Death by lunch
David and I spent today sightseeing, and the first thing we did was drive south to Mississippi and have lunch. He found a place called Dale’s, which has been there for 44 years in a burg called Southaven, so that’s where we went.
Dale’s is a monument to southern cooking, but I think I have to live on salads for a week to atone for what I did to my body at lunch.
The restaurant has plastic coated tablecloths and an old fashioned look you don’t see in California.
Sugar shaker and lots of Sweet’n’low. I hate Sweet’n’low.
Observe the packages of “butter”.
Buttery taste spread. Another phrase for yellow salty grease.
The menu has more fried food than I have ever seen. This is the appetizer section:
We ordered the Fried Green Tomatoes, and loved them. They come with ranch dressing, and “Lillie’s tangy tomato sauce”, which is kind of like russian dressing with horseradish. I really liked it. In fact, the fried green tomatoes were probably the hit of the meal.
Fried green tomatoes with ranch dressing and Lillies tangy tomato sauce.
Picking an entree was more difficult, but I managed to pass up on this one:
Chicken Fried Chicken was just too much for me.
I had the fried (what else?) catfish, which came with hushpuppies, creamed corn and candied yams.
The hushpuppies were fantastic, the best I’ve ever had. The catfish was tasteless, the candied yams were like a bowl of sugar and the corn wasn’t much better.
In fact, if you gave a 2 year old a bowl of sugar and a spoon he couldn’t eat as much sugar as this meal contained. The cornbread was sweet. All the food was sweet. I know sugar can be used as a preservative, so perhaps I will now live forever.
David had the fried chicken, and got the largest chicken leg I’ve ever seen.
Fried chicken, fried okra and mac n cheese.
The chicken was good–David gives it an 8.5. The yellow stuff on the plate tasted like macaroni and Velveeta. I don’t want to know anything about fried okra.
We had to try dessert, because what better way to top off a huge meal of grease and sugar? I had the lemon ice box pie, which is some sort of lemon pudding in a graham cracker crust with cool whip on top. Didn’t care for the cool whip, liked the rest.
Lemon Ice Box pie
David opted for the strawberry pie.
Fresh strawberries, strawberry jam, graham cracker crust and undefined white stuff on top.
The very best thing about Dale’s, though, was our waitress, Keke. Pretty, bright, funny, helpful, not too scornful of a couple of rubes from the left coast, we fell in love with Keke.
The best waitress in Mississippi
If you’re ever just over the border from Memphis and hungry, head for Dale’s. Ask for Keke, get the fried green tomatoes and extra hushpuppies. You can’t go wrong.
Totally Unauthorized 
We ate at a place like that in Georgia like that. “Like your grandmother’s cooking”, it touted. Not MY grandmother’s cooking, but Jack was in hog heaven.