On my last visit to Greenwood, back in April, I had decided to try the Crystal Grill for dinner, and I was thrilled with my meal, one of the very best I had ever had. As a result, this visit, I resisted the temptation to go back to Crystal Grill, in order to try Lusco’s instead. The people at the Mississippi Mo Joe Coffee House had warned that I might not be able to get into either restaurant due to the bike race and the resulting extra crowds of people in town, but I called Lusco’s and was able to get a reservation at 8:30.
Lusco’s is a fairly nondescript, older building on Carrollton Avenue in a fairly rough neighborhood of Greenwood. It looks nothing like the elegant restaurant it is inside, but, like its competitor down the street, keeps a guard at the door, who escorts customers to their cars after dinner.
Inside, Lusco’s consists primarily of private booths with curtains that close, so each group of diners is generally dining in their own private space. As such it would be a great place to take a wife or girlfriend. It’s a very romantic concept indeed.
Compared to Crystal Grill, Lusco’s is somewhat more expensive, and has a somewhat more limited menu, but they have marked similarities, especially the prominence of seafood on both menus, which is fairly odd, considering that the Gulf of Mexico is at least five hours away. I opted for the broiled shrimp, with the famous Lusco’s shrimp sauce, and lump crab meat added on the top. It proved to be absolutely amazing. The shrimp sauce seems to involve at the very least butter and worcestershire sauce, and was savory and delicious. The shrimp and crab came with toast points to sop up the delectable sauce, and my waitress actually brought another whole basket of bread for me to enjoy the rest of the sauce. Unfortunately, the restaurant had run out of baked potatoes, but since the french fries were homemade and cut in house, I didn’t even mind. They too were delicious. Finally, I decided to end it all with a slice of chocolate amaretto cheesecake, which the waitress said was made in-house as well, and it was absolutely delicious.
So, how did they stack up? I would have to say that Lusco’s and Crystal Grill are just about tit for tat. Both are among the best and most memorable meals I have had anywhere, and both offer seafood far superior to anything I can currently get at home in Memphis. Greenwood is worth a visit for fine dining.
It was kind of a rough day, actually. David Kimbrough Jr, son of the late Junior Kimbrough had died on July 4th, and was being buried on this particular Saturday morning, and in addition, a sudden hurricane, Barry, was headed straight for my friends in New Orleans, where massive flooding along the lines of Katrina was feared. R. L. Boyce was scheduled to perform in Merigold, Mississippi for the annual Monkey Day, an event held in honor of the late Willie “Po Monkey” Seaberry, a man who had owned the legendary Po Monkey’s Lounge juke joint in a remote cotton field west of Merigold, so after a breakfast at Moma’s Bar-B-Que in Bartlett, I drove down to Como to pick R. L. up.
Despite the weather warnings, the sun was out, and our drive from Como to the Delta was relatively uneventful. But upon our arrival in Merigold, we noticed that things were quite different from last year. Perhaps the larger Grassroots Blues Festival in Duck Hill, the David Kimbrough funeral, the outrageous heat at last year’s festival and the threat of a tropical storm all combined to keep down attendance, but there were few attendees when we first got to Merigold. There were no food trucks this year either, but Crawdad’s restaurant was open and people could get food and non-alcoholic drinks inside. Beer was available from a tent outside. I noticed for the first time this year that Crawdad’s had a crawfish weathervane on its eaved roof, which is pretty cool.
Lightnin Malcolm had already arrived when we got there, and the day started off being really hot, like it had been last year, but this year, the organizers had provided fans and misting machines under the big audience tent, which was a good idea. And there was a considerable amount of wind this year, which helped with the heat. As time passed, people began to trickle in, and by noon or so, the first act of the day, Terry “Harmonica” Bean, had come on stage. Lightnin soon came and warned us that Jimmy Duck Holmes from Bentonia was not going to make it to Merigold. He said Holmes’ wife would not let him come, and presumably it was the threat of bad weather that was frightening him. At any rate, Bean performed for nearly an hour, and then R. L. Boyce and Lightnin Malcolm came on stage to perform. By that point, there was enough of a crowd that some people began dancing in front of the stage, and some members of the Seaberry family had arrived.
Garry Burnside, a son of the late R. L. Burnside, was next up, with Lightnin Malcolm playing drums for him. Some friends of Lightnin had come up from New Orleans due to the storm, and were in the crowd. They were staying at the Shack Up Inn in Clarksdale and had driven down at his recommendation.
Garry was followed by Lightnin Malcolm’s own set, which was briefly interrupted by a speech from the mayor of Merigold, and the sheriff of Bolivar County. Malcolm performed a mix of his original tunes and some Hill Country standards, before closing with a rousing tune called “Clap Your Hands, Stomp Your Feet.” The outdoor stage ended an hour early, but music was also going on inside Crawdad’s, where I had reserved a table for dinner.
The move inside came just in time, as the clouds began to gather, and the winds began to pick up to the extent that guitar cases began blowing across the outdoor stage. As Crawdad’s specializes in steaks and seafood, I decided to order the filet mignon with french fries, and it was a good decision. The filet was extremely tender, wrapped in bacon, and with a good charcoal flavor, which is rare in restaurants today. It had been marinated with a slightly sweet marinade that clearly had worcestershire sauce in it. The fries were excellent as well, and although I was tempted to try something called Black Bottom Pie, I decided against it. Although the restaurant is truly massive, with rooms upon rooms, it was nearly all filled on this particular night.
Afterwards, Lightnin Malcolm was headed with his friends back to Hopson Plantation at Clarksdale, and R. L. and I were headed back out to Como, but we stopped at Clarksdale for coffee at Yazoo Pass before heading on to Panola County. Although we were concerned about the weather, we managed to stay ahead of it all the way back, and my friends in New Orleans were posting on social media that Barry had been something of a dud.
During this day, I had largely been experimenting too with the Reica Film Camera and Nizo movie-making apps on my iPhone 7, with a goal of seeing if I could cover a typical live music event with just my phone. For the most part, the experiment worked well. I love the Reica app, as its filters are based on historic varieties of camera film, including my beloved Agfa 400, with its brilliant reds and blues. Unlike a traditional film camera of course, one can switch film with each shot, changing from Kodak, to Fuji, to Agfa, to Ilford black-and-white, shot by shot. Of course, the iPhone 7’s camera has some limitations, and when zooming out, there is some loss of detail. But under festival conditions it worked well.
I was even more impressed with the Nizo movie-making app, which makes cinemtographic-quality footage. However, it can automatically string clips together if you forget to export them to your camera roll, and it has to be focused when shifting to different light levels. All the same, I was impressed with its performance, which in some ways surpasses my Nikon D3200. I probably won’t ever have to cover an event with only my iPhone, and its battery wasn’t up to the challenge, having to be recharged for an hour mid-festival. But it’s nice to know that I could if I had to.
I had a vacation day from work, and early in the day, I saw a Facebook post from my favorite coffee brand, Southern Coffee Services in Lexington, Mississippi, which said that their products were now available at the Piggly Wiggly store in Batesville, Mississippi, which is about 35 miles closer to my house than the store in Grenada where I had gotten some last time. So in the afternoon, I decided to drive down to Batesville and pick up some bags of coffee, and then, after debating where I wanted to eat dinner, I decided to drive back up to Como and grab a dinner at Windy City Grill.
Como, Mississippi has a special vibe to it. It has always been a unique place in my experience, perhaps because for a long time Tate County did not allow any liquor, and Panola County did, so restaurants located in Como instead of Senatobia. Como’s Main Street is not only historic, but something of a destination, with five great restaurants, a hotel, an antique mall, an art studio, and an event hall for rental which is the scene of many a wedding.
After shooting some photographs with my iPhone in the gathering dusk, I sat down to a thin-crust pepperoni and bacon pizza, which was so much food that I could not finish it. I asked for a box, and took the rest of it by blues musician R. L. Boyce’s house for him to enjoy.
It was a fun evening in one of my favorite places.
After Eric Deaton left the stage at Bentonia, I wanted something good to eat. Not just fast food. So I had seen a new restaurant on my phone’s Yelp app in the nearby town of Pocahontas, Mississippi called Kelly Ray’s Crawfish, Seafood & Steaks. Not only did it sound like my kind of food, but their Facebook profile showed a picture of what looked like an authentic blues band playing on their stage. I knew that some of the Hill Country blues musicians had played at a place in Pocahontas some years ago called T-Beaux’s, and I wasn’t sure if this was the same place under new ownership or what, but I decided that it would be a good choice. Fortunately R. L. Boyce and Sherena agreed, so we soon headed down Highway 49 in the darkness, past Flora and into Pocahontas.
We had a little trouble locating Kelly Ray’s, as the building still had a T-Beaux’s sign on the front, but we went inside and quickly learned that we were at the right place. Our waitress was in fact a blues fan, and had been at the Blue Front Cafe the night before. They had a small indoor stage, with just a folk singer/guitarist outside on the deck, and our waitress explained that they don’t book live music during the summer, but would start back booking blues in the fall. Soon, some other people that had been at the Bentonia festival also came into the establishment.
As for the food, it was great. Cajun seafood is the specialty, and although I considered getting a steak, I eventually opted for the fried shrimp instead, and it proved to be a great choice. My friends were happy with their meals as well, and we especially enjoyed the friendly, welcoming service at the end of a long, hot day.
Afterwards, with us being only 20 miles from Jackson, I decided it made more sense to go on down there and catch Interstate 220 back to 55, which proved to be far easier than the dark, 2-land road from Yazoo City to Pickens. We got back to North Mississippi with little difficulty.
I must say that lobster is my favorite of all shellfish, despite my abiding love of shrimp. It’s merely the high cost of lobster that typically keeps me away. Of course, on the other hand, a true New England lobster roll is hard to come by hereabouts, and, given my hatred of mayonnaise, I was never particularly eager to try one anyway. However, when Cousin’s Maine Lobster food truck debuted in Memphis, I became aware that there is more than one kind of New England-style lobster roll, and once I read a description of the “Connecticut Roll,” lobster meat with drawn butter and lemon, served warmed on a roll, I knew I had to try one.
So, when I saw that Cousin’s was going to be posted up outside of the Mississippi Ale House in Olive Branch, I decided that this was my opportunity, as it was directly on my way to Holly Springs, where I was headed for the second evening of the Kimbrough Cotton Patch Soul Blues Festival.
What I hadn’t counted on was the line, nor the fact that it wasn’t moving much at all. Apparently the process of preparing lobster rolls is a slow one indeed. Nearly 30 minutes after I joined the line, I finally got to place my order, which I have to say was quite expensive. Of course it is lobster, but I was still shocked at the cost.
Was it worth it? Yes. I have had lobster tails, and loved them, but this was my first time having a Connecticut Roll, and it was absolutely delicious. There was plenty of good, succulent lobster meat on my sandwich, and the tater tots that I got as a side dish were equally delicious. Lobster roll, tots and drink came to $20, and I won’t be doing that very often, but it is very, very good indeed.
As Cousin’s (at least in Memphis) is a food truck, it has no fixed location. Visit their website, or follow them on Facebook to find where they will be each day. For a special treat, it is worth finding.
I had read several months ago that a new restaurant had opened in Grenada, Mississippi called Molly’s Place. I had seen that they shared a courtyard with another Grenada restaurant called Orleans Bistro, and that Molly’s had on at least one occasion booked live music. So, in the hopes of finding another place for my jazz group to play, I decided to head down to Grenada for dinner.
Grenada, unfortunately, has seen better days. Many of the buildings around its square are vacant, and there is a considerable amount of abandonment. Molly’s proved to be in a block where an uncertain downtown revival seems to be fighting to be born. There are rental lofts on the square nearby, sort of an AirBnB kind of thing for tourists, and a few restored buildings that house an art gallery, some local businesses, and the bar and grill. The restaurant proved to have an aviation theme, and the inside was fairly dark, modernistic and sleek. Unfortunately, the menu was quite limited. I had intended to order a hamburger, but I soon learned that Molly’s does not have bacon to go on a burger, so I decided to opt for something else. I ended up ordering the ribeye, which was fairly expensive, but it was in fact quite good, despite ribeye not being my favorite cut of meat. It came with french fries that were also quite good, and a decent crowd of locals was gathered at tables and around the bar.
The person I would have needed to speak with about booking music was not there, but the bartender indicated that when summer came, they would be booking some music for the outdoor courtyard.
After dinner, I decided to do some driving around Grenada before heading back, as this is a town I have rarely spent time in. The main thing I noticed was the degree of desolation and abandonment throughout the downtown area. Down a street, I came to the ruins of the Pioneer meat packing plant, and then into a warren of tiny, run-down hovels that looked like a throw-back to a different (and worse) era. People were out and about within the area, but I decided that it was probably not a good place to attempt to take pictures, and I headed out.
The railroad depot was absolutely amazing. It was built in 1870 by the Mississippi and Tennessee Railroad to replace one that had burned, and is probably the one thing in Grenada worth seeing. Made of brick, it is a rare two-story railroad station, with large, long platforms on each side. In the early evening, it seemed eerily quiet and almost abandoned, although it is still in use.
Far to the east, I came upon a road where there were some large night clubs like the Rolling Stone, a laundromat and some convenience stores. But nothing much seemed to be going on, so I rolled on. Highway 51 however was a different story, with a lot of cars and people about. Wilson’s Electronics, the record store, was still open, with a lot of cars parked in front, and I debated going inside, but I decided against it. Further north, near downtown, there were a lot of people in and out of a game room on a side-street across from a store. But the place seemed to be primarily a pool hall and not a live music venue, so I gave up on finding any nightlife on a Friday night in Grenada, and headed back to Memphis instead.
Long before the expensive, luxury burger chain Shake Shack appeared in New York and other large cities, Marion, Arkansas resident John Tacker opened a restaurant alternately called Big John’s or Tacker’s Shake Shack. I had driven past it many a time, but rarely ever found it open, as I was usually on that end on Sundays, when they were closed. As far as I knew, it was just a local fast food place.
But after having their delicious fried pies at the Art on the Levee event at Waverly Plantation a week before, I realized there was far more to the Shake Shack than fast food fare, and sure enough, I found the place charming, filled with all kinds of rock and roll memorabilia. The menu was loaded with many different burgers, and so I chose a bacon and cheese burger which was absolutely delicious. Then, even though I had originally intended to have another fried pie, I noticed a chocolate chip pie and decided to have that instead. Both my burger and the pie were quite delicious, and I saw that the Shake Shack also serves breakfast and catfish. The signature item is a burger called the Sultana, named for a famous shipwreck in the Mississippi River, which consists of an egg, bacon, chili, hashbrowns, two pounds of beef, and lots of cheeses. Those who win the challenge get their pictures on the wall of fame.
Unfortunately, I learned that this was the next to last night for the historic Shake Shack. Although they were not closing for good, they were constructing a new building, and Friday would be their last night in the old building. They would be closed for about a month as they transitioned into the new building. (They have since reopened in the new building).
Years ago, the Airport Grocery was both a great steak house out on Highway 8 west of Cleveland, Mississippi and that city’s best blues venue. The Delta bluesman Willie Foster even recorded a live album there. Unfortunately, at some point, the restaurant shut down its old location with its unique ambiance and relocated to Highway 61 North between Cleveland and the nearby suburb at Renova, and since that time, live music at Airport Grocery has been largely a thing of the past.
However, at least the food remains quite good. Prices are reasonable, and the burgers and steaks are delicious. The atmosphere, with old signs and artifacts from a by-gone era, is charming, and oftentimes, if there is not good blues music on stage, there is at least good blues music playing overhead.
Altogether, while I would love to see Airport Grocery return to booking live blues, I can certainly recommend it as a great place to get food on your music pilgrimage through the storied Mississippi Delta.
I usually enjoy myself quite a bit at the annual Juke Joint Fest in Clarksdale, but this year’s festival was both wet and harried, as it poured down rain most of the day, and as I was scheduled to perform with Duwayne Burnside twice.
Upon arriving in Clarksdale, I found that the festival authorities would not allow me to park in the performers’ lot because I didn’t know the password. So I had to park down by Yazoo Pass coffee bar, and I managed to get there for a toffee cookie and a latte. But by then, the rain had really picked up, and I wanted to check out the new restaurant that had taken over the old Pinkbar on John Lee Hooker Street, the Hooker Grocer & Eatery.
With no umbrella, getting there took some doing, using shop awnings as cover where possible, and I still managed to get quite wet. Then, with the restaurant being new, Hooker Grocer proved to be packed to the rafters, with people waiting for tables. Ultimately, I managed to get seated, but the menu was fairly limited, expensive and strange. I ultimately opted for the burger, although without the mustard sauce or pickles, and to my disappointment, they didn’t serve bacon, nor french fries. What I got was a relatively dry burger with cheese, no accompaniments, and a canned drink, for nearly $20. That being said, I loved the blues-themed decor of the place and its atmosphere. Their dinner menu looks more interesting if I ever have the time or inclination. A young woman was inside the restaurant selling R. L. Burnside and Junior Kimbrough T-shirts, hand-made, but she didn’t have my size, and it was nearly time for me to perform at the Cat Head stage. However, now the rain had started in earnest, coming down in torrents, and I with no rain gear nor umbrella. Eventually, it slacked up enough that I felt comfortable heading to Cat Head, where the show was still going on bravely, under a tent that periodically would grow heavy with rain and then deposit it over the heads of the fans. I learned there that due to the rain I would likely have no trouble getting my car into the area to unload equipment, so I struggled back to the parking lot where I had parked the car, and then drove back down to the Cat Head stage.
By the time I got equipment unloaded into Cat Head store, it was just about time to set up and perform. There was very little room for a keyboard, but I managed to get set up, and Duwayne gave a rousing performance as best he could, while water occasionally poured down from overhead on amps, keyboards and our heads. I had left my keyboard bag inside the store, and suddenly, I looked around behind me and realized that the store had closed at 5 PM, which led to immediate panic. With the bag locked inside the store, I would have no way to put my keyboard back up afterwards, or protect it from the weather. Fortunately, when we finally finished performing, I learned that someone had thoughtfully brought it outside before the store was locked. And the rain had stopped enough that I was able to load up and head in search of dinner before my next performance.
Restaurants tend to work from a limited menu during Juke Joint Fest, which annoys me year in and year out, but I managed to get seated at Levon’s with less difficulty than the previous year. Last time, they had been serving their normal, full menu, but this year, to my disappointment, they too had created a limited JJF menu, but at least their signature pizzas were on it. Sherena Boyce soon joined me, and we enjoyed a leisurely dinner before we had to head to Pete’s Bar and Grill for my second performance of the night.
Pete’s is an old hole-in-the-wall near the Riverside Hotel, which normally does not have live music, but which makes a great setting for blues. On this particular night, Garry Burnside kicked off the evening of music, and I was not scheduled to perform with him, but he invited me to sit in, and I agreed. David Kimbrough, son of the late Junior Kimbrough, also came and sat in. He had been sick and some were not expecting him to be there, but he performed and sounded good. With Duwayne, we played until about 11 PM, and it had started raining again.
Sherena said she was going by Red’s Lounge to check on her dad R.L., but I loaded up my equipment and headed out back to Memphis, with lighting flashing off to the west. Although it had been a wet and somewhat frantic day, I was pleasantly content.
After two performances in Belzoni, I was thoroughly hungry and somewhat tired. Belzoni had only one sit-down restaurant as far as I could see, but it was closed, either due to the gridlock caused by the Catfish Festival, or perhaps closed for good. So I knew I would have to go elsewhere for dinner, and I had considered heading to Greenville, Indianola or Greenwood. Greenville was a little bit too far, and Indianola I had been to frequently, so I decided to head to Greenwood in order to try a place I had never eaten before.
Ultimately, I chose a 75-year-old restaurant called the Crystal Grill, located across from the main Amtrak railroad station in downtown Greenwood. The rain was coming down, and I almost feared that the place might be closing for the night. But fortunately, they were still open, and inside, there was a still a good-sized crowd of diners in the back dining rooms.
The atmosphere was bright and cheerful, and when I saw the menu, I was amazed at the various choices, and the relatively low prices. Ultimately, I chose a grilled redfish, with lump crab meat on top, and a baked potato with butter, bacon and cheese. Redfish is one of my favorite types of fish, and this one was so large, it nearly filled my plate. It was flaky, and delicious- the best I have had since I visited The Goode Company Texas Seafood in Houston many years ago. I had expected a normal baked potato with cheese, bacon and butter, but what I got was something quite different- the potato had been baked, then scooped out, and the butter, cheese and bacon had been mixed, then put back into the potato shells and baked again. It was quite delicious and I ate all of it.
Now thoroughly happy, I opted for the perfect finish- a slice of homemade cheesecake in a delicious graham cracker crust. When I left to go to my car, the doorman asked me how it was. I told him truthfully that I had just had one of the best meals of my life.
