We're headed to Vicksburg, Mississippi and then New Orleans for an extended Thanksgiving holiday. Erica's going to be showing me all her favorite spots and we're going to be eating our way throughout the South.

On the drive down from Chicago to Vicksburg we stopped in Memphis at Rendezvous for a late second dinner. Downtown Memphis on the Wednesday night before Thanksgiving is pretty dead, and what you'd think is the front door of Rendezvous directs you go around the corner to the alley. Around that corner, past some dumpsters, and it all started to feel like this might be a fool's errand. But as soon as we got inside, we could hear cheerful chatter from a still-busy dining room.

Rendezvous has a fairly short menu and the menu section of "Other Items" has the sub-head, "strange as it may seem, some folks don't eat pork ribs every chance they get" and we decided not to be those strange folks -- we both got a small order of ribs. Their ribs come with a pretty thick dry rub and the sauce is on the side -- one hot and one not -- which I think might be the perfect arrangement for me. As odd as it may sound for a ribs fan, I'm not really a fan of messy food. The plate came with two small sides, an oddly yellow cole slaw and a delightfully greasy pork-and-beans.