drink coffee and chat about local history. “We don’t talk about politics or religion or current events,” Taylor grinned. “Remember a rule of the Delta: things can change as long it stays the same.” At The Hollywood, local farmers eat lunch next to the gamblers, who like to sample the house specialty, which has appeared on the Travel Channel and in countless newspaper stories. The story goes that the dish was hatched on the spot late one night in 1970 when a drunk came in to sober up and the food was almost gone. Tait Selden sliced up some dill pickles, battered them up and threw them into a fryer. A legend was born. Now they go through a five-gallon tub of pickles a week. The restaurant itself had a humble start. Originally in the tiny hamlet of Hollywood, the place started as a venue for a local band, the Turnrow Cowboys, to play. After a fire destroyed the original, it moved to its current location, a quaint 1922 farm commissary. Through the years, people operated a cafe there, but the big draw was the musicians who played on evenings and weekends. In 2007, John Almond
and Michael Young bought the building after Almond watched a group of Illinois customers snap pictures of a mouse. They were feeding
“We get a lot of traffic from the casinos and a lot of word of mouth.” - CHARLOTTE MING
crackers to the rodent and it kept bravely returning through a hole in the baseboards. “It just wasn’t being run the way we thought it should be.” The two men then renovated everything,
including the kitchen. The outside still bears the unmistakable design of the blocky old commissary. Inside, you can still see the lines on the exposed brick wall where the old shelves used to be. After a wedding reception, they held onto the decorations: bare tree branches strung with twinkling lights. Belly up to the bar and you’ll see too many rings to count. It’s made from what Almond estimates is a three- or four hundred-year-old slab of lumber. Nearby, left over from yet another event, is a HOLLYWOOD sign like the one that sits prominently on the hillside above Los Angeles. If you can’t bring yourself to try the pickles, there are plenty of other options: Fried catfish, shrimp or chicken; fried frog legs, burger, BLTs with fried green tomatoes. At night, they serve steaks, shrimp cocktails and wine. iPad Extra: Download the Deeper South App to see diners wolf down at the Blue and White in Tunica
Home cooking keeps customers coming 119 back to the Blue and White. Photo by Thomas Graning