All the Greens in Jackson, TN
This piece was originally published in the August-November 2019 issue of our journal, Vol. 5, Issue 2: Together.
I probably wouldn’t have decided that 2019 was the year I was going to eat all the greens in Jackson if I’d grown up in the South, but I’m an adult convert, someone who moved here twenty years ago, tried greens for the first time, and decided they were brilliant. Good greens bring flavors together in ways few other foods do; they’re salty, sweet, bitter, savory, and often smoky and meaty, and they embody the sorcery of cooking: homely plants that taste like grass clippings, with a mouthfeel like eating stiff construction paper, are transformed into something unctuous and satisfying and harmonious. The humble, miraculously, is exalted. And somehow it always feels like they’re good for you, no matter how much pork has been added to the pot.
In retrospect, my greens quest was inspired by a sense of loss—several of the restaurants I used to depend on for greens aren’t in business anymore, and there have been a few soul food places that opened and closed before I even got a chance to walk through their doors. Something regional and, to me, precious, was fading away, and if I didn’t go on a greens odyssey now, I might not have a chance in the future.
Old Hickory Steakhouse
First stop was Old Hickory Steakhouse, a restaurant I don’t usually associate with greens. It turned out to be a good choice. Old Hickory cooks its turnip greens with diced onions and adds a splash of vinegar at some point in the cooking process, which greens purists would, no doubt, frown upon. Less orthodox eaters might find that these additions give the dish a bright, tangy kick. The greens have a nice, almost al-dente bite—I’m not a fan of soggy greens—and there’s a pleasant peppery undertone. There are no visible hunks or slivers of meat, but they’re infused with a meaty flavor. (Greens, paradoxically, aren’t vegetarian-friendly.) Also, I’m not sure greens novices should start their greens experience here; the variations Old Hickory performs on greens might create unreasonable expectations.
Brooksie’s Barn
By contrast, the greens at Brooksie’s Barn are novice-friendly. They’re mild and tender, suitable for small children, and the greens averse. It’s possible that they’d been sitting on the buffet longer than was good for them, because they lacked the slight bitterness I look for in my greens. Still, I ate two bowls. A few dashes of pepper vinegar in one of the bowls perked things up considerably, but I was still left with the impression that these were domesticated, henpecked greens, too easily dominated by any other flavor that might get added to the bowl. I thought of them, I decided, as the side dish equivalent of light jazz, a background accompaniment to the meal that was never meant to dominate your attention or cause you to skip dessert because you were captivated by the thought of one more helping of greens.
Paul Latham’s Meat Company
I’ve picked up pulled pork and a couple of sides from Paul Latham’s Meat Company before, but I’ve never stopped in at lunchtime for the meat- and-three cafeteria options, which I now realize was a hideous mistake that I greatly regret. My notes on Latham’s greens call them “pure,” “substantial,” and “upright,” which I mean as high praise. The cooks dial the meatiness back on the greens, and what shines through in place of the meat is a vegetal, almost herbal flavor, with a delicate bitterness like you might find in a cup of steaming hot (unsweetened) tea. A few shakes of pepper sauce elevated the dish to a harmonious whole.
*As a non-greens related side note, Latham’s country-style ribs are smoky and bone-gnawingly good, so tasty that when I was finished I started peering at pieces of bone and fat to see if I’d missed any scraps. And even though most barbecue sauces mask or clash, in my humble opinion, with the meat you put them on, Latham’s vinegary sauce pairs with these ribs exceptionally well.
Walmart
Walmart has greens at their deli counter, along with chicken wings and corn dogs and, depending on what time of day you go, crusty-looking mashed potatoes. I bought a small container of the greens, thinking I could make a joke or two about cooking down-home food in factories to be extruded into plastic bags and reheated in your local store, but Walmart greens are better than you’d expect. Despite hours under heat lamps, the greens resisted sogginess and made for a textured, pleasant mouthful. Unfortunately, they were cooked in a broth that tasted synthetic, like liquid drained from a can of store-brand chicken noodle soup. Surprisingly, these were the first greens on my quest to have meat in them, although I’m not sure I could identify what variety of meat it was. There were yellow/white meat-related slivers scattered through the greens, leaving, again, the impression that these otherwise respectable vegetables had been hanging out with a cup of soup or other freeze-dried meat products.
Brooks Shaw’s Old Country Store
The Old Country Store was my first stop that included two varieties of greens on their lunch buffet. I asked the woman cleaning up the dessert bar if she could help me tell the difference between the greens. “I know one of them is collard and one is mustard,” she said. Her voice was so quiet I assumed she was either shy or unused to greens-obsessed strangers interrogating her, so I filled up my plate and left her alone.
The more tender greens, which I decided had to be the mustard greens, had a punch of umami, that meaty flavor that gives the distinctive taste to mushrooms or, say, soy sauce. There wasn’t any visible meat in the serving, but clearly the greens had been meat-adjacent for a significant portion of the cooking process. There were grace notes of sweetness that played against the bitterness and the earthy, vegetable taste of the leaves. “You could make a whole meal out of these greens,” I wrote in my notes, but instead of doing that I tried the collard greens.
The collard greens looked more like a plate of leaves than the other greens I’d had earlier in the odyssey. (A lot of greens look like somebody has already chewed them up.) But despite the long cooking these greens had retained their basic structure, and the first bite provided pleasing balance of tenderness and resistance. The bitterness of this helping of greens was slightly more dramatic than the first helping, but I mean that in the most pleasant way possible—in a dark chocolate or coffee with cream sense rather than in the accidentally-letting-a-pill-dissolve-in-your-mouth sense. As a counterpoint to the bitterness, they were suffused with a soft, lovely tartness that somehow deepened and enriched the flavor.
In the interest of thoroughness, I tried another helping of the collard greens with a brisk shake of pepper vinegar. The result was fairly wonderful, but it also seemed unnecessary—the taste of the vinegar distracted from the harmony and nuance of the greens, and the overall effect was like putting lipstick on a baby or dressing your dog up as a leprechaun. There may be something interesting about the change, but you really couldn’t call it an improvement.
Cracker Barrel
I don’t really understand why anyone who lives in West Tennessee would eat at Cracker Barrel, given all our other options for Southern food. Do people who live in Naples, Italy, order food from Pizza Hut? Nevertheless, the turnip greens at Cracker Barrel are tasty. The texture is softer than some of the other greens I’ve tried, which isn’t a selling point, but there are so many bits and pieces of cooked-down ham in the dish that I doubt anyone will mind. My impression was that Cracker Barrel greens get most of their flavor from country ham. They’re salty, sweet, and porky, and what it lacks in vegetable flavor, it more than makes up for in umami. Sadly, I felt the portion size was on the stingy side, so on my next visit to Cracker Barrel, whenever that may be, I’ll probably skip the side of greens and order the entrée portion.
Baker Bros. BBQ
I assumed my quest to eat all the greens in Jackson was over, until Vicki, my wife, asked if I was interested in trying out Baker Bros. BBQ. “Check the menu,” she said. “Maybe they serve greens.” I wasn’t hopeful—barbecue places have a disappointing track record on greens—but the online menu said “turnip greens,” and, twenty minutes later, we were sitting in the restaurant. Baker Bros. offer a solid-sized serving of turnip greens, enhanced by a generous topping of their pulled pork. The bowl they’re served in features an appealingly dark broth, and there’s a peppery aftertaste and a tangy note that pairs well with the brisket sandwich. If you prefer your greens on the soft side, they’re probably right up your alley, but my take was that they were soft-spoken and genteel, when I would have preferred them to be a bit more boisterous and raw-boned.
So the quest to eat all the greens in Jackson came to an unexpected, but happy, end. Except it didn’t, really. This past week, as I was driving my daughter to an event across town, I noticed a couple of homey-looking restaurants I’d never seen before, and I’ve been daydreaming about what they have on their menus ever since. A few weeks before that, a friend on Instagram recommended a soul food place in Bolivar that my phone says is only thirty-one miles from my house. Last month, after a spontaneous drive up to Gibson County, my wife came back to tell me she’d driven past several places that looked like soul food joints. A friend at work let me know his wife really likes the greens at the Jackson-Madison County General Hospital cafeteria, and I’ve started to search for their menus online.
The blessing—I don’t use this word lightly—of this quest was to be reminded, in a small way, that journeys don’t end where you think they’re going to. It’s not that your sense of loss goes away—I’m still going to miss sitting down to a meal at Royal Reed’s or Say Grace, not to mention the friends and family members I’ve lost. But it’s good to be shown that there are still occasions to be joyful—perfect, shining moments or sights or sounds or flavors—and that, even in the face of loss, the world is larger than we first thought.
David Howard Malone has taught at Union University and lived in Jackson since 1999. His side gig, selling books on eBay, is spectacularly non-lucrative.
