
Driving south on US-61 into Mississippi
Sage move.

Eugene Hicks stands outside his world famous hot tamale restaurant
He’s been in the game for six decades, and at 74 years of age shows no sign of slowing down anytime soon.
“Who gets the business when you decide to call it a day?”
Mr Hicks chuckles “My kids is grown and gone and they don’t want nothing to do with this” he gestures across the restaurant.
“This is hard work”

The menu at Hicks Hot Tamales in Clarksdale Mississippi
“Come here a minute”
He leads me back through the restaurant to the banquet hall, and down a hallway.
“These here were the jail cells” he smiles as he opens the doors to the men and ladies’ restrooms.
“Now come back in here”

The nerve center of Hicks Hot Tamales in Clarksdale, Mississippi
“This here is a sausage maker. I use it to make tamales a lot faster than I used to be able to”
“If I need to I can make 200 dozen a day”

Eugene Hicks in storytelling mode at his restaurant in Clarksdale Mississippi
He fires up the sausage extruder he mechanically customized, and shows me how he loads it with the tamale fixins.
“I can do ten times the tamales like this than I could back when when I made them just by hand”
How did you learn to make them when you were young?

In the banquet hall at Hicks Hot Tamales in Clarksdale
How old were you?
“Oh I was just a teenager, and I worked at a little grocery called Liberty here in town too”
“I also make homemade Italian sausage, come back here a minute”
He leads me back through the kitchen to a walk-in cooler where he retrieves a freezer pack stuffed with link sausage.

Eugene Hicks explains how he makes his scratch Italian sausage
I tell him that I’d like to buy the pack and he smiles
“Well alright then”
I notice a couple 5 gallon buckets of oil near the stove and ask if he still uses lard in his tamales
“No we quit that a long time ago, we use canola oil now. I wouldn’t even know where to get lard these days”

Eugene Hicks holds a big bundle of corn husks he procures from Mexico
Five minutes later I’m peering into two styrofoam clamshells stuffed with a dozen steaming hot tamales. I unwrap the corn husk off one and stab it with a plastic fork and shovel the contents into my mouth. It’s sublime. Rich with beef, fat and red pepper, raspy with creamy, steamed cornmeal-I could easily take down a boarding house platter of these beauties.
Red, oily juice puddles on the plastic saucer.
“Spicy enough for ya?”

A half dozen hot tamales from the kitchen of Eugene Hicks in Clarksdale Mississippi
“Oh yeah, we get people that want deer in their tamales, and boar hog too”
What about alligator?
He laughs “No, never had anybody bring any gator in here. What’s that taste like, chicken?”
I nod.

The tamale making workbench in Eugene Wrights kitchen
We say our goodbyes and I wheel out of the parking lot punching through search on the radio. It’s no surprise that it’s all John Legend, and Beyonce. If you want to listen to Furry Lewis in his birth state you better have a cassette tape, and something to play it on.

The Paramount Theater in downtown Clarksdale Mississippi
Liberty Supermarket where Mr Hick’s got his start as a teenager sat next door for generations before it finally shuttered. Now it’s the Super Soul Shop with signs touting Hi Style suits for sale.
If you start to get too hairy or you need a sugar scrub there’s a spa nearby offering such services. A Trombone Shorty concert poster adorns a nearby plate glass window.

Eugene Hicks does not skimp on spices in his hot tamales
I’m left to wonder if you just walk onto stranger’s front porches and knock on the door in a certain way you’ll let them know that you’ve come to Mississippi and can you please have some tamales.
Hicks Hot Tamales
305 S State St
Clarksdale, Mississippi
38614
telephone
662-624-9887
Hours of operation
always call ahead

Hicks Hot Tamales in Clarksdale Mississippi
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