I moved to Oxford, Mississippi, in March of 2014, weighing somewhere near 190 pounds. By the time I left, nearly one year later, I was at 211. I ate like crazy: fried chicken, fried catfish, fried okra, fried oysters, hushpuppies (which, if you don't know, are fried), onion rings (also fried), baked beans (not fried, but probably could be), biscuits, bacon, country ham, chili cheeseburgers, piles of potato chips covered in barbecue sauce (while waiting on orders of chili cheeseburgers to be served), sweet tea, bourbon, shrimp, grits, shrimp and grits, and, on very special occasions, salad (doused in dressing). And though the specific poundage accrued by my waistline should be taken as an estimate—the doctor who weighed me also said I was 5’11”, which is definitely two inches short, I swear—it was enough that a friend who had taken to calling me “Single Clay” after the end of a three-year relationship started calling me “Double Clay.”
Fat-shaming aside, the truth remained: alarming spikes in both cholesterol and blood pressure were among the baggage I brought north when I moved back to New York. But something else came with me, too: a profound longing to get back south as quickly as I could. For all of its blemishes and stains, there is something about the south that, like kudzu, wraps itself around the deepest parts of you and won’t let go. And the connective thread running through the architecture of that place—on which the stories and cold beer and oppressively hot nights all hang together when they come flooding back in your memory—just might be the food. In the south, there is a constant flirtation with the line between the sacred and the profane—late Saturday nights at the bar blurring into early Sunday mornings at church—and the table is where those two poles meet: a communion of souls come together in the name of gluttony, saying grace before eating unholy amounts of food. (As Rick Bragg once wrote, succinctly summing up the difference in northern and southern delicacies, “A bagel is a fine thing, for some people, but it is a biscuit without sin or indulgence. It is a biscuit that has been saved.”)
So, on the heels of another New York winter, having shed 20 pounds but not yet able to shake the mouth-watering memory of the deliciousness that first gifted them to me, I booked a multi-city plane ticket into Nashville and out of Memphis (the closest airport to Oxford). I wanted to make that four-hour, 260-mile drive from Nashville, my favorite city in the south and where I attended college, to Oxford, my favorite place to call home since I left it behind. It's a trip you should take and one that, if you hit the spots listed below, will leave you with the richness of the south on your tongue long after you've gone back home and started a juice cleanse.
If you're going to Nashville, you should eat hot chicken; and if you're going to eat hot chicken, you should eat the original. So hit Prince's Hot Chicken Shack first, the night you land in Nashville. North of downtown, just past a Speedy Cash, tucked into a strip mall next to East Side Window Tint and Entrepreneurial Clothing, Prince's is the delicious primordial ooze out of which the now-trendy dish was born. (The origin story is a special one: Wife takes revenge on husband, a known philanderer, by cooking him some very spicy chicken meant to induce surprise pain; husband falls in love with the chicken; revenge is not won, but a hot-chicken business is launched using the recipe.)
Inside, the floor is blue-and-white-checkered, though the white is more not-white at this point. There is a table with brochures for a new edition of The Heritage Bible that is "needed by everyone." I appreciated the concern, but opted not to get one. A long line of hungry customers waits to order through a small window strung with Christmas lights. Get the half-chicken—breast and leg quarter—for $11 and add seasoned fries ($2). Now, this is the important part: Get the "medium" spice, if you want your chicken hot; get the "hot" if you're seeking atonement through pain. Don't even think about the "xhot" or the "xxxhot."
The chicken's piled on white bread, smashed together with the fries and a pickle garnish (additional pickles, great for soothing the scorching heat, come alongside in a styrofoam container, dripping green juice). Even the medium heat comes with a trigger warning: Your nose and eyes know something is up and tingle accordingly. It's hot enough that it'll confuse your taste buds: For the first ten minutes, I gingerly picked at my chicken, thinking it still too warm to eat, when in reality the chicken had cooled—it's just that Prince's spice doesn't. Nonetheless, the chicken is tender, juicy, and flavorful—worth the burn, which lingers after you've left.
The next day, get up early. If the states below the Mason-Dixon are ascribed a certain idleness, it’s in some small part because the time after one meal is spent recovering for the next. You need that time. When you get to the Nashville Biscuit House—a squat, gray-and-blue building that looks more like three consecutive storage units than it does a place where you'd consume biscuits—go easy on yourself. In fact, don't even get out of the car. The best quick food in the south comes ready to go and without pretense, served on a paper plate, wrapped in wax paper or tinfoil, sometimes with a toothpick stabbed through to hold it together, and shoved into a brown bag bleeding grease. It's seemingly created for road-trip consumption. Roll around to the drive-thru window and ask for a country ham biscuit ($3.25—that's all). Unwrap the foil and enjoy in your driver's seat: The biscuit dissolves into a pillowy crumble that matches the ham's salty pop. Then, if you're longing for more, hit the road.
Wait. Make sure to stop at the nearby garage cum upscale coffee shop Barista Parlor. You'll need to stave off the crash from those golden, buttery southern carbs.
Drive west on I-40, putting about 95 miles of Tennessee under your tires, passing an endless number of signs for Loretta Lynn’s dude ranch. Probably don't stop. A left on TN-22 and 10 miles of dirt-brown state highway later, past roadside flower beds nestled into tires and a Speedee Cash (not to be confused with the aforementioned Speedy Cash), there’s the wood-paneled Scott’s-Parker’s Barbecue in Lexington, Tennessee. You'll be able to spot it by the two large signs, neither of which features its current name (one says SCOTT BAR-B-Q; the other B.E.SCOTT BAR-B-QUE). I had spent time as a kid going to a barbecue spot in another Lexington (North Carolina, where my parents were from), and the simple congeniality of the interactions there was why I, raised in Connecticut, wanted to go to college in the south. In this case: different Lexington, same sweetness. The young lady behind the counter asked each patron if he'd like a beverage with her customary "Inthing drank, hon?" An old man, who talked like he had a basso profondo frog in his throat, said he'd have his "reguhla" with some "tater chips." "That all, Curtis?" she asked another visitor.
The barbecue is done whole-hog (meaning the pig is split down the middle and cooked whole, as opposed to being butchered into different cuts beforehand). I got mine chopped—but you can go for pulled—on a Wonder Bread bun, with vinegar slaw and the house sauce, which, unlike at many places that use ketchup, is vinegar-based (and combined with cayenne, black pepper, and lemon). The thinness sinks into the meat, adding juice to each bite. Unlike at Prince's, here it's probably okay to get the "hot." (The "mild" was actually mild.) I got a side of baked beans, thick and flavorful like syrup, and sat in the dining room where the blare of ESPN on the TV—a temporal concession in a place that felt otherwise unchanged—competed with the sound of men chopping meat in the kitchen. I ate everything in about six bites, then grabbed a pound of barbecue and a bottle of sauce to go.
Instead of getting back on I-40, stick to the state highways (continuing on TN-22 to TN-100 to TN-18 to MS-7). They're 55-mph, two-lane roads, but they're empty, and the feeling of being alone in such wide-open, striking countryside is the most restorative digestif you'll find. I was staying in Oxford—and so should you, at the recently opened The Graduate—and so, after the additional two-and-a-half-hour drive, I met some friends, put the barbecue in their fridge, and had a beer on the upstairs balcony of Bouré, overlooking Oxford's scenic square.
Taylor Grocery is only 15 minutes from Oxford but feels like it's in the middle of nowhere (Taylor, Mississippi, is roughly four square miles and has a population of less than 350). Dinner is here, a country joint famed for its fried catfish. And yet, catfish aside, there might be no better example of what eating in Mississippi should be. It is always a long wait—longer during the weekend of an Ole Miss home football game or graduation (Ole Miss is in Oxford)—and that might be the best part. Taylor, as it's called, does not serve alcohol, which is not to be confused with a place where you can't drink. Come with provisions to survive a drawn-out wait: a cooler full of ice, a bottle of bourbon, and a stack of styrofoam "go cups." You'll drink underneath the worn-out facade (it was originally built in 1889 and doesn't look like it's been touched since), sitting on a chair on the front porch, or—more likely, since those are almost always taken—right on the wooden floorboards, your feet dangling off the front. There is a long-defunct gas pump standing guard outside. A string threads the underside of the porch's canopy, connecting the restaurant's front door to an empty Dickel whiskey jug, the weight of which closes the door behind anyone northern enough to leave it open.
Inside, Taylor is lit by a warm, amber glow and carries the tenor of a cafeteria. Music swims in the background when someone's picking a guitar on the stage in the back, near the restrooms. The tables are covered with red-and-white-checkered tablecloths (my empirical observations suggest that if a spot on this road trip does not have tacky tablecloths or an inordinate number of tchotchkes, it may not be worth dining at); the walls have been swallowed by tens of thousands of marker-drawn messages and signatures from patrons who've written where the brick has worn away. You don't have to order catfish, but you should. Get the whole catfish plate—you can always finish it for breakfast. The filet's cornmeal crust is light and crispy, and accompanied by hushpuppies and two sides (get the fried okra and more baked beans, if you dare). Then, after paying, take the winding, nakedly dark country roads leading back to Oxford. It's a haunting drive that, if you do it windows down, will leave you intoxicated and wondering how many more places like Taylor Grocery you'll spend your life never going to.
Stop back by City Grocery on Oxford's square. (The restaurant of James Beard Award–winning chef John Currence, and you should also eat here should you have another night or, God forbid, still be hungry.) Though its balcony has a prime, square-overlooking view, the bar is best experienced from the very back, at a table on a slight perch. You can see the place come alive, witnessing the ease and familiarity of everyone who lives here. There's a comfort in that—and in the blurred edges that follow a glass or two of bourbon. Stay, enjoying yourself until they kick you out—or until they kick everyone else out and let you stay, depending on who you know, or get to know.
If you drink more than you should, you're in the south, and there are no kitchens in the world better equipped to whip up the grease-weighted deliciousness that can cure your ills and get you back on the road. Maybe not entirely refreshed, but you'll be full—and definitely more nourished than you have been in a long time.