Chicken Salad for Days at The Ole Country Bakery in Brooksville, Mississippi.

Can two grown adults be satisfied by a single chicken salad sandwich? At The Ole Country Bakery in Brooksville, Mississippi, Grav and I found one worthy of the highest celebration.

Road Eats Johnnie's Drive In, Tupelo, MS - Where Elvis Ate.

Finding places to dine with interesting stories is just what I do. Oftentimes I have a tip, a recommendation or a suggestion from someone who reads this blog. Sometimes I'm pulled off the road by the scent of something excellent. But sometimes... sometimes it's just serendipity.

It was the end of the Birmingham trip, a Monday morning. We had overnighted in Tupelo after dining in Corinth, and our only set plan was to head back to Little Rock and pick Hunter up from school by the end of the day. Grav has spent a little time in Tupelo, and I had a tip from a year back on a great Italian joint to check out (more on that in a moment), so what was another hour, anyway? Plus, we wanted to scout the Elvis Presley birthplace, in case I decide to return for a story.

Unlike our time in Birmingham, it was cool, damp, muggy. We drove through a mess of a construction zone to get to the Presley birthplace and museum, pulled up... and... well, here's the thing.  A lot of time, reporters work on intuition and have an idea whether a story is going to work or not.  Something told me this was not the day to explore the birthplace of The King. Something in me said "save it for later." Grav popped out, took a few photos, and we prepared to hit the road again.

Except, on the way there, we'd seen a couple of restaurants that had piqued my interest.  Might be because I've spent all this time recently working on my Classic Arkansas Eateries series... but when I notice a certain look to a restaurant's architecture, or notice a name, I mentally file it away for later. And within blocks, there were two such places.  I figured once again, take a few photos, make a few notes, come back later.

And then, when we're sitting in the turn lane on East Main Street, I smelled barbecue. We pulled into a spot next to a sign that mentioned pimento cheese and fried ham. Grav was going to walk in and spot the place, spray it, maybe pick up something for later (as I mentioned, we expected

to write up another restaurant in town) and we'd take off. But moments after I pulled into a spot, a carhop came up and asked if we wanted to order from the vehicle or come inside.

Well heck.

The moment I stepped inside Johnnie's Bar-B-Q Drive In, I knew I wasn't going to leave without a story.  Every wall was covered with memorabilia or this or that. A sweet waitress suggested sitting wherever we liked. And a gentleman sitting in a booth opposite the door offered his seat.

Above that seat was a photograph of a young Elvis Presley.

Immediately, I connected the appearance of the young Elvis with that of the singer sitting with Jim Ed and Maxine Brown at the Trio Club. This was a photo that had to have pre-dated it.  Yes, that was indeed the case.

Though we protested, the very nice gentleman who had occupied the booth (who only really identified himself to us as a "regular") scooched aside and we had a seat. As we sat down the BACs and glanced around, we were regaled by both our waitress and this kind man about the significance of the place.  Seems the young Elvis Presley visited quite often as a youth, sure to dine when he could, but more likely to come with a friend and split an RC Cola.  That seemed like a perfectly natural thing for a young man to do -- even in my youth, I'd walk down to the laundromat or even to the closest grocery to enjoy a cold bottled beverage, back when it was okay to wander at the age of six or seven or eight.

The booth itself, marked "Elvis Booth" (to avoid any sort of confusion, I'm certain), was unchanged from those days. Varnished wooden back, white tabletop, and above all matters of photos, including a large image of Elvis sitting in the booth as a young man. Turns out a gentleman named Paul Cramer took the photo back in 1956, back when Elvis was just starting to become famous.  A note in a cracked picture frame notes that Cramer was traveling as a jewelry salesman, and he was showing his wares to a Tupelo jeweler when a girl came in and mentioned Elvis was next door.  Cramer walked over, saw this was true and asked Elvis f he could take his photo. Once permission was given, the photo was shot. Cramer forgot about it until 1997, when he found the photo amongst his belongings and gave a copy to Johnnie's.

Interesting thing to me is, looking at the photo and the shots Grav and I took inside the restaurant, Elvis had to be shorter than me.  Is that right?  He was reportedly six feet tall and I'm 5'9". Must be a trick of the camera.

All this was very well and interesting, but I wanted to know more about the restaurant itself. Turns out it was opened way back in 1945 by Johnnie Chism, who had just been discharged from the armed services. I understand he built it on the same block where his mom and dad had a grocery.  It's not a big place by any means, but there is outdoor seating up front and of course you can eat in your car, as we discovered.  

What's more, the menu is packed with heritage dishes -- ham fried, baked or boiled; barbecue, of course; country fried steak; toasted cheese and pimento cheese sandwiches.  On the wall, a menu reduces toasted cheese to TC and pimento cheese to PC... which makes one ask about the

AMHB.

"All meat hamburger," our waitress asked, ready for our order.  We ordered drinks and I asked for an egg sandwich.  An egg sandwich sounded fantastic right then, and maybe it wouldn't mess up my appetite too much for the next restaurant.

Grav asked about the difference in burgers, and we were regaled with the story of how back when the restaurant was opened, rationing was still in effect. Beef was one of the items purchased with a combination of money and ration coupons, and to make it stretch further, it was often mixed with flour before cooking.  This intrigued us to no end.  I've been a lot of places, but I had yet to encounter in my adult life a place that still sells burgers this way (I actually remember eating burgers like this a few times as a child). Yeah, we had to try that.

It occurred to me, moments after ordering those sandwiches along with a pound of barbecue for Grav to take home and share with Hunter, that we were in yet another cash-only restaurant.  This particular trip had been hard on our cash, and we pulled out our wallets and my change purse and counted out what we thought was going to be our bill, a bit nervous, since we were very concerned about having enough for a tip.  I mentioned there was still change in my car door we could fetch.

We ogled the whole place a little while we were waiting, but also looked at our phones and calculated the time.  A typical restaurant visit takes about an hour and we had drive time and traffic to worry over.

It didn't really matter.  It doesn't take much time to cook up a flat burger or fry an egg.  In fact, it probably took about as much time to do either as it did for us to whip out our BACs and phones and document the dining at this august restaurant.  My fried egg sandwich was EXACTLY what you'd expect a fried egg on toast to be.  It was fried and eggy.

Okay, I mean, it was exactly what I wanted but there's not much you can say about it.

The burger, though... okay, if you haven't had a burger this way ever, it's very simple -- you take flour and mix it in with the beef when you're patting it out, and you

make it very thin so the grease from the beef cooks the flour.  The key to it being palatable is to add enough seasoning to make it work. And of course Johnnie's has this down pat, else I doubt it'd be offering these burgers any more.  It was satisfying.

Our waitress came out with Grav's barbecue in a bag, and we set out, briefly stopping to photograph the Dairy Kream before crossing town.  Imagine our disappointment to find nothing left of Vanelli's, the restaurant we had expected to try. Turns out Vanelli's had been wiped from the face of the Earth by a tornado less than a year before our visit.  From what's available on the website, Vanelli's will be coming back this year, and we'll have to visit Tupelo again.  Next time, maybe it'll feel right to go visit the place where Elvis grew up.  We still found a story.

Johnnie's Bar-B-Q Drive In

908 East Main Street

Tupelo, MS 38804

(662) 842-6748

Road Eats: Russell's Beef House in Corinth, MS.

I think I actually stepped foot in Russell's Beef House for the first time back in 2006, at the insistence of my friend Kristy. This was before I started writing about food. She insisted I needed to try this local favorite while I was in

Corinth, Mississippi, so I did... and it was good.

Since then, every time I've been through town, I've had to stop in with whomever was traveling with me and have a steak. When I was with folks I was comfortable with, I'd share this particular Sirloin for Two with them. I'm trying to recall if my brother actually tried the steak on his own, but if so, that was back in 2007 and I don't have photos to

prove anything.

In fact, the sad fact that I don't have photos from any of those early visits is why Grav and I decided to divert our trip home from Birmingham to get us up to Corinth for one of these steaks.  Mind you, Siri was plotting against us and tried to send us elsewhere about six times, which is why we saw way more of rural Alabama on the way there before we arrived (we'll be back, Russellville Alabama, you have interesting things) in our epic foggy, wet drive, but eventually we pulled into town and into the soggy parking lot. We were shocked to find that for once, there was not a line to get in. We were also thankful for that... as I mentioned, it was raining.

Inside, the scent of meat roasting over an open fire permeated everything -- from the all-wood walls to the all-wood tables to the not-all-wood wait and cook staff.  If you can't stand the smell of beef, you're just out of luck here.  The effect is to immediately cause one to drool and possibly paw at the ground a bit.

We were escorted to a table in the front section (the restaurant consists of a cavernous collection of wood-paneled rooms), right past the open grill, where meat was happily sizzling away under an expert eye.  We didn't really even need to look at the menu.  I knew what I wanted, and Grav acquiesced that yes, the Sirloin for Two was an excellent choice.  We ordered it medium rare-towards rare, I chose a baked potato as a side and he went for sauteed mushrooms.

While our steaks were being prepared, we slid up to the salad bar and filled our bowls. The salad bar isn't all that large at Russell's, but it's nicely packed with anything you really might want to consume before a steak.  It's located right next to the front door, which means you really do see about all the restaurant has to offer at one time upon entry to the place.

Salads were a good thing, too, cutting the edge off a hunger that had grown in the seven hours since we'd left Big Bad Breakfast on the far side of Birmingham.  No, it

normally doesn't take that long to get from Birmingham to Corinth, but as I mentioned, we'd been sidetracked.

Walking back to the table with the bowl of salad, I noticed the gigantic vats of margarine and sour cream on the bar that's both the register and wait counter for the

restaurant. Baked potatoes are popped open and scoops of the two are slapped inside immediately after steaks hit the plates when they come off the grill, which pretty much allows the waitress to fling them on, pick up the plate and have it to the diner in mere moments from coming off the great pit.

I suppose those potatoes are the reason for the sign overhead cautioning customers to watch for flying potatoes.  From where we were sitting in the front section, we had a pretty good show.  Being a little late on a Sunday night, the crowd was winding down for the
evening, so we didn't notice any potatoes actually flying, but I'd be interested in seeing this happen (I'm told that they'r called flying potatoes because they'll fly right into your stomach, which alleviates my concern over the potential for thrown potatoes ala the thrown rolls at Lambert's Cafe and its knockoffs).

What did seem to be flying, though, were steaks when they were ordered.  They were pulled from a designated refrigerator to the right and brought over quickly to be thrown onto the brick-and-stone grill in the middle of the cooking pit.  There wasn't much evidence of any other cooking than this, but that was fine.  Tendrils of smoke were steadily whisked up and out by a massive overhead fan. The grill master expertly doused each steak with the special house sauce and maneuvered them with great tongs from one side of the charcoal heat to the other.

Russell's Beef House, by the way, is housed in a building built in 1957 by E. N. Howell, who ran a restaurant named after his daughter Kathy there.  It's also been home to the Dairyland.  According to the restaurant's website, Troy Russell came back to Corinth when his grandson, Russell Smith, was born, and decided to open this great steakhouse.  The young boy grew into a restaurateur himself. Russell Smith has not only worked at Russell's Beef House, he and his wife have another restaurant called Smith in downtown Corinth -- which I need to visit next time I come to town (along with Abe's Grill, I'm told).

And in not much longer than it would take to read from where we ordered to this point, our massive plate was delivered to our table, along with an aluminum foil wrapped package of mushrooms, a potato and a basket containing two long garlicky grilled French bread spears.  The massive monster, weighing in at a whole two pounds, spread across the plate and seemed to egg us on to eating it while we patiently, yet still hungrily, managed to shoot it over and over

again.

And this... this is a STEAK.  An inch thick, over a foot wide, glistening and hot.

Dang it, I wanted to eat it right then.

And finally, once Grav had finished shooting it

with the BAC and his camera for Instagrams, after we'd sliced into it and divided it, I finally had that marvelous, rich, slightly peppery steak to eat.  And it was everything I had remembered - perfectly cooked, warm in

the middle and still red, butterknife tender, minimal gristle.  I interspersed bites of steak and potato, saving the salty bread spear for sopping up juices.

We did learn something this time around.  Grav wanted to try the house seasonings and went for a shaker bearing orangish-red granules within. The surprise came when he discovered this cinnamon-sugar mix was for baked sweet potatoes.  Well, you live and learn.

I think we were both full by the time the waitress came back the second time to check

on us and see if we needed more tea.  And yet, half the steak was still there.  We're not complete gluttons -- that was a pound of meat for each of us!  So of course, it went home with us.

It wasn't easy to leave. Though we were cheerily brought our ticket and box, and though the jovial gentleman invited us back, and though the rain had briefly ceased, we found ourselves plopped into the car after shooting the sign outside wishing that Tupelo (our final destination for the night) were just a bit closer, since we were both ready to turn in for the night.  We did manage to make it, smelling what was left of that steak the whole way.

Russell's Beef House
104 US Highway 72
Corinth, MS 38834
(662) 287-5150
Facebook
Website