Maxine's Old Country Kitchen

Maxine’s Old Country Kitchen began with one stove and one table, back when Maxine Dixon noticed a vacant commercial building next to her West Jackson home.

“This was empty by my house, so I said, ‘Well, I need to do something because it’s gonna be right by my house, and it’s gonna be run down.’”

And do something she has. Dixon has taken the recipes of her family’s traditions – past down through storytelling – and created a go-to soul food spot.

Find fried chicken collard greens, mac and cheese, cabbage, black-eyed peas, peach cobbler, and cornbread among the staples on the daily plate lunch menu.

Dixon is also famous for her “secret recipe” fried chicken wings “served with love.”

“I’m cooking from the soul, from the inside,” Dixon told Chef Alisa Reynolds in Hulu’s Searching For Soul Food.

Reynolds, in turn, proclaimed this legendary eatery “the real deal.”