Our meal Friday night was so good I'm almost wondering if the Reids have been holding out on me -- in however many visits down here to Vicksburg we've never gone to either of these places.
First, running errands today we kept driving past the Goldie's Express* (3313 Pemberton Blvd, Vicksburg, MS) and there was a sign on a trailer out back that they had "HOT BOILED CAJUN CRAWFISH". On the way home for dinner I wondered aloud if we could try some over the weekend and the consensus in the car was "no time like the present". So we pulled through the drive-through (can you even walk up to Goldies Express?) and got two pounds of crawfish and some corn and potatoes.
Something about that order reminded my father-in-law David of tamales. Since he hasn't much of an appetite for much of anything lately, we all decided to scrap the planned hamburgers and go for an all carry-out dinner. We swung by The Tamale Place (2190 S Frontage Rd, Vicksburg, MS) and picked up a dozen hot tamales and some shrimp and pork Boudins (a Lousiana rice sausage).
(The Tamale Place's menu notes that it is "owned and operated by Margerey Sollys Brown and family - Not Associated With Any Other Business" which is confusing to the outsider, but my Vicksburg sources tell me it has something to do with some drama around Sollys Tamales (1921 Washington St, Vicksburg, MS) - "since 1938".)
We sat out on the patio and ate our carry-out feast. The crawfish were a lot of work, as peel-yourself crustaceans always are, but tasty and peppery (are you really supposed to suck on the heads, or is that something you trick yankees with?). The tamales were small by Chicago standards, but spicy and cheap. The boudin, both flavors, were delicious. The Shiner Bock was refreshing. All in all, an amazing dinner.
* We've been to Goldie's plenty of times, but Goldie's Express seems to be a related but different animal.
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The reason that the menu says that they are not associated with anyother business because the current owner of Sollys' Hot Tamales continually insisted that she was Henry Sollys' Family. My grandmother who is old-school and has always included her Maiden Name in her signature was slapped with a lawsuit about 6 months after she opened the Tamale Place...Dean McCain tried to sue my granmother for using her God-given name on the menu. To those from the area, it's not confusing at all.