I took off a few weeks recently. But my staycation turned into an “eatcation,” thanks to the rediscovery of Southern Eatery in Holly Springs, Mississippi.
I’d eaten at the restaurant years ago, but I hadn’t been back after it burned and was under new ownership.
Well, since my first return visit, I’ve been back about seven times.
When you walk in the restaurant, which is on the town square, you’re asked what you want to drink. I ordered sweet tea with lemon. No ice. Then you walk down the line of delights, aka the buffet line, where you select what you want to eat. On any given day your choices might include grilled or fried chicken, black-eyed peas, green beans, yams, potatoes, squash, cornbread, and cobbler.
It’s all delicious. And, to add to the fun, it’s all-you-can-eat.
I discovered Katrina Washington is the owner of Southern Eatery, which is open 10:30 a.m. to 3 p.m. every day at 130 East College Avenue on the town square. That’s all-you-can-eat every day of the week. So I called her and asked her all about this fabulous place.
Washington told me she originally worked part-time for the previous owners, Tom and Linda Stewart. “I was there about nine years before it burned,” Washington says. “So it was maybe a year or two after they started.”
Southern Eatery wasn’t a buffet when she began working there, Washington says. “It was a tad bit different then. They still did all the vegetables and everything like that. We maybe did pretty much the same thing, but we did plate for plate: You come in, order a meal, and we cook that meal. It was from the menu.”
She doesn’t remember when they began doing the buffet, but, she says, “It became, I guess, just easier for the buffet. Doing buffets versus plated lunches. And before they went to the buffet, they were doing lunch and dinner.”
Southern Eatery was popular. “It was one of the very few places that you could sit down and eat, versus fast food.”
Some of the popular dishes back then were baked tilapia and chicken Alfredo, which they still put on the buffet every now and then. “It’s the white cheese and chicken pasta.”
Now that she’s the owner, they also do the baked and fried chicken as well as the meat loaf, roast, potatoes, and catfish. “Everything is from the old restaurant.”
The fire was August 30, 2022, Washington says “It was at night. It wasn’t the actual restaurant. [It was] downstairs.”
Washington thought about buying the place. “After they decided they weren’t going to reopen, I sat them down and had a talk with them. ‘What would they think about me purchasing it?’ They loved it.”
She believes they wanted it “to go to someone who really cared about the place and their history and their vision of it. To serve a good plate lunch. Where you could eat lunch, come down and have a seat, and enjoy a conversation, if that’s what you want to do. A very friendly atmosphere.”
Washington closed on the property April 17, 2024.
I told her that I think the tastiness of the food is what sets Southern Eatery apart from some other places. “We make all our own spices. Our seasonings and everything. We do our own mixture of those seasonings.
“We have our own special spin on a lot of things.”
Born in Chicago, Illinois, Washington moved to Holly Springs with her parents when she was younger. “And I’ve lived here ever since.”
She had just ended a part-time job when she went to work at Southern Eatery, which was hiring at the time. “I had come from a big family, so we’ve always cooked and everything.”
Washington didn’t begin as a cook at the restaurant. “They had a cook. And I was just the person on the line that helped plate the lunch and make sure everything was good. When we switched over to the buffet, we had to adjust a lot of things.”
She was shown the recipes for the various dishes. “And I just kind of helped out for a while. When that person eventually left, I just took over.”
Washington memorized the recipes long before she took over the restaurant. “Most of them I still had in my head.”
But, she adds, “They gave me the recipes, as well.”
Her old customers began returning to the restaurant after she reopened. “They started slowly but surely coming back. We have a lot of our old customers coming back in.”
Asked if she’d ever go back to serving dinner, Washington says, “I don’t think it would be daily, but I really hadn’t thought about that right now. But if I did, maybe one or two nights a week.”
She would like to put sandwiches back on the menu one day. “We used to make sandwiches.”
Sandwiches included chicken bacon ranch paninis, she says. “I’d like to get some of those items back.”
Southern Eatery isn’t Washington’s only job. “I work full-time for the circuit clerk’s office. I’ve been there for 14 years. I just run across the street when they need me. I’m back and forth checking on everything.”
So, thanks to Washington, a Holly Springs culinary institution is back. And I’m very happy about it. “I just hated to see it closed and no one be there,” she says. “And it was such a great place to be. I loved working with them. The community needed it.”