SHOW DESCRIPTION

Guillermo Salinas grew up in a small fishing village in Mexico before a Belhaven University art scholarship brought him to Jackson in 2013. Today he's the pastry chef and chocolatier behind Just Vanilla, a family-run bakery operating out of Duling Hall in Fondren. In this episode, we introduce you to JXN's Table, hosted by Geno Lee, who sits down with Guillermo to talk croissants, bonbons, and how nearly two decades of cooking trained him to taste flavors in his mind before they ever hit a pan. It's a conversation about creativity, community, and why Jackson's culinary scene still has room to grow.

TRANSCRIPT

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.

INTRO

Paul

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.

If you've spent any time in Jackson, you know the food here isn't just good — it's personal. It carries history. It carries identity. And nobody embodies that more than Geno Lee, the chef and fourth-generation owner of The Big Apple Inn, one of the most storied restaurants this city has ever known.

Geno is hosting a limited series podcast for us called JXN's Table, and the premise is simple: Jackson's culinary scene is one big, connected experience shared across a single table. Each episode, he sits down with the chefs and people behind the kitchens that make this city's food culture what it is.

On today's Soul Sessions Extra, we're handing things over to Geno for his first full episode — a conversation with Guillermo Salinas, the pastry chef and chocolatier behind Just Vanilla, working out of Duling Hall in the heart of Fondren.

JXN's Table is on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, YouTube, and wherever you get your podcasts. Go find it and pull up a chair.

Here's Geno Lee…

Guillermo

You build up enough flavor profiles in your mind that even without tasting something, you can taste it in your brain, right? Brain's really cool that way. Because we have a simulator that's from our fight or flight reflex where you can simulate a flavor without ever tasting it. Like, for instance, I bet you've never had a cilantro ice cream. No, I haven't, but you just tasted it.

Geno

I did, I did. Yeah. That's it. That was good.

Guillermo

So the more you're involved with things and the more you get to do things, you can rely on a lot more of just — I've never tasted these flavors together, but I can simulate it. And I think that this is how it would work. And then I just executed.

Geno

Hey there. I'm Geno Lee, the chef and owner of The Big Apple Inn here in Jackson, and we want to welcome you today to our podcast, Jackson's Table — a place where we love for you to come and learn about our local chefs, our local cuisine, and our local places to visit. And today we're so pleased to have our own Guillermo Salinas at Jackson's Table. Welcome, Guillermo.

Guillermo

Thanks for having me.

Geno

G, or Billy, what do you go by?

Guillermo

Mostly G. I don't know if you can say it. Yeah.

Geno

Why G? Because people can't say Guillermo?

Guillermo

People can't say Guillermo. And then I started saying Billy, but that was kind of like my mom's nickname for me. And then it just kind of got out of hand. So I've been kind of going back — no, no, no, no.

Geno

I love Billy too. That's — I know. You know, it's funny because my great grandfather opened a restaurant here 87 years ago, and his name was Juan. But people in the South couldn't say Juan, and they called him John.

Guillermo

John. You know, that typically happens.

Geno

Well, that's neat. Tell me a little bit about yourself.

Guillermo

Well, I'm not from here originally. I was raised in Zihuatanejo, a small little town.

Geno

I love that.

Guillermo

Yeah. Zihuatanejo, Mexico. Do you know what it means? No? It's hilarious. It was actually named by the Spanish. When the Spanish came over, they were looking specifically for gold. They came to this little fishing village and found no gold. But they found lots of women. So the name means "land of beautiful women with no value" — because they found no gold, but lots of beautiful women.

Geno

Oh my goodness. I know the women love to hear that.

Guillermo

You know, I know.

Geno

"No value." Yeah. So how long have you been here in Jackson?

Guillermo

So I came to Jackson for Belhaven. I got a scholarship for the art program and came here in 2013. I've been here pretty much since then, except for a year gap when my wife and I moved to Houston, where I worked at the Post Oak which was great. But Covid happened, and that just kind of shot all of the food industry. And she was in dance — she was actually in a dance company, so that got shot too. We were also about to have our firstborn son, so we were just figuring everything out. We always wanted to go back to Jackson. We love Jackson, but we left because she wanted to get into a dance program, which they didn't really have here. And I told her I can get food anywhere — but this was her season. We knew Jackson was going to be on our horizon. We just didn't think it was going to be that fast. But we came back in 2020 and have been here since.

Geno

Wow. So when you came back, what got you into the food scene, the culinary scene?

Guillermo

Well, I've always been in the culinary scene here in Jackson. Even when I first got here — I was studying at Belhaven, but I was also working. I say part time, but I was working 30 to 40 hours a week at La Brioche when they first opened up in Fondren, and I was their sous chef. So I knew a little bit of the scene then because I was kind of in it. And when I came back, I was just seeing what everything was doing. We had a lot of new chefs come in — Pultio had not opened yet, Elvie’s had just been opening up, and I knew both of them. And a lot of coffee shops were also starting to pop up. And I was noticing there wasn't a lot of pastry in Jackson. So when we came back, I started from ground zero. I worked with my father-in-law, who had a coffee company, and I started there — coffee and pastries go together. Then I started working out of my house, doing the farmers market, doing pickups every Friday with preorders. And I told people in Jackson, if y'all want this, get me out of my house. And so they did.

Geno

So the name of your business is Just Vanilla. What do you call this, your home away from home?

Guillermo

Yeah. Just Vanilla was kind of a fun, tongue-in-cheek thing. One, because people will just say, "oh, it's just vanilla" — like it's nothing. But it's one of the most expensive spices out there. It actually has one of the largest ranges of flavor profiles — more than wine. So "just vanilla" is not just anything. And it's also one of my favorite flavors. But another funny thing about vanilla — do you know where it's native to?

Geno

No.

Guillermo

It's native to Mexico.

Geno

Is that why we can get it so cheap there?

Guillermo

You can get it cheap there because they make it there. And it's probably one of the best. The flower itself is like an orchid. Now Madagascar is one of the larger producers, but Mexico was the original source.

Geno

I always wonder, because whenever I'm in Mexico, I always buy big.

Guillermo

Yeah. I just came back, and I bought as much vanilla as I possibly could.

Geno

Just vanilla.

Guillermo

Just. Yeah.

Geno

So you're from Zihuatanejo?

Guillermo

Yeah.

Geno

And came to Jackson. What a great background. I love that story. Make sure you continue to tell it. That's what people love to hear. And that's what I love about the Jackson culinary scene — we all have our different backgrounds, our different stories, our different histories. So now you have a shop right here in the Fondren area. Tell us about that. What do you do here?

Guillermo

We do a lot of things here. We're known for our croissants, and we do chocolates — probably one of my favorite things. But beyond croissants and chocolates, we do a lot of wholesale. We supply to a lot of restaurants in the area and a lot of coffee shops. We also have a retail shop. And now we've opened up a coffee shop downtown in the Regions Building. My father-in-law, my sister-in-law, and I — it's a family business. My father-in-law is our coffee roaster right now, and we're doing coffee downtown. Probably the best cup of coffee you can get. Not just saying that, but yeah — we do as good as we possibly can.

Geno

Is that one of your coffees you're drinking?

Guillermo

This is one of our coffees, yeah. But we get our beans from a local supplier now, because we lost our roaster a couple years ago. So we're working with a coffee called Campervan Coffee — they're out of Madison, locally here, and they do single-batch coffee. We use their coffee here, and then we use another roaster out of Oxford called Velvet Ditch. We're using a couple different ones. There are so many roasters popping up that what we don't have in Jackson is baked goods. So we're focusing on just baking, and using the roasters that are around us. That's the cool thing about Jackson — use the resources around you. We have great restaurants, great coffee shops, but there's no pastry. I'll fill in the pastry. We have great roasters all around the area, so there's not a whole lot of need for us to be roasting. We can make the coffee that they're roasting. We're trying to have a symbiotic relationship with as many people around here.

Geno

It's not only filling a need, but I love how you described this space. It's kind of difficult operating here with all these different levels — right now we're in like the basement, and then there are more levels, we go up a ladder to get to another place. Tell me about the building and the space you're in.

Guillermo

Yes. So we're in the heart of Fondren, in the Duling Hall building — that used to be a high school, back about 20 years ago or so, that's now been repurposed into a concert venue, two restaurants, a ticketing agency, and a beauty salon. All in just this little area. And our bakery. We have to talk to each other because Saltine manages the bar. They use our space at night when there's a big concert. So we have to clean up so they can use it. But we're also just helping each other out with different things we need. And it feels — before coming to the United States, I worked mostly in hotels. Luxury hotels, where I got to learn from a bunch of different chefs from a bunch of different places. A lot of French chefs are executives at those luxury properties — it's kind of a thing. And they bring in all their friends: Spanish, Colombian, Italian, German, Dutch. I worked with a lot of them. So I like this building because it feels like a hotel. A hotel is that same self-sustaining ecosystem where you have different chefs, different restaurants, different outlets, different events happening constantly. I was able to take that model — what a pastry department would be in a hotel — and put it in Duling Hall.

Geno

Oh, that's cool.

Guillermo

So we do weddings, specialty things, amenities. We supply to restaurants around the area, and we have a little shop where you can stop by, get a cup of coffee, and get a fresh baked good.

Geno

Wow. Well, when I first met you a couple years ago, I was telling my daughter — she's a social influencer, but isn't everybody these days — I told her about you, and the first thing she said was, "Daddy, you've got to look at his Instagram page."

Guillermo

That's all.

Geno

Incredible. And so you're a great pastry chef. I mean, you're an artist. Tell me — where do you come up with these ideas to — I'm not going to say bake, but to create?

Guillermo

To create. That part comes a little bit easier to me, I'm not going to lie. One of the things I learned early on, even getting into food, was: what do I enjoy doing? I like working with my hands. Turns out I'm better than most people — I don't know if that's true, but I don't stop. There aren't a lot of barriers that keep me from doing stuff. So the creative part is more of just having an idea and executing it. I think most people have the ideas, but they stop themselves from executing because of fear, because of anxiety. Whereas I just get in. And if I make it or if I don't, that's fine — I'll do it again. I've always had that. And baking is especially that way, because you have to start from the bottom — cutting stuff, mise en place — and it builds you up to the point where you get the confidence to say, yeah, I know how to execute that. You build up enough flavor profiles in your mind that even without tasting something, you can taste it in your brain. The brain's really cool that way. We have a simulator from our fight-or-flight reflex where you can simulate a flavor without ever tasting it. Like, for instance, I bet you've never had cilantro ice cream.

Geno

No, I haven't.

Guillermo

But you just tasted it in your brain.

Geno

I did. Yeah. That's it. That was good.

Guillermo

So the more you're involved with things and the more you get to do things, the more that simulator gets wider. You can rely on it — I've never tasted these flavors together, but I can simulate it, I think this is how it would work, and then I just execute. Sometimes it turns out, sometimes it doesn't. But I've been doing this for almost 18 years now. You get to the point where you can trust the simulator pretty well. The creative part comes easier to me because I've been doing it my whole life. I don't know what it is to not create. But I've talked to people and they just can't get past that point. So I've found out that that's a strength I have. But like you were saying about Instagram — I can take photos. I'm terrible at posting and timing and all of that. That's why I have my front-of-house manager, Tessa. She takes care of all of that — the marketing. My father-in-law does a lot of the bookkeeping and a lot of the other things. So we split things up by strengths — whoever's better at it.

Geno

Well, Tessa does a great job. You know, a lot of people eat with their eyes. And I like how you talk about eating with your mind first — you get the idea of what it is, and your mind simulates it. And right now I'm having a hard time because you've been playing videos over here, and I'm eating with my eyes, eating with my nose — oh my goodness, it's talking to me out here. So tell me, what do we have here today?

Guillermo

So I have an array of different things that we do. I'm known for my croissants — I got hired at the Post Oak because there was an executive French chef, and I did a 24-hour tasting. They had a bunch of different stuff, and one of them was croissants. After the interview, he took me aside and said, "All right, now we're going to talk, because we had the whole kitchen come in and taste everything . And I'll start with this: your croissants were phenomenal. Everything else — we'll talk about it." So I got the approval from the executive chef on the croissants. And so I have a guava and cheese croissant, and I have a chocolate almond croissant — we're known for our almond croissants. This one is a classic. So the regular ones — we take the ones that have dried out a little bit, re-soak them with a rum simple syrup, fill them with almond cream, and bake them again. Double-baked, with chocolate. Sounds dangerous. And then I have this cheesecake, because we supply to a couple of different restaurants. One of them is Louise's down the street in Fondren — the piano bar. They have this raspberry cheesecake on their menu. I do a slightly different take — a layered cheesecake. We've got a layer of graham cracker crust, a traditional vanilla bean cheesecake, and then a layer of mousse — in this case, raspberry. Topped with a little cream. And then bonbons. That's another thing I love — chocolate. I love working with it as a medium. And it just tastes phenomenal. So I have three different types. The first bonbon is a 64% dark chocolate with a Mexican hot chocolate ganache. The yellow one is a 33% white chocolate with a mango ganache and a guava paste on the inside — we call it our tropical. Some people call it the Pikachu because of the color.

Geno

Yeah.

Guillermo

That one was actually inspired by my son — he looked at it and said, "Oh, those are Pikachu." And then this is probably one of my favorite chocolates. It's a milk chocolate — 41% Ilunga chocolate. It's on the higher end of cocoa percentage for a milk chocolate. A lot of milk chocolates start losing that chocolate quality as the milk content goes up. This one retains the feel of a 64% dark, but with the creaminess of a milk chocolate. It's filled with dulce de leche and a little bit of Verona crunchy pearls for texture.

Geno

Oh, that sounds great. So it's more than just — well, I know you do.

Guillermo

Tongue in cheek, like I said. Just vanilla? Oh my goodness. Yeah.

Geno

You know, we have a multitude of great restaurants here in Jackson — especially for being such a small city, we have a lot of culinary offerings. I like to call this next section "Love at First Bite." G, what is one of your favorite bites, or one of your favorite dishes, that you've experienced here in the Jackson area?

Guillermo

Oh, this one's a hard one. I'm going to go with my gut. I think probably Pulito's has some of the best bites I've had. They had a truffle dinner one time — everything was with truffle — and it was probably one of the best dinners I've ever had, period. I only had bites in the back, but I'm just going to use that entire event as probably the best bite I've had in Jackson. Chad does a lot of pop-ups like that.

Geno

He does, he does. And I can see that. One time I was there — you know how Chad is, whenever you're eating he just keeps bringing more stuff to the table.

Guillermo

Yep, yep, yep.

Geno

And he did a truffle spaghetti. He said, "I just got these fresh truffles," and he put this pasta right in front of me and just started shredding.

Guillermo

Just bring those truffles.

Geno

And that's all he did. Yeah. And it was the best bite.

Guillermo

Truffles do an amazing thing to food. It's like salt — salt can just bring a dish up. Truffles do that, where if you do it just right, it just pulls out so many different flavors.

Geno

Well, that's a good Love at First Bite. Thank you, G.

Guillermo

You're welcome.

Geno

Well, Guillermo, thank you so much for joining us today at Jackson's Table. And remember — at Jackson's Table, you will always find a seat.

Paul

That was JXN's Table with Geno Lee and Guillermo Salinas of Just Vanilla. If you enjoyed that conversation, go subscribe to JXN's Table wherever you get your podcasts — and keep an eye out for new episodes as the series continues.

Soul Sessions comes to you from Visit Jackson, the destination organization for Jackson, Mississippi — the City With Soul. Our executive producers are Jonathan Pettus and Dr. Rickey Thigpen, and I'm Paul Wolf, managing editor and your host for these conversations. Stay current on all things Jackson at visitjackson.com. If you have a question about Jackson or a story idea you'd like us to explore, send it our way at pwolf@visitjackson.com.

Thank you for listening, and I'll talk to you next week.

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