Crafting a culinary culture By Karen Ott Mayer | Photography by Karen Ott Mayer and bonappetit.com
Eighteen months ago, native Californian Emily Blount dived into Mississippi’s culinary world when she opened Saint Leo in Oxford, Mississippi. And now she and her team will soon cook for the James Beard Foundation in New York City. On a Saturday late afternoon, Saint Leo – located on the northwest corner of Oxford Square – hums with anticipation of the approaching dinner hour. The crisp, clean tables in the slim space will fill quickly in the brief space of an hour. Even with young children at home, Saint Leo, and a new building renovation poised to start, owner Emily Blount appears unflappable. With a wide smile and infectious enthusiasm, she manages an interview while giving brief polite direction to her team, bustling back and forth. A former actress, Blount landed in Mississippi after a circuitous route from California, to Boston and New York-where she performed just off Broadway for five years. With a Southern husband from Jackson, the former actress agreed to consider Mississippi as her next home.
“I had never even been to the South or to Mississippi,” she says. In fact, she has traveled the world and never once thought about the state as an option. “I love New York City. I love the hustle and bustle.” So how does she find Oxford? “I knew it was small, but I didn’t realize how small until now!” But for all things foreign like too much quiet, Blount has truly found her place, her new stage, at Saint Leo where she’s been shaking up the Oxford scene. “I want to serve simple, good food, but the hospitality aspect is just as important,” she says. Even before she arrived in Mississippi, she spent time researching ideas and brainstorming different entrepreneurial ventures, including everything from a bed-and-breakfast to DeSoto 37