Note: Soul Sessions is produced as a podcast first and designed to be listened to. If you are able, we strongly encourage you to listen to the audio, which includes the emotion and inflection meant to be conveyed by human voice. Our transcripts are created using AI and human transcribers, but may contain errors. Please check the corresponding audio before quoting.

PAUL:

What makes a culinary town? Is it the awards, the accolades from national publications, or is it something deeper? The way food becomes a language, a shared history, a reason to gather. In December of 2025, the local palette named Jackson, Mississippi, the South's top culinary town. But anyone who's pulled up a chair at the Mayflower, broken bread at Elvie's or shared a tamale on Farish Street already knew the city's been cooking up something special for generations.

Hey, it's Paul Wolf with a front row seat to conversations on culture from Jackson, Mississippi. We call our podcast Soul Sessions. It's the people, places and events that make the City With Soul shine. On today's season six opener, we're celebrating what makes Jackson's food scene unlike anywhere else through the voices of the chefs, restaurateurs and the food makers who bring it to life.

To understand Jackson as a culinary destination, you first have to understand what we're not. We're not trying to be Nashville or Charleston. We're not hiding from our complicated history either. Chef Nick Wallace addresses that head on.

NICK:

Mississippi has a way to just almost like a chef kiss with the hospitality, the way we talk to you, the way we approach you, the way we serve you. Like everything is full of respect. Mississippi is is stereotype for a lot of the bad messaging across the world. But look, I live here every single day. I'm telling you, we're better than that. And that's not our whole entire story.

PAUL:

That authenticity, that refusal to be anything other than exactly who we are, while acknowledging we're more than our stereotypes, that's what sets Jackson apart. It's in the Delta Tamales at the Big Apple Inn, a restaurant opened in 1939 by Mexican immigrant Juan Mora on Farish Street. It's in the comeback sauce that originated here and shows up on tables across the city. It's in the way old and new exist side by side.

Chef Hunter Evans, whose restaurant Elvie's just earned a Michelin Bib Gourmand recognition, coined a term for his approach.

HUNTER:

I've kind of coined the term Mississippi French. I feel like we're kind of exploring, you know, there's the history of French cuisine all throughout New Orleans and some of the people that came through Mississippi and settled along the Mississippi River. We're taking that influence, you know, what does that look like today? The relationships that we have with farmers and fishermen. How do we use their products?

PAUL:

Mississippi French, taking historical influences and making them completely our own through relationships with local farmers and fishermen from the Coast. That balance between honoring tradition and creating something entirely new shows up across Jackson's dining scene. Chef Damien Cavicchi and his wife and business partner, Mary Sanders Ferris Cavicchi bought two Jackson institutions. Hal & Mal’s and Campbell's Bakery. Damien read founder Malcolm White's book about the restaurant's history to understand exactly what he was taking on.

DAMIEN:

I have a lot of respect for the history of Hal & Mal’s. I read the book that Malcolm wrote as we were in the process of buying it, read it all the way through. And, you know, it really connected me with Hal & Mal’s. As a food destination, I think that we definitely want to keep it true to its roots, but also layer in things that are contemporary.

PAUL:

True to its roots, but layering in what's contemporary. That's the Jackson difference.

If there's one thing you hear again and again from Jackson chefs, it's this. They genuinely support each other. This isn't a cutthroat restaurant scene. It's a community. Chef Enrika Williams of Fauna Food Works describes her friendship with Hunter Evans and how they spent hours nerdy out about something as specific as different types of fruit.

ENRIKA:

We're like friends in real life, but we have such a good time together nerding out about whole… like Hunter is just as excited about varieties of apples as I am. Like, we can go on, like, hours and talk about the most mundane thing about food. And it's really good when you're in spaces, when you, when you collaborate on any level with anything to find people that not only share what you're doing, but they mirror that back to you.

PAUL:

Finding people who can mirror back your own passion. That's what builds a culinary community.

That collaborative spirit showed up on the national stage at the James Beard House in New York last year when Mississippi chefs from the Coast, Oxford and right here in Jackson came together to cook. Enrika was there.

ENRIKA:

I was not surprised at the quality and the level of food that they put out. I was not. I was just more excited that New York and people who came to visit got to experience it and see what we already know. The biggest thing that we took away that I took away from it was just the collaborative and the supported efforts just from people who weren't able to make it to the dinner. They were still there in some capacity.

PAUL:

Even the people who couldn't be there were still there in spirit supporting the effort. That's Jackson.

The Local Palate's designation as Culinary Town of the South wasn't handed down by food critics in a boardroom. It came from two rounds of public voting. Real people voting for the places that matter to them. And Jackson won. The recognition highlights what the Local Palatte called “a dining landscape where long-standing neighborhood institutions stand alongside innovative chefs reimagining Mississippi cuisine.” Think about that range.

You've got Hal & Mal’s serving comfort food in that historic warehouse since 1984. You've got the Mayflower Cafe, Jackson's oldest restaurant, dating back to 1938, now revitalized by Hunter Evans. And you've got Cathead Distillery, where Richard Patrick and Austin Evans aren't just making award-winning spirits, they're creating community spaces, throwing festivals and supporting local musicians.

RICHARD:

What we're offering downtown is really a community place. I feel like any local business has to appeal to locals or otherwise it's not real, it's not authentic and people from out of town don't want to visit if it's not appreciated by locals. You know, we have live music, crawfish boils, various events all the time. It's really become a place, a gathering place to have big productions like CatheadJam is one thing. My mom puts it best. She told Austin and me several times, she's like, ‘You guys really have combined everything that you love and built it into one place.’ And, you know, obviously there's music and just a, you know, family-friendly environment.

PAUL:

Combining everything you love into one place. That's not just about business. It's about building community, but it's not just about restaurants and bars. It's about people choosing to invest in Jackson to change the narrative. Trey Malone of North Shore Specialty Coffee moved back from Los Angeles with a clear mission.

TREY:

The way that people in Mississippi talk about Jackson is the way that people in America talk about Mississippi. And it's our job to change that. Whenever I left, I told my friends like, ‘I'm going to, I'm to be back.’ And always the hope was to make, this place better, make our homes better and to, to invest our, our skills and our talents and our gifts.

PAUL:

Investing your skills and talents here in Jackson. That's what makes this more than just a restaurant scene. It's where a distillery is also a music venue, where a coffee roaster is building community gathering spots, where a chef's restaurant doubles as a culinary education space, where food is never just food. It's connection. It's an investment in home.

So what is all this collaboration, all this authenticity, all this soul actually tastes like? Well, let me paint you a picture through the voices of our chefs. At Elvie's, Hunter's serving braised Mississippi rabbit in a dish called Le Pen Chasseur, Hunter's chicken in French. But he's most excited about his whole fish preparations.

HUNTER:

I love cooking whole fish, reaching out, seeing what's fresh, what was just caught. And we do this really beautiful salt crust dough. Wrap it up. It's kind of like Play-Doh and we can make designs. So looks like a fish, it looks like scales. It's got fins and whatnot. It just is like really fun way to cook fish. The really beautiful way to cook fish. It gets so moist and seasoned without ever actually applying salt.

PAUL:

A salt crust that looks like a fish with scales and fins. That's playfulness and technique working together.

Meanwhile, Enrika Williams is pulling inspiration from everywhere. Pop culture, nostalgia, even gratitude.

ENRIKA:

I was watching Netflix. And so one of my childhood favorite movies, Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, that movie came on and it just brought up so many memories. I just started writing things. So it always starts from some sort of spark. I'm still so excited about learning new things. I always want to tell people thank you in some sort of way. I always want to like pay homage to something that inspired or honor it in a way. And so whenever I'm cooking, that's what I'm trying to do is just to say thank you.

PAUL:

Cooking as gratitude, that's soul food in the truest sense. And look at the breadth of what's happening. At Rowan's and Pulito Osteria, Chaz Lindsay is bringing neighborhood bar comfort and handmade Italian pastas that earn Michelin recognition. At Cathead, they're collaborating with Trey Malone of North Shore Specialty Coffee on the Hoodoo Espresso Martini. And at Hen and Egg, Nick Wallace is creating a family-style feast that bring together chefs from across the country. Nick summed it up perfectly.

NICK:

The talent we have here in Mississippi period is incredible. We have so many talented people from pit masters to fine dining to Caribbean to African. Like everything is on the line here. You know, it's very important for us to come together just like some champs. That's what we are. This is our Super Bowl.

PAUL:

This is our Super Bowl. That's how Jackson's chefs approach what they do with championship-level commitment.

The Local Palate’s recognition doesn't define Jackson as a culinary town. It comes from what we've known all along. From the tamales on Farish to the white tablecloth experiences in Belhaven, Fondren and beyond. From the comeback sauce at the Mayflower to Mississippi French at Elvie's, Jackson's food scene tells our story. It's a story of resilience and creativity, of honoring our grandmothers while pushing boundaries with pitmasters and pastry chefs, distillers and coffee roasters all working together to make the city shine.

So this then is the invitation. Come hungry, come curious, come ready to experience what makes Jackson the South's top culinary town. Not because the magazine said so, but because the people cooking here have poured their hearts, their histories and their hospitality into every bite.

We'll have links to all these restaurants, chefs and The Local Palate article in our show notes. Plus info on where to buy Jxn Food & Wine tickets. That's coming up March 20th through 22nd. Hit us up at visitjackson.com/soulsessions.

Soul Sessions is produced by Visit Jackson, the destination organization for Mississippi's capital city. Our executive producers are Jonathan Pettis and Dr. Ricky Thigpen and I'm our managing editor. You want to know more about the great work we're doing to shine a spotlight on Jackson, Mississippi? You can find it at visitjackon.com.

I'm Paul Wolf and you've been listening to Soul Sessions.

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