by John T. Edge
Milo Carlton opened his first burger stand in 1946, on Birmingham’s Northside. Milo’s primary business was hamburgers, thin disks of meat, swabbed with a deep brown slurry that reminds you of both A-1 sauce and the peculiar barbecue sauce that local Greek-owned diners ladle on hot dogs hereabouts. French fries sprinkled with an orange-hued seasoning salt and iced tea stoked with a cane field of sugar formed the core of the menu. During the late 1970s, his little burger stand was so popular that Milo began leaving the closed sign up all day long, secure that he would get all the business he could handle from the regulars who knew to come rap on the window.
Over the course of the past fifty-plus years, Milo’s has become a localized chain of more than a dozen locations. Though I have long been a fan of their tea, I did not come to know of its wider availability until very recently when I spied a plastic, orange juice–style pint back behind the counter at Mike’s hot dog stand in Homewood. It turns out that in 1989 Milo’s began packaging its sweet tea in gallon jugs and selling them in local grocery stores. In 1997 they added pint servings and began selling those in local restaurants.
Milo’s now brews tens of thousands of gallons of tea each week, and demand is spiraling ever upward. The tea is viscous stuff, deep amber in color, and as sweet as a clump of church lady’s divinity. Truth be told, it may be too sweet for you, dear reader, but I can’t think of a better belly wash to follow a vinegar-drenched barbecue sandwich or an onion-capped chili dog.
MILO’S SWEET TEA IS AVAILABLE AT WESTERN SUPERMARKETS
AND OTHER OUTLETS IN BIRMINGHAM AND ENVIRONS.
Decatur
BIG BOB GIBSON’S BAR-B-QUE
Don McLemore, proprietor and grandson of founder Big Bob himself, is a student of barbecue, an aficionado of sauce styles and wood types who collects bottled sauces like some men collect stamps or coins. He makes it a point to stop at every barbecue joint he passes on the roadway. “I’ll eat a little bite as I go,” he tells me, seated in the cavernous dining room of his family’s ranch-style restaurant. “I might stop at four or five places in a day when we’re traveling. For me, it’s like research. It’s good for my business, good for my barbecue.”
Big Bob’s old place, soon after they installed that famous neon pig with the dancing feet.
Over the years, inspired by his travels, Don has introduced a few new twists on the old smoked meat theme, items like barbecue salads and barbecue stuffed baked potatoes. But his real accomplishment has not been so much innovation, as the cultivation of an experienced team of cooks. “Jerry Knighten is still in charge of the pits,” Don tells me. “He started working for my grandfather as a dishwasher back in 1945. I think he was sixteen at the time. You won’t find anybody better at it.” One taste of Big Bob’s tender pork shoulder meat, and you’ll say a silent prayer for his continued good health.
But Mr. Knighten isn’t the only long-serving employee here. Mattie Johnson is moving a bit more slowly these days, but she still clocks in every morning at 4:00 A.M., just as she has done since she began working for Big Bob back in 1948. Mrs. Johnson makes the pies that make Big Bob Gibson’s famous. Not long ago this spry septuagenarian underwent surgery for a rotator cuff injury, sustained no doubt while rolling out crust number 229,337, or something such as that. Chocolate, lemon, or coconut—take your pick. As for me, I dote on the coconut, with its jiggling core of creamy custard and bone-white border of flaky crust.
I’m also a fan of their white sauce, a mayonnaisey concoction, thinned with vinegar and shot through with black pepper. It has the consistency of the runoff that seeps from a mound of coleslaw. I love the stuff, slathered on barbecue chicken, poured on top of French fries; hell, it’s a good salad dressing. Rarely found outside of northern Alabama, the sauce is a Big Bob original. But, unlike much of what makes this barbecue joint so great, no one remembers the story behind the sauce. “I’m just about positive it started here, but I can’t tell you when we first made it, or who first made it,” says Don. “I know it was after 1925 when my grandfather opened up. But even my mother can’t remember when it was.”
1715 SIXTH AVENUE SE / 256-350-6969
Dora
LEO AND SUSIE’S GREEN TOP CAFÉ
Like many of the working-class folk of north-central Alabama, Leo Headrick spent much of his adult life toiling in the local coal mines that fed the iron furnaces of Birmingham, first in the Maylene mine over in Shelby County and later in the Maxine mine in Walker County. When he retired in 1973 with his pension, his wife, Susie, hoped he’d take it easy for a change. “He came home one day and said he was going to buy the Green Top, and I said to him I was against it right off,” Susie told me. “Of course, that was a long time back. Now I like to tell people that he made two good decisions in life: marrying me and buying the Green Top.”
At the time the Headrick family took over operations in 1973, the Green Top had already been open for more than twenty years, earning a reputation as the destination of choice for fine smoked pork and icy cold beer. “It used to be that this was one of the last places to stop off and get a drink before you hit the Mississippi line,” recalls present-day manager Richard Headrick. “When my father took over, well, he was a real promoter, so he started pulling more folks in with all his shenanigans.” Richard’s mother, Susie, remembers that Leo “liked to get tipsy and sing for anybody who would listen. His favorite song was ‘I’m Gonna Be a Wheel Someday,’ by Fats Domino.” I ask her if he played guitar, too, and a man at a nearby table shouts up at me, “Hell no, son; he couldn’t play a guitar, but I saw him play a broom every once in a while.”
Ever since Leo passed away back in 1996, regulars say that the Green Top has become a little less raucous, though it retains the feel of a 1950s-era roadhouse. Situated at the crest of a hill, the cinder-block building claims two trucker strip joints as neighbors: the Sugar Shack and the Boobie Trap. George Jones and Tammy Wynette are in heavy rotation on the jukebox. And a long bar still stands at the center of the government-green dining room, where more often than not, you’ll find a local boy with a snootful, elbows propped on the counter, scarfing down an oversized barbecue sandwich.
Like his father before him, Richard is a pitmaster of the old school, who cooks pork shoulders fourteen to sixteen hours over hickory wood, and then hacks the meat into little crusty chunks before piling it on a bun and ladling on a catsupy red sauce with a pepper kick. Hand-cut French fries, sweetish coleslaw, and a longneck Budweiser complete the feast. Ask nicely, and Richard might even rustle up a plastic cup and pour you a beer for the road.
7530 HIGHWAY 78 / 205-648-9838
Huntsville
WATERCRESS CAPITAL OF THE WORLD
We Southerners dote on greens. Collard, kale, beet, mustard, turnip, rape, poke, dock, and lamb’s quarters are just a few of our favorites. And while most any Southerner worth his salt pork can talk intelligently of collard or turnip greens, watercress—with its peppery bite—is, for many, a cipher among Southern crucifers.
But there are provinces of the South where it was once known well. Drive east from Huntsville on Ryland Pike toward the burg of Gurley. Along Hurricane Creek, within sight of Mary’s Barbecue, you’ll find a patch or three of watercress. The green is not that hard to spy, if you take the time to look, for it flourishes in lowlands and on creek banks hereabouts.
Not too long ago watercress bogs were easier to spot. During the first half of the twentieth century, Huntsville was the epicenter of American watercress cultivation. The local limestone springs were part of the draw for the Dennis Watercress Company, which at the height of its production, hand-harvested and shipped more than 2 billion bunches of cress to wholesale and retail customers including Brennan’s in New Orleans and the White House in Washington, D.C.
Today, little evidence of that heyday remains. Few Southerners still cook with watercress. Sure, it’s often cited as one of the pureed greens in the original oysters Rockefeller from Antoine’s in New Orleans. And you see watercress and cream
cheese sandwiches at a few tea rooms. But the case of Antoine’s is peculiar. And as for those tea rooms, they are usually fey affairs, dolled-up imitations in the English tradition. No, when watercress was favored by Southerners it was likely to play a part in a salad of killed greens.
Some people might call the dish wilted salad. I prefer the more countrified appellation, killed salad, because it more accurately represents the preparation technique: toss various fresh lettuces and greens in a bowl, adding a bit of chopped white onion, maybe some green onion, too. Fry a couple strips of bacon until crisp. Crumble the bacon over the lettuce. Add a bit of vinegar to the hot fat remaining in the skillet. Stir, adding a dash of sugar and pepper. Pour the hot liquid over the salad until, well, it’s pretty much dead. And then garnish with slices of boiled egg.
Mobile
**Eugene Walter** Gastronomic Gadabout
If the title “patron saint of Mobile” does not exist, then I would make a strong argument that one be established and posthumously bestowed upon Eugene Walter. A native of the Azalea City, he worked as a novelist, poet, essayist, artist, lyricist, actor, designer, translator, humorist, botanist, epicurean, philosopher, and imp. He published numerous chapbooks of poetry, acclaimed collections of short stories, prize-winning novels, and treatises on culinary history that will stand the test of time. Though the term is often overused, Walter was a true Renaissance man. His work in the broad field of culinary letters was intelligent and playful, worthy of comparison to the best of M. F. K. Fisher.
In the 1953 novel The Untidy Pilgrim, Walter introduced the world to a delightfully skewed vision of his native city. “Down in Mobile they’re all crazy, because the Gulf Coast is the kingdom of monkeys, the land of clowns, ghosts and musicians, and Mobile is sweet lunacy’s county seat,” he wrote. Throughout his life Walter espoused the virtues of good food and drink. Of Mobile natives he observed, “It’s a toss-up whether they rank the pleasures of the table or the pleasures of the bed first, but it’s a concrete certainty that talk follows close after.”
* * *
“
In Rome I live as I lived in Mobile. On my terrace garden I have five kinds of mint, five kinds of onions and chives, as well as four-o’clocks and sweet olive.
”
* * *
While in Rome, Italy, Walter ate and drank with a group of friends that included Federico Fellini. He worked as a translator on several Fellini films and wrote the lyrics for the song “What Is Youth?” in Franco Zefferelli’s film of Romeo and Juliet. And yet, no matter where he might be, the love of Southern food and frolic remained at the core of his being. “In Rome I live as I lived in Mobile,” he wrote. “On my terrace garden I have five kinds of mint, five kinds of onions and chives, as well as four-o’clocks and sweet olive. I take a nap after the midday meal; there is always time for gossip and for writing letters.”
Walter’s dedication to the Southern culinary arts brought him back home in 1969 to write American Cooking: Southern Style, the best of the Time-Life Foods of the World series. In succeeding years, he wrote about the foods of the South for numerous publications, including Harper’s Bazaar and Gourmet. In his later years he wrote an overlooked jewel, Hints and Pinches: A Concise Compendium of Herbs and Aromatics with Illustrative Recipes and Asides on Relishes, Chutneys, and Other Such Concerns. Illustrated with Walter’s fanciful pen-and-ink drawings, the book is a fun house encyclopedia of the culinary arts. One of his color-saturated drawings from that period is on display at Rousso’s Restaurant, a seafood warehouse in downtown Mobile. It depicts a regal lady attired in a purple and gold striped skirt, her hand resting on an oversized fork as if it were a scepter. The caption reads: “The Devil’s dear Grandmother pondering what menu to serve when she invites Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell and Jesse Helms to dine in Hell with Hitler and Mussolini.”
Eugene Walter was interred at Mobile’s historic Church Street Graveyard on April 2, 1998, after a spirited wake. He was seventy-six years old. A line from one of his Monkey poems might serve well as a panegyric:
We’ve eaten all the ripened heart of life
And made a luscious pickle of the rind.
Indeed he did. Indeed he did.
MORRISON’S CAFETERIA
Cafeterias were all the rage in New York and Chicago when Mobilians G. C. Outlaw and J. A. Morrison opened the first Morrison’s in the fall of 1920 at St. Emanuel and Conti Streets. It wasn’t the first cafeteria to open in the South—Britling’s in Birmingham purportedly enjoyed that distinction—but it was the first such establishment to introduce a decidedly Southern wrinkle, waiters. Outlaw and Morrison couldn’t imagine asking one of their lady customers to select her own fried chicken and mashed potatoes, stewed tomatoes and butter beans from a steam table and then haul the tray back to her seat. It just wasn’t proper. Instead, they stationed white-coated waiters at the end of the serving line who, for a small tip, toted trays to the tables.
Morrison’s was an immediate hit. By 1921 a second location opened in Mobile and a third in Pensacola, Florida. Others quickly followed. At the height of Morrison’s success, the chain claimed more than 150 locations scattered throughout the Southland. Alas, Morrison’s is no more, the victim of an aging customer base and a changing Southern palate. The death knell sounded back in the spring of 1998, when the company announced it was selling out to a relative upstart, Baton Rouge, Louisiana–based rival, Piccadilly.
Home of beauty queens and sourpusses alike.
WINTZELL’S OYSTER HOUSE
A relic of the days when oysters were trencherman’s fare, consumed by the dozen while leaning against an oak bar, Wintzell’s is—in the best sense of the word—a rude place. Though founder Oliver Wintzell, his gray hair always trimmed to a buzz, a fat cigar protruding from his pugnacious face, passed away in 1980, his irascible spirit still presides here.
Hand-lettered placards tacked to every conceivable surface announce old man Wintzell’s many philosophies. “If you are in a hurry, we will mail your lunch,” reads one. “Diplomacy: The art of saying, ‘Nice Doggie’ until you can find a rock,” reads another. Somewhere among the tens of thousands is the very first one Wintzell ever hung on the wall, not long after he opened in 1938. It reads: “A man can sometimes get a pearl out of an oyster, but it takes a pretty girl to get a diamond out of a crab.” By the 1970s Wintzell’s witticisms were taking on a more political tone, and soon he was running for local and state office on the oyster ticket. “I will be prepared at all times to shoot from the lip and be quick on the drawl,” he promised in a thirteen-point platform released during a campaign for county sheriff.
All wordplay aside, make no mistake about it, Wintzell was serious about oysters. In the restaurant’s heyday, he owned his own oyster beds at nearby Portersville Bay and employed several oystermen whose sole job it was to harvest the mollusks for sale in the restaurant. Even the placards owe their origin to Wintzell’s devotion to oysters. “Well, customers used to ask me a lot of questions,” he explained to a newspaperman some years back. “It was hard to answer them and get the oysters opened, so I started the signs to get across some of the information they wanted. Now they keep so busy reading, they don’t ask questions.”
Soon after Wintzell’s death, the restaurant went into a decline, changing hands a couple of times and then closing for a while. Long-term employees like master oyster shucker Willie Brown, a veteran of more than thirty years behind the bar, were furloughed.
In 1996 Wintzell’s reopened after a gentle refurbishment that preserved the patina of old. Soon after, Willie Brown returned to shuck. More recently, Wintzell’s has opened lesser branch locations. Locals grumble, but the gumbo is still dark and murky and good. And the West Indies salad—a marinated seafood concoction considered to be a Mobile original—still tastes of sweet white onion and sweeter white crab.
605 DAUPHIN STREET / 251-432-4605
Montgomery
**Georgia Gilmore** Girth, Grit, and Sass
A
hero at the stove.
On a weeklong ramble about Montgomery, I came upon a historical marker like none other I had seen before. Located just south of the capitol on Dericot Street, in a working-class neighborhood of tidy brick and frame bungalows, it stands in honor of one of the unsung heroines of the Civil Rights Movement, one of those people Martin Luther King Jr. called a “member of the ground crew.” It reads:
Georgia Gilmore
February 5, 1920–March 3, 1990
Georgia Gilmore, cited as a “solid, energetic boycott participant and supporter,” lived in this house during the days of the Montgomery Bus Boycott. Once arrested on a bus, Gilmore was ardent in her efforts to raise funds for the Movement and organized the “Club From Nowhere” whose members baked pies and cakes for sale to both black and white customers. Opening her home to all, she tirelessly cooked meals for participants including such leaders as Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Dr. Ralph David Abernathy. Her culinary skills contributed to the cause of justice as she actively worked to encourage civil rights for the remainder of her life.
* * *
“
Her culinary skills contributed to the cause of justice as she actively worked to encourage civil rights for the remainder of her life.
”
* * *
