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Walnut Hills Restaurant, Vicksburg
Crawfish sauce was the nearest I got to crawfish pie – but I did sample the local catfish at Walnut Hills – 1214 Adams St. and it was delicious.
This restaurant is full of old world charm at its best and serves good Southern Plantation cuisine. It serves lunches at a big round table if you want the community feel. It shuts on Tuesdays. The service was a bit too quick (mains arrived before we had finished our appetisers), but apart from that, it was a good place to go. Get there early though – it gets pretty quiet by 8pm and loses some of its atmosphere.
What's on my Playlist?
This takes you back!
Foodie Firsts
Fried Green Tomatoes with Crawfish Cream Sauce
Local Catfish – served deep fried with purple hole peas (like black beans) and turnip greens (turnips served with the greens chopped up with them – not thrown away as we would usually do)
Juke Joint Tamales – Like a minced beef cannelloni
A pre-dinner cocktail at Rusty’s Waterfront Bar, courtesy of my new friend Mike – driving a replica green Ford Mustang registration plat BULLITT – AKA Steve McQueen.
He treated me to a Pina Colada Martini, complete with coconut fur trim and a marshmallow – “so cute – it looks like a bunny!”
Fascinating Facts
Crawfish grow well in swamp land and are a staple part of the diet here. They were once thought to be inferior crustaceans – food for the poor – and were dubbed “mudbugs” or “trash fish”. The advent of commercial aquaculture in the 1970s along with its aggressive marketing campaigns and investment in high quality production techniques made them big business.
Catfish ponds were established along the flat lands of the Mississippi Delta and crawfish were raised in the rice fields. Sadly though, just as in the days of cotton and sugar cane, factory workers suffered low wages, poor working conditions and punishing quota targets – many suffered from carpal tunnel syndrome. Some things never really seem to change.
Sullivan's Grocery Store
We called into Sullivan’s Grocery Store on the highway – always interesting to look around the local supermarkets. We only bought teabags and some milk (finally!), but you could have walked out with a number of other delicacies (see photos!). They were very surprised when I said I didn’t need a plastic carrier bag and insisted on putting green PAID stickers on my milk and tea bags – how different from the UK!
Glad I Packed
An umbrella, a rain coat and a fleece – it was cold and wet today.
