Weekend in Vicksburg, Mississippi

March 29, 2024

We spent Saturday (March 23) running errands such as ordering and picking up medication and grocery shopping.

We treated ourselves to lunch at the Gumbo Pot Restaurant. We ordered fried green tomatoes as an appetizer. I ordered a half oyster po’boy and a cup of gumbo. Bruce ordered a seafood platter.

The fried green tomatoes were delicious. They had a cornflour crust and were crispy and crunchy.

I was shocked and disappointed when my half oyster po’boy came out with the cup of gumbo. I was expecting a four or six inch sandwich. Instead, I received a two inch sandwich. It had just two oysters on it. It was very good, but a half po’boy, I don’t think so. It was a quarter po’boy at most. I finished my sandwich in three bites.

Bruce’s seafood platter was large and he enjoyed it.

Sunday, the weather was lovely, so we decided to go for a motorcycle ride into downtown Vicksburg. We rode past the Welcome Center, the Ameristar RV Park, signs pointing to the water front casinos, historic homes, water front murals and museums. We rode up the steep entrance to the Walnut Hills Restaurant and parked the motorcycle.

We entered through the front porch entrance and we were seated in a back room. The front of the restaurant was already full.

On Sunday, the restaurant has a set menu. You pick from two salads, three mains, select three sides from the five or six sides, and two desserts. Bread rolls and cornmeal muffins were included.

The two salads were a pear salad and a green salad. The mains were roast beef, fried chicken and shrimp and grits. The sides were black-eyed peas, green beans, rice and gravy, mustard greens and I don’t recall the rest. The desserts were lemon cake and apple cobbler.

Most of the food was absolutely delicious! The fried chicken was better than my grandmother’s fried chicken and that is saying something! They have won best fried chicken in Mississippi for several years and the obsoletely deserve it.

The pear salad was traditional, a poached pear half with cottage cheese. The green salad was as expected from a high end restaurant.

The Southern sides were very good. I loved the black-eyed peas and mustard greens. Bruce admired the gravy on his rice and gravy. The pepper sauce for the mustard greens came in a whiskey bottle. It reminded me of the pepper sauce my dad made.

The bread rolls were small, fluffy and melt in your mouth good. The cornbread was authentic and delicious.

The shrimp and grits were a little bit of a disappointment. The shrimp were in a bechamel sauce over grits. I haven’t ever had shrimp and grits this way before and I found I didn’t care for it. The green beans were a bit overcooked for my current taste, but reminded me of my mom’s and grandmothers’ green beans. Every bite of the green beans was a memory of eating with family.

The desserts were delicious. The lemon cake was melt in the mouth with a delicious pop of lemon. In the apple cobbler, the apples were mixed with cinnamon and cardamom, and maybe some allspice. The crust was an excellent pie crust. Just lovely.

On our way back to the RV, we stopped at the welcome center and admired the I-20 bridges and the railroad bridge over the muddy Mississippi River.

We then rode across the I-20 bridge into Louisiana. The American flag on the railroad bridge marks the border between Mississippi and Louisiana.

We wanted to see the other end of the closed old Hwy 80 bridge, so we took the first exit in Louisiana and rode to Delta, Louisiana.

We couldn’t see the bridge, but we did get to see a train.

We rode back to the RV and Nox was happy to see us.