A Delta Legend
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B Y M I R I A M TAY L O R
oe’s Eat Place still sits at the end of Nelson Street, its dilapidated exterior a fit for the neighborhood, all the glory of Greenville’s past melted into fading clapboard houses and potholed asphalt. It’s a little past seven on a Friday night and the parking lot is packed. In a neighborhood where yards are cluttered with rusty cars and bordered by broken-down fences, new Lexus, BMWs, and Mercedes fill the vacant lot used for parking. Men and women from as far away as Jackson and Memphis come for a taste of the tamales, the salads, the meatballs and the steaks — steaks whose seasoning rival any restaurant in the country, steaks that at their thickest measure three inches. Tamales, that strange little treat from south of the border that has become a staple of the Mississippi Delta, also lure guests from every corner. Outside, the night is cool and quiet, the only sound the occasional screen door slamming or a car backfiring. But inside the kitchen it is hot and loud. Orders are tossed back to the cook, and every now and then a guest lingers by the stove to comment about the steak or the Ole Miss game. It’s been 70 years since Doe’s opened, but while conversations and crowds may have changed, the same familial atmosphere present in 1941 prevails today. G ARRET H BL ACKWEL L
Charles Signa loves top recount how the humble ramshackle house became a legendary restaurant.
* * * “Well it started out because Daddy was a civilian worker out at the air base in the thirties,” recalls Charles Signa, 63, son of
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