoo, then the Green Ladies, and a recent addition, nugget league of mayhem (lower case correct). A few are businesses, but most are just groups of people having fun. Almost all are from the Jackson area. In election years, there are usually several political candidates. Governor Barbour used to bring his horse group. That was actually kind of cool. I should also mention the Knights of Columbus Color Guard; they aren’t exactly a “krewe,” but they have been in front of the parade for as long as I have been around.
How do the representatives of the parade krewes work with the organizers? Is there a set marching order for the krewes or is that order determined on a year-to-year basis?
We have one “float” meeting every year that I conduct about a month before the parade. Every krewe is required to have at least one representative there. I go over basic rules, particularly any new rules, discuss problems of the previous year and try to answer questions new krewes may have. Most of the krewes have been around so long they can answer the questions better than I can. As far as parade order, only the color guard, bands, Grand Marshal and marching groups at the very front are pre-programmed. Otherwise, the float order depends on arrival time: the earlier you get there, the closer to the front you are.
Have the specifications for the size of floats, personnel and vehicles been hammered out?
Absolutely – many years ago. The rules and regulations and the parade application are all included in a package available at Mal’s St. Paddy’s Parade and at various other places around the ‘Net. I post it on Facebook every year as well. Floats are inspected in the lineup area by representatives of the Jackson Police Department, the Jackson Fire Department and the Hinds County Sheriff’s Office. They are checked for safety violations, skirting, fire extinguishers, driver’s licenses, insurance, etc.
What role do the people at Blair E. Batson Hospital for Children play?
The Batson folks are wonderful. They play a role in the lives of Mississippians every day. They treat our children in Mississippi for severe illnesses and injuries regardless of the family’s ability to pay. But your question is about the parade. The hospital gang has several roles. 
Tena McKenzie, who runs the Office of Development there, is the central data center for the parade “Players” list, which is a group of about 40 people who have roles in one way or another. That would include sponsors, media people, all the city services, the Jackson Convention and Visitors Bureau, the Mississippi Museum of Art; the list goes on. We have two luncheons where a great deal of behind-the-scenes work takes place, where we all meet face to face. The hospital, as I mentioned earlier, also handles registration for all krewes. Their people are present bright and early on parade morning and check in participants in the lineup area. They also bring a large group of people to run the “city sweep,” which is maybe the most important part of the parade. The city sweep consists of vehicles, golf carts, radio vans, employees, volunteers, patients, Star Wars characters, and anyone else who wants to play, and leaves the lineup area 30 minutes before the parade starts. They pass the bucket for donations and sell t-shirts, just about anything to raise money. I encourage everyone to take an extra fiver or larger, to drop in the bucket; you can’t beat this cause. The hospital also manages the race, and they are the beneficiary of the event as well.
How is media involved in the development of the parade?
Media is mostly donated. The Clarion Ledger has been a corporate sponsor for many years, so Sherry Lucas always gets first shot at news stories. When they had more people working, they would take an active role in events. Now they really don’t have the personnel to do as much. Radio stations are given access to anything they want. We don’t actually buy radio time, but we welcome their involvement on whatever level they want. Most put vans or other vehicles in the parade or help with the city sweep. The Jackson Free Press always has extensive pre-parade coverage, and Portico Jackson usually has a green-themed issue in March. The local TV stations differ from year to year. Some years they are all over it, some years they don’t seem interested. I suspect that has to do with ever-changing news directors and reporters who aren’t familiar with the event. WAPT has recently been a sponsor for the Children’s Festival.
What lessons in human nature have you learned in your many years of working on the parade?
To be honest, I have had nothing but good experiences working on the parade. Everyone wants it to succeed and remain a part of Jackson’s culture. That includes the city of Jackson’s administration. Everyone comes to have fun, including the parade organizers. Anytime there is a crowd of forty or fifty thousand people in one location there are bound to be a few people misbehaving, but those types of problems seem to be minimal.
Lavender Tunnel
Hal & Mal’s
Lou LaRose: Chef at Work
I’ve always enjoyed cooking and helping my mom or grandmom in the kitchen, whether it was making fried chicken or chocolate chip cookies or even tater tots. You’re still cooking. I got a job at the original Poet’s when I was really young, and it kind of went from there. I worked there for a couple of years and moved up quickly. It was pretty tough on somebody as young as I was; it was a bar scene. Obviously I felt there was more appeal to things other than washing dishes. I started bussing tables after washing dishes, then found out I was pretty good with a knife; I picked a knife up and started hacking on chicken, prepping it, trimming it, doing shrimp, and I got pretty fast at it, so that’s how I moved up into prep. I waited tables for a while, cooked, bar backed, did a little bit of everything.
While I was at Poet’s, I worked at Sam’s Westside, which is where Broad Street is now. And then I worked at Mick & Mott’s, which used to be Jackson Bar & Grill, now La Cazuela’s. Then I went to work at Bravo!.
When I first started cooking, I didn’t realize you could buy knives out of a catalog, I didn’t realize there were “chefs”. I mean, I did, because I remember watching “Yan Can Cook” as a kid on television and loving that dude because he was awesome. I also watched “The Galloping Gourmet”. While I was working, I was learning. When I was at Poet’s, I didn’t know you had culinary schools and real knives, so I started to learn and pick up on it and began thinking I should learn what I could at one place and then move on to another. So I progressed through the restaurants around here and ended up at Bravo!.
I started out as a hot line cook my first night there and soon picked up a lot of shifts because I was always the guy who wanted to work more. I was always one of those guys out there working. I worked at Brick Oven for a while, because a guy I worked with at Bravo! worked there as well, and he told me they were short-handed and needed some help. I picked up a few morning shifts at Brick Oven while working nights at Bravo!. I didn’t work at Brick Oven too long because I wanted to devote myself more to Bravo!. I really enjoyed working in the Bravo! kitchen; its well-run, well-organized, and I got to learn a lot of things that I’d never had my hands on before, whether it was making pizzas or baking bread. I started doing things such as that right off the bat. After about the first year I was there, I was making the breads three mornings a week. It was when I went to work at Bravo! that I began to think my career path was leading to the restaurant business.
After a couple of years, I started looking at the culinary schools. I chose Johnson & Wales in North Miami. I knew I had to go to a place to work and earn income because I couldn’t go on full scholarship, I couldn’t go with all the money in the world, and I was going to have to get loans. I went through an advanced-standing program, which let me test in and get on with recommendations for having prior experience. By this point, which was 1997, I’d worked for five or six years in kitchens, so I was able to CLEP-out of the lesser classes, since they had a program for people with industry experience. This advanced program only required me to be there about a year and a half, but it was still a full culinary degree. I went every day, early morning to mid-afternoon, and then went to work at night. I worked at some really good places there. I worked at Mark’s Las Olas for Mark Militello, who was one of the bigger-named chefs in that area when I was there.
I’m a native to Jackson. I grew up here; my dad’s been a realtor here for almost forty years. I grew up on Whitworth Street, and have lived on Belhaven, Manship and Poplar Streets. I love the Belhaven neighborhood, the old houses, the feel of it, and it’s one of the most storied neighborhoods around as well. There’s a lot of appeal to that. I chose Jackson for my restaurant because there are simply more people here who would decide to go out to eat than there would be in a more remote location such as Madison, Ridgeland or Flowood. It’s a tougher sell outside of Jackson. For one thing, you don’t get the draw from outside people in Madison or other places that you do here in the city. Not as many people go out, and you just get your local crowd, but from what I’ve seen people from those areas are more inclined to come into Jackson to eat and then go back home.
When we first came in to this location, we liked the space and we liked the way it looked at night. I really liked the old black-and-white checkerboard floors, which are still here. We kept the ceiling grid, cleaned it and repainted it. I came in and had an idea about what I wanted, how I wanted it laid out, talked to my architects about it, and we ended up gutting the whole place, took it down to four walls. The only wall that was left standing was a four-foot section that had the electrical panels on it. Everything else is brand new.
I really didn’t put a lot of thought into the menu before we opened. I wrote a menu a long time ago and just sat on it. I had a couple of different ideas for what I wanted to do, and depending on the spot I got, I was going to do a different concept. If I’d gotten the place in Madison I was looking at, it would have been completely different. You don’t want to open up something too similar to something else; I wouldn’t open up a wood-fired kitchen here with my buddy Alex Eaton at The Manship up the street, even though I worked with the pizza oven at Bravo! and worked with one at Brick Oven. I wanted to incorporate that somewhere, but it would have been at a whole different end of the culinary spectrum: less of the Creole/French/American that I’m partial to as well, and more to the Mediterranean/Spanish/Italian. That may be one day or not, you never know. I’m content right here with this one place, trying to keep the doors open, keeping the business going and building a good name and reputation as these other chefs and restauranteurs are doing.
The dynamics of restaurants in big cities change a lot more than it does in Jackson, but I like it better here because a lot of restaurants have been around for a long time, which is my interest. You know, in a lot of these cities you have restaurants that change what they do and open up for a couple of years, then they’re happy closing down and opening up another restaurant. But I look at restaurants like Bravo! and Walker’s that have been around for twenty years or longer, and that’s where I want to be. Obviously you progress with the times and you change so you stay relevant. If you can. I don’t want to be one of those restaurants that are open for five or six years and then closes down and does something different. That’s really not what I want to do. The industry is a marathon, not a sprint. The work itself is a double marathon, but it is what it is. I want Lou’s Full-Serv in Belhaven to be relevant for more than a just few years. At the end of the day, what matters is treating customers right and putting a good, well-seasoned plate in front of them that they enjoy and want to come back for. That’s really as simple as it is.
Blue Man on Farrish
