Greenwood - The Alluvian Hotel

We visited Greenwood on our "Grand Tour of the Delta" years ago and really enjoyed our time there. One of our favorite memories was seeing the famous Alluvian Hotel, where we took a brief, but impressive, tour of the public areas. What a cool hotel! Minimalist in the best sense of the word, with beautiful art and flower displays, modern furniture, and marble-floored public areas that aren't cold or off-putting. It was so impressive that we decided we wanted to stay there someday. And, someday finally arrived!

We got to Greenwood about mid-afternoon and, while our carb coma was wearing off (slowly), we were still far from energetic. We checked in – easy enough since we had booked online – and set off to have a look around town, beginning on Howard Street, since that's where the hotel is. Our first stop was just a few doors down: Made in Mississippi – a great store full of interesting and beautiful things...an absurdly large number of which one or both of us already own, given our propensity for buying anything that is made in or shaped like Mississippi. There was much to admire there anyway though, including some stunning local pottery.  The Mississippi Gift Company

After that we just walked around, admiring everything in the windows of the Viking store (which was, sadly, closed for the day) and oohing-and-aahing over charming old buildings. Greenwood is very clean, and they have a lot of brick sidewalks and crossing strips; these things add a lot of refinement to downtown's overall look.

And thank you, Greenwood, for saving these old painted ads! There's a certain charm to them.

We were particularly impressed with the courthouse, which is not only massive, but really beautiful.

And, like almost every Southern courthouse, there is a Civil War Memorial.

Once all the stores closed, we began looking for the restaurants on our list. No, we weren't hungry – at all – but there are four famous restaurants that we have never tried, and we hate to miss any opportunity. One restaurant of interest was at the hotel, Giardina's. Its reputation precedes it, and it is definitely a place we would like to dine, but we really wanted to try one of the old-timers, one of the places people are either asking us about or scolding us for not having tried. 

At the top of our list was Lusco's, a real icon; any restaurant that can stay in business for over 80 years deserves a visit! We had hopes of sitting in a curtained off booth just for the experience, having missed the whole Speakeasy era and everything. Unfortunately for us, we were there on a Monday and it is closed on Monday. (Mondays, by the way, are second only to Sundays for finding things closed, but we couldn't alter our travel dates.) So, we decided to visit Crystal Grill, another local icon, but with pie! For the last fifty years or so, they've been known for their pies with “mile high meringue.” That sounds nice, although probably not as nice as the pie part, and as we all know, there is always room for pie, so it only made sense to go to Crystal Grill.

Imagine our surprise when we saw the sign on the door saying they were on vacation.

We had another good option, however, in Delta Bistro. So, even though we weren't hungry, we were able to convince ourselves that if we didn't eat now, we would be hungry later. We went in and found a very modern restaurant full of young Foodies – always a good sign. We opted for appetizers: cups of shrimp bisque along with a salad for Marian and crab cakes for me. Then, for reasons we can't really explain, we decided to share a piece of the lemon pie they are famous for. The food was really good, but we should have stopped with the soup. Actually, we should have grabbed a couple of those green apples the Alluvian sets out for guests and just dropped by the Bistro for a drink. As it was, we made ourselves totally miserable, a stupid, stupid thing to do. So, we waddled back to the hotel and settled ourselves in our room.

And it was lovely. Lovely room, lovely dressing area, lovely bathroom. So nice. We both have stayed at more luxurious hotels, but there is something really special about The Alluvian. We discussed this at length and finally decided that there is just a zen quality about the whole place. So quiet. So soothing. It is really a wonderful experience to stay there.  Check out the "The Alluvian Hotel" 

The hotel itself is rather small - there are only something like 45 rooms, plus a few suites and loft apartments, and maybe that's why it seems to run so smoothly. The few other guests we saw appeared to be there on business; the only staff we saw were at the front desk - a smiling, friendly desk clerk and an equally pleasant bellman. There's no hubbub; the hotel is refreshingly quiet.

Since our room was so nice, we wanted to just enjoy being there. So, we tried to force ourselves to stay up and read and watch TV until the sun went down – yes, that was our goal, and a pitiful one at that. However, we couldn't even attain that small goal, so we finally gave up and just closed the curtains. The bed was super comfy and the linens luxurious, so we woke up totally refreshed. The Alluvian has the whole "comfortable night's sleep" thing down pat.

Needless to say, we were up early the next day, feeling good and ready to hit the road. Incredibly, given the events of the previous day, as soon as we showered and dressed, we took the elevator up to the top floor for breakfast. Yes, we did.

Breakfast is included, so we expected the standard feast of inexpensive carbs, and we vowed to restrain ourselves...to just eat a little something. Breakfast is served in the Terrace Room.  It's beautifully done and, like the rest of the hotel, has a quiet elegance about it. It was sprinkling rain so we didn't get to sit outside and enjoy the view, but the room itself was perfect. And the view of the buffet was fantastic!

photo courtesy The Alluvian Hotel

What a great breakfast! Great tasting food, beautifully served. Eggs, bacon, potatoes, biscuits, gravy, bagels, juice, fruit, scones...there they all were, waiting for us. It was the same basic menu that many other hotels serve, but the preparation and quality were a cut above; everything we tried was delicious. But, as nice as it was, it probably seemed even nicer because it was at The Alluvian with its zen-like decor, its upscale clientele, its invisible staff, and us. Just perfect.

The Help Tour in Greenwood

We've been to the Delta - Greenwood, actually. We really packed a lot into this trip, including a tour of the places where they filmed the movie "The Help". We missed a few stops on the tour, but we had so much fun that we'll be back!

"THE HELP"

Given that the movie came out years ago, we almost blew it off from lack of interest. Really, we just took the tour as kind of an afterthought, but we're so glad we did! We relied on the color brochure, “The Help in Greenwood. A star-studded tour through the filming of 'The Help' during summer and fall 2010.” It's available all around town and includes a map and photos, and it's really easy to follow, so who could resist? And, by the way, although the featured houses are actual homes and are not open to the public, tours of the interiors can be prearranged.

Since we were setting out from The Alluvian hotel, which is downtown, we stopped by the County Courthouse first. We'd been admiring its clock tower from blocks away and had driven past often enough to see that it is a real beauty, so we would have stopped to take pictures anyway, but it turns out it was used for exterior shots for The Benefit. Remember The Benefit, where sweet, drunk Celia was abused by mean Hilly and mean Hilly got her comeuppance with the pie?

Sure you do!

While we were downtown, we worked in a quick photo op at the “Junior League of Jackson,” which is really the Mississippi Garden Club Headquarters (401 East Market Street). Yet another lovely old downtown house that someone had the foresight to save.

From there, we drove over to 613 River Road, where Skeeter's interior shots were filmed. What a gorgeous house! The pictures really don't do it justice since they can't capture the setting...a lovely old shady Southern street...a river view...trust us on this.

Next stop was Grand Boulevard, a lovely residential neighborhood and home to the infamous Hilly Holbrook. Okay, really 413 belongs to the Johnson family according to our “paperwork,” but that's beside the point; it is a gorgeous house! (And, by the way, they have carted off all those toilets.)

Hilly's friend Elizabeth, it turns out, lives right down the street. Well, the Leefolt home is at 1101 Poplar actually, but they're awfully close. I don't remember it looking so big in the movie, but it's really a huge house, much larger than it appears in the photo.

LITTLE ZION M. B. CHURCH

Our next stops were supposed to be Minny's and Abileen's houses, but for some reason the GPS – into which we had loaded all the addresses we wanted to see – sent us to Minny's and Abileen's church instead. At first, we were disappointed (and a bit confused), but we were soon distracted by the charm of the place. Not only is it the sort of old country church that warms your heart, but we are both suckers for old  church cemeteries. This particular one is not only charming in the way of rural church cemeteries but, according to the sign, it may be the final resting place of Robert Johnson. For anyone unfamiliar with The Blues, it was Robert who famously sold his soul to the devil – at the junction of Highway 61 and Highway 49, no less! – for the ability to play the guitar better than anyone ever had.

And those soybeans growing right in the front yard aren't something you see everyday!

SKEETER'S HOUSE

The church is located on Money Road, and since we were all the way out there anyway, we decided we wouldn't go back into town, we would just swoop by the house used for the outside shots of Skeeter's home, including the shots of Skeeter's and Constantine's conversation in the yard. We were just hoping the house and yard would be visible from the road, so imagine our surprise when we spotted this sign on their fence. (You can't read the bottom part, but it invites you to tour the yard.)

Can you believe it? Only in Mississippi. Anyway, we are not ones to argue when things are going our way, so we turned right in. It's a loooong driveway – that wasn't a camera trick – and so we puttered along, admiring everything until we got to the front of the house, which we just had to stop and admire separately. It is truly lovely...the house, the setting, their Fourth of July decorations, just everything.

TALLAHATCHIE FLATS

From there we moseyed down the road to Tallahatchie Flats, another plantation-cum-hotel similar to Clarksdale's Shack Up Inn. It's another brilliant example of "making do," something Mississippians are quite good at, thank you. Collect a few old sharecroppers' cabins, plumb them, wire them, add a window unit air conditioner and a good bed and rent it out..We didn't go inside any cabins here, but having stayed at the Shack Up Inn, I can assure you the cabins are as honest as they can be and still attract guests. Blues fans love the opportunity to "live the Blues," if only for a night or two. 

The Flats sit just off the highway, down a red dirt road. And for what it's worth, there is nothing - except perhaps the slam of a screen door - that tugs at the hearts of Mississippians like the sight of a red dirt road. There just isn't.

Tallahatchie Flats is surrounded by soybean fields. And, when we say surrounded, we actually mean surrounded. Soybeans are everywhere in the Delta. Well, everywhere cotton and corn aren't.

These are some of the cabins/hotel rooms, all lined up and complete with porch furniture. The outhouse is for effect (we hope).

The plantation's old commissary is now Tallahatchie Tavern, which we understand was very popular with The Help's cast and crew. So popular, in fact, that they chose it for their wrap party. There appeared to be a store on the grounds as well, but we were running short on time and couldn't nose around as much as we might have liked. And we really would have liked to snoop around the whole property. Although neither of us grew up in the Delta, there are things still there that are so familiar that we find ourselves instantly transported back to our childhoods, and sometimes that's just not a bad place to be.

Greenwood - Indianola - Leland - Greenville July 31, 2009

Day 1

GREENWOOD

We got an early start for our “See the Delta” trip – we’re always a little concerned about allowing enough time for all the side trips we want to take. As it turned out, we were in Greenwood by 10:00 a.m. because there wasn’t anything enticing along the way. There were plenty of enticements in Greenwood, however. There is a nice little shopping strip downtown (Howard Street), with cute stores that all seemed to be having sales. Add to that the fact that it was “no tax day” there, and the buys got even better.

Greenwood’s Alluvian Hotel is on the same street, and I must say, it’s snazzy. It’s also pricey, but for folks coming to do business with Viking (which is right across the street), the hotel has to be a wonderful surprise. The lobby is striking in a very contemporary/almost-minimalist-modern sort of way, and the ladies’ room is gorgeous – really beautiful. The Viking Spa is also across the street. While that wasn’t on our agenda, it must come as another wonderful surprise to travelers.

We had wanted to tour Florewood River Plantation, but sadly, it’s closed – apparently due to some disagreement between the owners and the state or something like that. It’s a shame, as it got great recommendations and looked really interesting. We had to appease the tourist in us with a trip to Cottonlandia Museum. It was interesting, but in a school field trip kind of way. Nice stop, but once is enough unless you have little ones with you.

INDIANOLA

From Greenwood we moved on to Indianola for lunch. We were looking forward to eating at The Crown, Evelyn Roughton’s downtown restaurant. She catered Amy May’s wedding in 1994 (Amy is my goddaughter, the daughter of Karen Cooper and Robert May), and I still remember the food because this woman is so fabulous. She makes a catfish pate that is out of this world. I used to buy it at a specialty store here (that, sadly, went out of business) and I’ve really missed being able to serve it at parties – the look on people’s faces when you tell them that they haven’t been eating smoked salmon, they’ve been eating catfish is priceless. (People from other parts of the country, especially the east coast, are afraid of catfish, you know. A friend in Chicago actually thought they were poisonous. Despite that, I’ve been told that her catfish pate has won national awards at some of the big food shows. I guess food critics are more savvy.)

Anyway, we had a wonderful lunch and it’s a charming place. The restaurant exhibits the work of local artists, and has a small toy store and book store. They prepare catfish every way but fried, serve yummy beer breads with the meal, and they had a dessert table (for $2!) that contained no less than 6 pies, a trifle, and a pavlova. They serve prepared versions of the prepackaged mixes they sell (Taste of Gourmet), so it’s kind of a tasting. Also, Evelyn is the hostess-with-the-mostess that every restaurateur should be.

We walked around downtown Indianola and saw BB King’s hand and foot prints on the sidewalk at the spot where he first played for locals when he was just 17.

Then we took Evelyn’s advice and drove along the bayou. What a surprise! We didn’t really know what we were looking for, but we certainly weren’t looking for a swamp in a nice neighborhood. That’s what is it though. It’s just off the downtown area, and it is a long body of standing water with cypress trees and their knees sticking up out of the water. (Did you know that the knees rise above water to take in oxygen? I read that in a tourist brochure.) There are also bird houses planted on long sticks in the water (gotta be to lure mosquito eaters). The water is covered with some of the loveliest slime I believe I’ve ever seen – a beautiful shade of bright, light green, and as gross as it sounds, it’s very appealing. (Karen says that it is probably duck weed, a real problem, so I guess it’s not always green.) But it’s just so unexpected to come upon a sight like that! I couldn’t help worrying about mosquitoes though, what with all that standing water.

Marian -- This picture of the Bayou can be taken anywhere down Main Street in Indianola. You can see the bird/duck houses on stilts in the water. The light green is slime, the dark green is lush grass...beautiful, but, also unsettling. Something made a ripple in the lime green slime just as we got out of the car. I choose to believe that it was a frog -- Kermit?

LELAND

Next stop was Leland, Mississippi, and the Kermit the Frog/Jim Henson museum. Marian’s got a thing for Kermit; I’m a Miss Piggy fan myself. The nice woman at the museum was incredibly knowledgeable; she knew a lot about Jim, and she really knew her muppets. We had our photo made with a giant Kermit, bought a couple tee shirts and were on our way.

GREENVILLE

We got to Greenville about 4:30 and checked into a new Hampton Inn near the country club. What a nice hotel! We dropped off our stuff and then headed across the Mississippi River to Lake Village, Arkansas, to a store that is supposed to offer fabulous shopping. Sadly, it was a mecca for “Made in China” housewares, so we soon came back across the bridge.

Speaking of the bridge, it’s very old and doesn’t inspire a lot of confidence, but there is a new bridge being built that is spectacular. I imagine the Mississippi is hard on its bridges, what with the current and all.

On the way home, we stopped at Warfield Park Landing and climbed the lookout tower to get an incredible view of the Mississippi. Now, all things are relative and this is the Delta, so the “tower” is really only three or four stories high. Still, it doesn’t need to be any higher – we could see for miles! There was also an old, rusting paddlewheel boat parked not far from the “tower.” It was built in 1924, and had a full and busy life before being purchased for $1.00 and brought here. Hopefully, they will come up with the money to restore it while there’s still time. It would be a shame to lose it.

By this time, it was nearly 6:00, and we had 6:30 reservations at Doe’s Eat Place. For years (decades, maybe) we have both heard how wonderful Doe’s is, how it has the best steaks in the world, blah, blah, blah. Seldom does anyplace that gets such hype live up to it, so we were wary, but determined to eat there and put an end to thinking about it. I do believe that Doe’s is all it’s cracked up to be though. I’ve never had a better steak. Ever. It was incredible. Marian had fried shrimp (the only way I don’t like shrimp) and her shrimp was delicious. So light and flavorful, I could hardly believe it.

That said, the place gave us a fright. It’s rumored to be a dump, but that’s almost flattering. It’s the only place I’ve ever been where I would eat their food, yet didn’t want to use their bathroom. You enter through a kitchen – a really hot kitchen – with stoves going and supplies piled up everywhere. Then they seat you. There are several rooms: the side room, which you can find because the wood sign over the door says “side room,” the back room (same thing), a main room, and a few tables along a wall in a second kitchen. That’s where we sat, in the second kitchen. Our table was right on the dividing line between the kitchen and the main room, and it sloped down toward the main room. I sat on the kitchen side, but Marian sat on the main room side and she looked about two feet tall. The table came way up her chest.

The waitress came to us with a pitcher of water, and then stood there holding her tablet and pencil and looking at us. We looked back, but we didn’t know what to do. Finally, we told her we hadn’t gotten a menu, and she said that was because they didn’t have menus. She reeled off a few things and I ordered a filet and Marian ordered shrimp. I have no idea what all our choices were, but from my handy-dandy kitchen seat, I did see spaghetti, shrimp pasta, tamales and a few other things go out.We were right by the big stove where this woman cooked batch after batch of fries that had obviously been hand-cut. She had a cast iron skillet going, and that’s pretty much all she did. They were wonderful. Another woman dipped and fried shrimp. Other people buttered bread and toasted it, etc., so we had some entertainment with our dinner.

We also got a good look at their pans, and they aren’t for the faint of heart. There is so much grease cooked/caked on the outside that I don’t believe it is even possible to clean them. Seriously. I’m glad I couldn’t see the inside. What I could see was everything under and behind the stove (I’m looking into hypnosis to help me forget what I saw), and the walls and ceiling, which had electric cords running all along them. Some were in metal tubes, others just painted over. I don’t know how the place has stood so long (the sign says since 1941) without burning to the ground. It’s a miracle, a real miracle, but so was that steak. I can’t get over it.

Marian here...I have to second Susan's assessment of Doe's. To all of those who told me that Doe's has "gone down" since their heyday....obviously you were speaking of the building...NOT the food! The shrimp was better than I've ever had on the coast...any coast, any where, any time. I tasted Susan's filet. WOW....melt in your mouth, no seasoning to mask anything, 3" high and fork-tender, filet. The food definitely was fabulous. The building is still etched in my mind. The two are not a match! The wall we sat next to leaned toward the street ....the outside of the building appeared to have had a new coat of paint...maybe the paint will keep that place together -- this place needs to be preserved!

Marian and I headed back to the Hampton Inn then, fat and happy, and slept like logs despite the fact that – lucky us – we had gotten to town in time for a Little League baseball tournament and the hotel was full of 9 year olds!